Friday

  • Travel. Atlanta to Seattle. Seattle to Beijing. Bus from airport to hotel. Drinks at hotel.

Saturday

  • Breakfast at hotel. Bus to Tiananmen square and the forbidden city.
  • lines of chinese people. Fairly empty square. Mao’s body entombed in crystal. Giant portrait.
  • forbidden city is astoundingly huge. Burned down three or four times.
  • Summer palace after forbidden city. Didn’t realize there was a lake. Thought it was awesome.
  • welcome dinner in hutongs. Black sesame kitchen. we made dumplings and learned that eggplant is delicious. Best ice cream ever.

Sunday

  • Breakfast. Bus trip to great wall.
  • traveled through some pretty desolate areas.
  • didn’t realize the great wall was on top of a mountain.
  • got to ride a slide down from the wall.
  • stopped at olympic stadium in beijing on the way back. meh.
  • dinner at Da Dong. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Monday

  • US Embassy - interesting discussion. The embassy was really impressive.
  • Baidu - Kaiser was a cool dude. Learned that Baidu is more than just a copycat company. Also they run the show in China.
  • Wandered around with Bobby in the evening. Ate donkey. Went to the store. Went to the night markets. Met some random Europeans. They showed us another night market where there was a bunch of gross food. It smelled awful.

Tuesday

  • Intel - Bruce was awesome. And he was honest and thoughtful.
  • DHL - was kind of boring. We got a tour of the distribution center.
  • Great Leap Brewery. Really cool people.
  • Dinner with Weber

Wednesday

  • Rode high speed train to Shanghai. Interesting view.
  • Visited Jade Buddha temple. Had some tea. Watched prayers.
  • Attempted to go to a garden but it was closed so we just got to hang out in an outdoor market. Had some really good dumplings.

Thursday

  • Got up early. Went to MARY CHING shoes. Listened to mary ching. Interesting lady.
  • Visit TouchMedia. Learned A LOT about chinese social media. Almost fell asleep.
  • Lunch at another shopping mall but this one had some awesome fried dumplings.
  • Visit Carrefour. The Wal Mart of China.
  • Went to the acrobatic show that night. Mind blown. Girls on bikes, balancing and bowl throwing, guy balancing a huge pot on his head, stilt backflip, omg seven motorcycles, flexible shadow girls.
  • sweet popcorn.

Friday

  • Visit Shanghai GM. The speaker was kind of disingenuous. Not a fan. But got to tour the factory so that was cool.
  • Free afternoon. Spent wandering around. Returned to outdoor market. Found the restaurant supply street. Took the tunnel across the river (lights!). Went up to the 87th floor of the Grand Hyatt and looked down on everything else except the Shanghai Tower.
  • Got back and went to farewell dinner. It was really good. Got waaaaayy too drunk on wine.

Saturday

  • Hung over all morning
  • went to the shanghai museum and saw a bunch of cool stuff. Wandered around a few markets.
  • Ate at a szechuan place. Saw face changer show.