I am very behind on this post, but I’ll have to blame it on the long flight home from Beijing zapping my creativity! After the trip to Cannes, I flew over to Beijing for the last of Lenovo’s internal Kickoffs. The flight from France to Beijing was somewhat depressing, because by that time I was ready to come home, but from the moment I checked into my hotel things turned around and the four or five days we were there flew by. We stayed at the Shangri-La BJ, which was pretty nice and had a woman who jammed every evening to 80s and 90s covers. I ordered a Pinot Noir from Oregon each night (US represent!) and got a funny look each time. I had a room sized for a small army, seriously, it could’ve fit 5 king beds in a row! Perks included extra water bottles (for my friends?) and tons of mini shampoos!
Khaner, Zac and I trekked over to Asia together, and while Beijing was a busy blur in terms of work and meetings, we were able to carve out a few hours here and there to see some stuff that had been on our bucket list. The Beijing (BJ) Lenovo Kickoff was held at Capital Indoor Stadium, which is a pretty dated arena in the middle of the city. The China and Asia-Pac teams got together for this large meeting, which was entertaining and informative for the company 😀 we had some cute Lenovo logo costumes on stage that were a huge hit there! But, I’ll tell you about the fun stuff I saw and did, since that’s probably what you’re more interested in (I know I am).
Some experiences we had in BJ:
- Went to the Great Wall of China. Casual, right? I was pretty excited. It really is great. Zac and I took tons of photos of each other panting up the steep stairs and bought awesome souvenirs for our families there. We had a fabulous tour guide Tony who told us all about how and when it was built, and how finally we could call ourselves “men” since we climbed the wall. (Ok he actually said courageous but I think he was being PC) the views are incredible, and we had a perfectly clear, smog-free and beautiful morning there. Definitely something I won’t forget.
An awesome climb with an amazing view
- Stopped at a jade factory and bought some cute bracelets! We got a tour, got sold HARD and watched a man literally carving tiny details into jade balls that would bring luck to whoever bought them. Did you know China is all about jade? Now I can tell real jade from fake, jadeite, and plastic!
These are all hand-crafted jade pieces
- Couldn’t get a cab due to our American nature (classic!)
- Asked a Chinese coworker to purchase cough medicine for one of our executives. Good thing I really trusted Tao Bai, because there was no way we could read the instructions!
- Ate dinner in a revolving restaurant which overlooked BJ. Think massive buffet, large amounts of seafood, pieces of chicken and frog that “are edible”
- Ate dinner in a VERY legit Chinese restaurant. We ordered by pointing at photos on the menu… Verrrry interesting experience. The couple next to us were pounding beers! They don’t remove the empty bottles for you, it’s something to be proud of I guess, so they were burping and hollering, banging their table and clinking their glasses each time. LOL to that!
The black thing is a 100-year old egg…
- Went to the Summer Palace! This was our last day in BJ, we had a few hours before the trip to the airport so Khaner and I walked through the Summer Palace with what felt like millions of kids on field trips! We were out of rmb by then, so had to essentially beg people outside to give us a few rmb, and even then we used our student discount. Luckily, I still look exactly like I did when I was a senior at Davidson! The Summer Palace felt like BJ’s Central Park to me. It’s huge, has a large lake where people would take dragon boats for a spin, lots of different beautiful temples and halls, and a ton of history. Here’s a quick video that sums it up! https://youtu.be/PyNMzFoFaUY
Dragon boats!
Peace out China
Amazing detail in these halls
jetsettingjennie 