Archive for July, 2006Day 7: Shanghai [China no. 7]Thursday, July 13th, 2006[Note: Read a more chronological account of Day 7 on calpolymbatrip.com] Apparently Day 7 was a slow photography day for me. I took only a handful of shots — perhaps it was the heat and the fact that it was a full suit day.
Day 6: Shanghai [China no. 6]Thursday, July 13th, 2006
I’ve been lagging a bit on making posts to wrap my experience in China and hope to have each daily entry finished within a few days. I took a few too many photos and unfortunately want to include them all. Writing the captions takes a while but makes the images a lot more personal for me. To move things along more, I’m going to focus more on the image captions and less on providing a bit of an intro. I cover quite a bit of background in the captions, and there is also a very good overview for each day of the trip on the MBA blog that my classmates and I drafted while we were traveling (a link to a specific day appears at the top of each post as I have done above). I hope that helps a bit! The following are from Shanghai:
Day 5: Shenzhen to Shanghai [China no. 5]Sunday, July 9th, 2006
Day five marked our final day in Shenzhen and the beginning of our stay in Shanghai. We would visit the rather impressive Yantian Logistics Center as well as an ex-pat residential development before boarding our flight to Shanghai. Both of our official visits were very interesting, though the residential development was quite an experience in contrast to what we had seen so far on the trip. In comparison to the living conditions the workers we met on our second day had to endure, the units in the ex-pat development were like heaven. At US$1.5-2 million, they were also well beyond attainable for any of the workers, even after several lifetimes of the compensation they most likely received (and indeed, well beyond the grasp of most Chinese citizens based on the per capita income information we received). The development was populated almost exclusively by wealthy ex-pats from Korea, the US, and a few other countries.
Day 4: Shenzhen [China no. 4]Saturday, July 8th, 2006
Our fourth day in China was a “free” day. Prior to the trip I interpreted “free” to mean time to myself. Evidently it meant that we would still have an agenda (at least for the first part of the day), but would not visit any companies. This didn’t bug me at the time, but in retrospect I would have enjoyed having more time to travel on my own in each of the cities we visited. Our evenings were almost always open for our own agenda, though the cities were always different at night. We started by taking the metro to the electronics district in Shenzhen, had a group lunch, and then were free to explore the city. As we wandered around in small groups, we saw pretty much the same thing at first: shop after shop of electronics vendors. It was a bit overwhelming, but also curiously uninteresting (at least to me). None of the wares were top quality (most of the equipment I checked out was gray market or 6 months behind the current technology) save the various high-end stereo equipment we encountered in one shop. As we moved out of the main part of the electronics district, however, more of the city’s personality started to appear. A group of us took a 10-15 minute cab ride to a new neighborhood and stopped in a billiard hall for a few beers. Overall it was a very fun and relaxing day.
Day 3: Shenzhen [China no. 3]Friday, July 7th, 2006[Note: Read a more chronological account of Day 3 on calpolymbatrip.com] On our first day in Shenzhen we visited two factories, an electronics component manufacturer and a phone manufacturer. I have quite a bit to say about the experience but have yet to gather my thoughts completely. In the meantime, please enjoy a few photographs.
Days 1 & 2: LAX to Shenzhen [China no. 2]Thursday, July 6th, 2006
As a short introduction, as part of Cal Poly’s MBA program myself and 32 other students traveled to China between June 15 and July 2. I was unable to make blog posts while traveling and will now begin a series of daily posts that add photographs I took during the trip as well as additional commentary (beyond what is provided via our class blog located at calpolymbatrip.com). The first day of our trip was fairly uneventful. I woke up around 5am in Santa Barbara, said goodbye to my family, and took a 1 1/2 bus ride to LAX spending the time watching the early morning traffic and thinking about the upcoming trip. The MBA program was short and sweet, and I was glad to have an extra few weeks with my classmates — it seems that my favorite friendships always come about when time is compressed. Indeed, the trip will be the last time I may see many of my friends before I move my family to the East Coast at the end of this month. As people began to arrive at LAX, it became obvious that everyone was excited to be taking such a trip. We were all chipper despite the very long set of flights, bus rides, and extra hoops to jump through. Our first leg to Tokyo (~11 hours, I believe) was for the most part spent wandering the aisles of the mammoth plane, socializing while enjoying the many benefits of an international flight. I am sure a few from our group grabbed cat naps during that flight, but it seemed most waited for the Tokyo to Hong Kong leg. The seemingly arcane process of transferring from Hong Kong over the border to Shenzhen was also relatively painless. My one qualm was that I saw a “no photography” sign just as I was becoming interested in taking some real photos. The border, especially around 10 or 11pm, is quite fascinating, and not at all what I expected. There wasn’t the cadre of automatic weapon toting military that I anticipated, nor the throngs of individuals usually present at border crossings (perhaps the hour…). All in all, aside from the rush of cigarette smoke, and perhaps the general chaos of non-line formation, I don’t know that I would have been able to tell that I was actually in China. I took only a handful of photos that day, and provide additional captions with each:
China: Daily Re-CapMonday, July 3rd, 2006Prior to my trip, I had intended to write a journal entry for each day and post it here. Once in China, however, I quickly realized the futility of my goal due to internet filtration as well as a distinct lack of free time. On the upside, my classmates and I were assigned group journal entries on our class blog, so the detail for each day of the trip is well covered. If you are interested in reading what we experienced each day, you can find the journal entries linked below (linked to calpolymbatrip.com):
Home From ChinaMonday, July 3rd, 2006It was a long and amazing trip, but I am glad to be back home in the US. I managed to avoid getting sick or having food poisoning during the bulk of the trip, but had to deal with the latter during my flight home yesterday and have yet to fully get over it. Additionally, I can’t tell if I am dealing with jet lag yet (it’s 3am in Beijing) or simply the side effects of traveling with stomach/digestive discomfort, so I probably will not begin posting regularly for a day or two. In the meantime, I’ve posted two photos to tide you over. The first is a shot I took in the streets of Shanghai. I was walking around a pretty depressed market district with a friend (Chris Riffel) and saw the scene across the street. Behind the wall laundry hangs to dry on a scaffolding surrounding construction for a new building. In the second image, a friend (Mike McSweeney) took a photograph of me standing on the Great Wall. I’m holding a small photo book of my son that my wife made for me as a Father’s Day gift. 
[Update]: I forgot to mention that my assumption about being unable to post from China was correct. My blog as well as several sites I normally visit on a daily basis were completely blocked. The censorship was quite frustrating from an ‘access to information’ standpoint, but also noticeably affected internet performance. |
|
TAGS: 
[Note: Read a more 
[Note: Read a more 
[Note: Read a more 
[Note: Read a more 
