The Engagement

Do They Have What it Takes?

The City of Nanjing wants to be a world class software development headquarters.  They have the assets.  There are more than 50 Universities here in Nanjing.  One of the colleges has a software institute that leads all of China in turning out software engineers.  Their curriculum is amazing and much deeper in focus on software engineering and full lifecycle of development than most American schools.

They have built software parks that look and produce like silicon valley.  Our visits to the governmental agencies are all focused on the mission of producing high value jobs.  They are willing to do what ever it takes to edge out India for software outsourcing.  Because of their manufacturing prowess, they are very skilled in embedded development.  They could become the Smarter Planet Showcase for the world.  They have built a Smarter Transportation System already.

Why haven't they taken over already?  That is what we are aiming to find out.

Sorry for the Delay in the Blog - Hello Nanjing

Hi everyone.  I realize that it has been almost a week since my last blog post.  I have now been in China for 10 days.  After my visit in Beijing with Fred and Lisa Begtine, I made my way to Nanjing.  It was a relatively short flight between Beijing and Nanjing.  I was greeted at the airport by Eduard who works for the Australian Business Volunteers (ABV), a non-for-profit agency that helps companies to promote business investment in the eastern hemisphere, primarily east Asia.  ABV is the agency that IBM is using to help connect the Executive Service Corps with governments in places like Vietnam, Laos, the Philippines, and of course, China.  This is IBM's third engagement of the Service Corps in Asia.  There have been two others in Cheng Du and now Nanjing in Jiangsu Province which is about 80 miles from Shanghai which is on the Chinese eastern coast.

View from my 65th floor room

Zifeng Tower, Hotel Intercontinental

Eduard, a Chinese National, is here to help our team of non-Chinese speaking executives to get to where they need to be, the beautiful Hotel Intercontinental in Nanjing.  The hotel is the tallest building in Nanjing over 85 stories tall.  It is our home for the next several weeks.  No complaints about the digs here.  This is a luxury hotel in China.  No need for a steripen and most important this hotel is very western compliant with appropriate plumbing.  Other members of the ABV are here to facilitate our success.  Jean Sum, a charming Australian National who also speaks good Mandarin, has been with us since the early days of briefings.  It is a pleasure to be working with Jean.  She has been invaluable to the team keeping us moving from meeting to meeting and making sure that we have everything we need including finding us a church to attend if we need to and where we can have a great meal.  Jean understands the Chinese culture well, too.  She seems to really enjoy her job.  We appreciate all that she is doing for us.

Nanjing is a beautiful city with hills, a river, and a fairly sizable lake.  There is plenty of waterfront and our first couple of days were spent getting to know the city with a tour and a trip to the Confucius Temple.   We learned of the wisdom of Confucius in more depth than we know from our Chinese Fortune Cookies. It was a fascinating view of thousands of years of history preceding the birth of Christ.  Confucius died in 479 BC.  

Confuscious

You really get a sense of how much history this country has with over 5000 years of recordings.  It is sort of strange, however, that the country is not trying to preserve history.  Instead, it is modernizing most of their relics, including the outer walls of old Provincial Nanjing.

We have had some very nice dinners.  Chinese food can be so familiar to the sort of food we eat and so different when you eat the local specialties.

On our third evening here, we ate at a restaurant at the old part of Nanjing close to the original wall hundreds of centuries old.  It was an elegant restaurant with excellent food and excellent company as our team met with the local IBM team and discussed the client situation and our ESC engagement.  We got to try some unique dishes and of course drank the Watermelon Smoothie - basically puree'd watermelon that my daughter Elise, a watermelon junkie, would love.

My team is a wonderful set of executives, 3 from North America, and one from Australia.  They are all great to work with and I am having a lot of laughs with Dean, Judith, Doug, and Ron who are all bringing unique talents to this engagement.  We are working and gelling together quite well.  More to come on our team and our engagement.  Working with the City of Nanjing and the Chinese people has been quite a cultural experience for me.  I think you will all be quite interested in what is going on in Nanjing and where the Mayor of this fine and beautiful city wants to take the people of China.  I will try to be more regular on this blog, but our schedule has been so busy with interviews, dinners, and team meetings that finding even a spare 15 minutes to blog has been difficult.  And then there is sleep.... not nearly enough.  More tomorrow.

Forbidden No More

Forbidden City is a Fascinating Look at China's History

Fred and I went to Tienanmen Square to see the Forbidden.  Having been there once before, it was Fred's second time so he had some background about the history.  As you walk into the Forbidden City, the size of the city becomes apparent.  It was a city from the 14th century onward and Beijing grew up around it.  The many leaders and Emperors reigned there.   You might remember a movie about the Forbidden City and its youngest Emperor, Pu Yi, in the movie the Last Emperor.  There is much history here about the situation dramatized in that movie.  I don't recall everything about it, but I do recall that Pu Yi didn't reign for long before Sun Yat Sen and the new republic brought revolution and ushered in a new government.  The Dowager Empress pretty much ran the country into the ground and the Qing Dynasty was hopelessly shattered.  Pu Yi became just a cog in the Communist system.  Of course the reality is that any time there has been famine in the land as with the end of the Qing Dynasty there has been a change of government.

Just Outside of the Forbidden City

 The architecture inside is as you would expect of Chinese architecture, but you have no idea how large this area is as it goes for at least several miles.  The parks inside are very nice.  It took more than 1 million workers to build this city and 24 emperors reigned there.  The capitol city has mostly been in Beijing, but it was my host city for the Executive Service Corps, Nanjing, at one point.  When the Forbidden City was built in the Ming Dynasty, it was moved from Nanjing to Beijing and the City was built on the site of the former Imperial Palaces that were burnt to the ground at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.

There is much to see and do here, but mostly this is the museum of Chinese history and a must see if you want to understand the rich 5000 year history of China.  I'll have more pictures to share that I will upload to Picasa as there are just too many pictures to insert here in this blog.  My next post will talk of my shopping experience in Beijing and a first in my life!

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to Beijing

Beijing is a vibrant city.  It is a large city covering a huge area with the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square right in the center.  East meets west here in Beijing.  It is loaded with embassies.   Being the capital city, you see compound after compound surrounding us as we make our way to the Temple of Heaven.  Living in the ex-patriot community you would think that you are living in a suburb of Atlanta, GA.  The homes and the people are generally western folks here on short term assignments.  We are picked up by a shuttle and with an hour and 15 minute ride through choked arteries of roads, we finally make it to the Temple of Heaven which is a set of religious buildings dedicated to sacrifice to the heavens.  Built in the early 1400's, it is exemplary of early Chinese architecture.  It is quite pretty and interesting.

It was a very hot day and despite everything you here about pollution in Beijing, it really wasn't bad.  On day 2 with the visit to the Forbidden City, we had blue skies and sunshine for most of the day.  Did I say it was hot?.... Yes.  Fred bought, as he would say in French, beaucoup d'eau.  We needed it.  You do a lot of sweating in 95 degree heat and very unbearable humidity.

Fred and Lisa Begtine at the Temple of Heaven

After spending time at the Temple of Heaven you realize that the past here is very old.  5000 years of dynasties and history is evident at the Temple of Heaven. To think that this place was built 1400 years AD is amazing.

There were displays of various types at the Temple, but most were dedicated to the various types of sacrifices that were made at the temple.

Leaving the Temple, we found ourselves in a more active area, the Pearl Market shopping district.  You can buy almost anything there.  I bought an interesting little speaker system that collapses into a ball like figure.  The price was right, 60 RMB, or about 10 dollars.   You see quickly here that China really does manufacture everything for the world.

Pearl Market - Loaded with Everything for Purchase

First Days in Beijing

As the Boeing 777 from Chicago to Beijing landed after almost 14 hours on the plane, I thought about the adventure that awaits. As I was leaving the plane there was a young American woman walking off the plane at the same time as I. She could have my daughter, Elise. Cute, long blonde hair, carrying a plush Panda bear and looking a little out of sorts. I asked her where she was from and if this was her first time in China.

From Minneapolis, Minnesota, she said this was her first time in China. I asked her if she knew anyone here. She said no. I asked her if she was a student. Again she said no. Realizing at the moment she was a college graduate who must have been advanced because I swear she looked seventeen, I asked her why she came. She said that she was here to teach English. Recently graduated from Bethany, a Christian school in Minnesota, she learned of this opportunity and signed up for to a one year contract with an agency. How young she looked and how great an adventure for someone not yet fearful of the great unknown.

Which reminded me of a quote from Mark Twain: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” I thought to myself, here I am 54 and it is my first time in Asia and this young girl not knowing anyone is here to Explore, Dream and Discover. I must confess, I would have had a hard time putting my daughter on that plane bound for Beijing. Youth knows know boundaries.

Good for her. China awaits. More tomorrow on my first full day in Beijing. My good friends, Fred and Lisa Begtine, who have learned the value and excitement of new adventures, treated me to a day of shopping and important Beijing landmarks.  The Temple of Heaven and the next day the Forbidden City.

Hmm... What to Bring

Today is packing day. What to bring besides sedatives for the flight? Let's see... clothes for a month, China Culture guide, 10 packages of Beer Nuts (can't get them in China), two dozen small packs of tissues - it seems that the Chinese don't have toilet paper in their bathrooms, anti-perspirant when facing the Chinese Media, and the book "The Amateur" by Edward Stein.

Time to load up my iTunes with enough podcasts to last a month. A few videos for the flight - found a PBS Series called "Inside China." I think I will be taking my camera and all of my Apple gear. Do you think I should take my Apple TV? I doubt I can get Netflix there.

I am really looking forward to seeing my good friends Fred and Lisa who recently moved from Nice, France to Beijing for a two year stint. They live in a expat neighborhood with their two dogs and a cat. They are wonderful hosts and I always enjoy seeing them. I'll be there for 3 days. Maybe see a few sites in Beijing.

2 Days to Go!

This trip is also my birthday present.  I leave at 5 pm on Sunday which is also my birthday. I think my good friends Fred and Lisa Begtine whom I am staying with in Beijing will have a birthday cake for me when I arrive.  So I get to celebrate being 54 once on this side of the International Dateline and once on the other side.  How fun is that?

I have a very tight connection in Chicago with less than one hour to make it to my flight to Beijing.  So be in prayer that American out of Bloomington takes off on time!  I have had some bad experiences with American Airlines this year as they have "for no good reason" cancelled two of my flights on my return from Chicago to Bloomington.  I never thought I would see the day that I would be praising Delta Airlines over American, but here is the deal.  After my last two cancelled flights, I wrote a letter to Thomas Horton now CEO of American.  My letter was never even acknowledged by American.  That is NOT a Remarkable Customer Experience.  American needs to do something to improve their posture in the industry. They need to do something other than bankruptcy and proposed mergers with Jet Blue to do it.  I long for the return of Bob Crandall.  Bob ran a tight ship at AMR.  He also made them profitable and a pleasure to fly with.

Thomas Horton, CEO AMR

I'll let you know how this flight with American goes.  13 hours and 25 minutes of flight time on American in coach no less.  I was able to secure a power port and an aisle seat but only by paying an extra $100 for the two legs of the trip.  Maybe I will at least be in Group 2 for loading?