9/9/08

Ni Hao Journal,

Again, I find myself writing at a ridiculously early hour of the morning. But, outside of the minor case of jetlag, Madhu is keeping us moving throughout the day and I don’t have any other chance to write!

Yesterday was another action-packed day! We started the morning with our breakfast buffet at the hotel – I love Asian breakfast! There is much more variety and it is not just the usual eggs, yogurt, and cereal routine but rather a large buffet with noodles, cheeses, meats, and other delights. A good way to start!

First stop was Lenova. You may be more familiar with them as IBM ThinkPad but in 2005 Lenova, a Chinese company, bought the ThinkPad division from IBM. So now, they are most known for their Lenovo ThinkPad. We had an American expat speak to us – Cory Grenier. Cory has been with Lenovo for 3+ years and was one of the first expats to work there. He discussed his experiences as a foreigner working abroad in China and the various challenges Lenovo faced when taking over the ThinkPad product line from IBM. I found his experiences as an expat most interesting, mainly the differences between cultural communications. While I previously thought that companies were making progress towards achieving an understanding in cultural differences, Cory pointed out there is a long way to go. However, despite the many cultural differences in the way the Chinese conduct business, there are many still many similarities that we neglect.

After Cory’s talk, we were bussed to another Lenovo building where we walked though a museum-like exhibition on Lenovo’s history and where they are heading to the future. This was developed for the Olympics. FYI – they were the chief sponsor of the 2008 games. It was an impressive exhibit – it seemed more like a club with the flashy displays, techno music, and flashing lights – was this really Club Lenovo sans bar?

I found Lenovo to be an interesting stop and a great first company visit. Then it was off to the Wenjin Hotel where we would have a buffet lunch and hear Terrance Tsang speak. Terrance is a communications consultant who works with many top companies in China and around the world. He was a great speaker and was able to share some of his “war stories” about doing business in China. He did provide some interesting viewpoints. Terrance discussed the hot issue of music piracy in China. He told us that due to the Cultural Revolution the Chinese missed out on the “vinyl” phase of music and thus never really purchased any music due to cassettes and CD becoming available at little or no cost after this. Therefore, the idea of paying for music is an almost unknown and absurd concept to the Chinese. I definitely never thought of this issue in that light.

The day was not over after these two speakers – then the tourist activities began. First, was the Summer Palace – very impressive grounds and buildings – lots of good photos! Perhaps more exciting was going to the Paralympics at night. Madhu scored all of us tickets. To be honest, I found the architecture of the buildings to be more exciting then the various sporting events. After watching the Olympics on tv last month it was amazing to the see The Bird’s Nest and The Water Cube in person. Again, I got plenty of great photos. Too bad the weather turned and it was pouring at the time. It took us a long walk and many frustrating attempts to finally hail a cab and get back to the hotel. It was an exhausting day but all very enjoyable.

Ciao,
PG