As I write this, I am traveling as part of a group of forty MBA students from the MIT Sloan School of Management.  We are touring China - Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, anyway - and observing businesses there during our spring break in 1999.  I am one of the half-dozen students on the organizing committee for this eleven-day trip; however, these pages are not any sort of official record.  They are simply my own impressions from my first-ever visit to China.

Our approach into Beijing was from the north over a hazy range of mountains that gave an impressive first image of China, almost like a painting.  Once we landed, the mountains were nowhere to be seen.  I expected to see huge crowds at the airport - so often I had heard of how crowded China is - but it was no busier than a typical American airport.  Getting from the plane through customs to the airport lobby took surprisingly little time.  A few soldiers loosely monitored the gate and a few wandered through the airport as we waited for our buses to show up, just going about their business, which had nothing to do with us.  Quite a contrast to the pictures of Chinese military threat painted so often by the American press.

A fast bus ride from the airport along a newly completed highway brought us to a late-afternoon traffic jam downtown; traffic lights make no special allowances for left turns, and that hung us up for an amazing amount of time.  Overall though, my first impressions of Beijing are good ones, better than I had expected; it’s an old city just starting to turn new, making it fun to explore.

The Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, lobby pictured above, is like any better American hotel by the looks of the place and our rooms.  This is Beijing?  Checking in our group took a while - we have Cantonese but no fluent Mandarin speakers on the trip - but we got through it fine.  Dinner was at a nearby restaurant serving decent but somewhat Westernized food with a few sweet dishes and cookies at the end.  Our tea appeared to be a chrysanthemum and cherry mix; our group, jet-lagged, didn’t know whether to eat it, drink it, or just look at it.  Most were wiped out by the time we finished at 10pm, and the few of us hearty enough to explore found most shops already closed and the nearby Forbidden City’s lights cut for the night, so it was back to the hotel after this long opening day.

Jet lag had me up early the next morning, so I walked over to the east walls of the Forbidden City to see the vegetable markets set up there and to get my first photographs of China.  A group of kids on their way to school cycled past me, ...

...small families stood by their carts selling vegetables, ...

...and nuts and grains, ...

...and guys received hair cuts out in the open alongside the street.  Most everyone along the way was Chinese, but surprisingly few turned to give me a stare.  Too many Westerners have been to Beijing now, especially here beside the Forbidden City, for the locals to get excited anymore.

The purpose of this day was three business visits, so we put on our suits and headed out on our bus.  The first was to the China Development Bank for an overview of financial reforms in China, a presentation that turned out more interesting that expected.  When asked about devaluing the renminbi - the Chinese currency - the officials suggested just the opposite, that its value should appreciate.  Afterward, a few of us went to lunch at, of all places, Pizza Hut - for research purposes, of course.  A few items were on the menu, such as onion rings, that would not normally be served in the US; otherwise it was the same, from the style of service to the waiter serving each customer their first slice of pizza.

Then it was on to Legend, the largest maker of personal computers for China, with 15% of the market; second-place IBM has half of that share.  All of us with technical backgrounds looked forward to this visit; I had some questions about their distribution system and their government sales - neither of which foreign computer companies have in China, both of which would seem to give Legend an advantage.  Surprisingly though, the visit was disappointing: their presentation was average and their translator was simply unable to handle our questions.  Our first question about the company’s strategy and vision prompted a lengthy reply in Chinese, but a single ambiguous sentence in English!  When the answers to a few more questions went the same way, we quickly wrapped up the visit and headed to a separate area of town to see where Legend manufactures its computers, a visit that went little better.  More interesting was seeing people leaving the warehouse with computers strapped to their bicycle carts, as in the photograph above.

From Legend it was on to Tsinghua University, the MIT of China, to meet students from their International MBA program.  A short tour of the campus - the above photograph shows most of us in front of their main building - was followed by a dinner banquet with the students.  I asked one about her business background before coming to Tsinghua, as top US business schools like Sloan desire students with years of experience.  It turned out that she had no work experience, other than a short stint as a store clerk; she was allowed into the program because of her English abilities and her previous schoolwork at the university.  Her story was not unusual; it seems that China really does need to build its management expertise from the ground up.  After mingling with more Tsinghua MBA students at a get-together after dinner, jet lag began wearing us down again; about a dozen Sloan students stayed behind to go clubbing with the Tsinghua students, but most of us headed back to the hotel.

More dreary weather greeted our third day in Beijing, our first day of tourism; our bus headed toward the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall under a shroud of fog.  Approaching the Ming Tombs, some of us asked to see the stone animals lining the pathway leading to the tombs, so our bus made an unplanned stop.  I’m glad we did, because it turned out to be the highlight of the day.  The stone animals...

...and the stone humans begin appearing a few hundred yards along the wide, straight path.  The statues are nothing spectacular, but the long walk on this cold, misty day felt good.  From here it was a very short distance to the tombs.

Detail of a wall along the path.  A guidebook warns that, though a frequent stop for tourists and an important site to the Chinese, the Ming Tombs have the resemblance of a bomb shelter and about as much to offer.  That is an accurate description.  After descending many stairs, we entered a series of poorly-lit chambers holding stones once used to block the doorways of the sealed tombs and very plain recreations of coffins - leaving no doubt that the reason tourists frequently visit this place is because of its proximity to the Great Wall.

Lunchtime another twenty minutes up the road was at a restaurant upstairs from a Friendship Store near the Great Wall serving somewhat Westernized versions of Chinese dishes.  The Friendship Store merchandise was the kind of stuff found in any American Chinatown, so browsing didn’t take long.

Rumor has it that we visited the Great Wall, but it’s difficult to say.  As our bus climbed into the Badaling pass toward a restored section of the wall, the fog thickened and what little scenery was visible before vanished.  When we reached the vehicle tollbooths just below the Wall, we were told that the highway leading up to it had been closed because the fog was too thick for safe driving.  I was afraid that we wouldn’t get to see the Great Wall at all, but eventually we were allowed to get off the bus and walk the final mile or so up to this other separate completed section of the Wall that tourists don’t visit as often.

The walk up almost wasn’t worth it; the fog was so thick that we didn’t even notice the Wall until we were practically upon it.

Roofline tiles along this restored section of the Great Wall.

Through windows and walls of the Great Wall watchtowers.

Part of the glory of the Great Wall is to see it snaking its way over the nearby mountains, but we could barely see fifty feet in front of us; editing the above photograph to look even this good took some work.  With just too little to see, I headed back to the bus early, just in time to avoid a wet snowstorm that came minutes later and soaked most of our group that had remained on the wall.

Back in Beijing, we headed to the famed Quanjude restaurant - “Old Duck” - for a Peking Duck dinner.  Desperate for warmth after the Great Wall misadventure, some of our group managed to get the heater working in our cold restaurant room, despite our waitresses telling us it didn’t work.  The most authentic Chinese food we’ve had so far, the duck was quite good: the hot oily skin, thinly sliced, is surprisingly tasty when dipped in sugar, and the meat, cut into small pieces, is wonderful combined with onions and celery and a tangy sweet sauce and then wrapped in thin fajita-like skins.  MIT graduate Charles Zhang, leader of the Chinese Internet portal Sohu, stopped by to give an informal talk about his company and the Internet in China before we headed back to the hotel.

On our fourth day in Beijing, I headed out very early to see the Temple of Heaven - Tiantan - on my own before our group’s organized activities for the day, and was amazed to see a clear predawn sky as I stepped outside to catch a cab.  Could it be?  Yesterday’s thick fog had blown away overnight, leaving clear skies; even the normal Beijing haze had nearly disappeared.  We would be seeing the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace later today in postcard-perfect weather.  These are the Temple of Heaven entrances viewed from the south.

The day was cold, just like Boston after a snowstorm blows through and leaves clear skies behind; many layers of clothing took care of that.  The ten-yuan ($1.25) cab ride to Tiantan Park was quick, as the city was just waking up and no cars were yet on the road.  The first locals were arriving for morning exercises when I showed up at 6am.  The park surrounding the temple was open, though the temple itself would remain closed for another couple of hours.

Tiantan, the Temple of Heaven, at sunrise viewed from the surrounding Tiantan Park.  In the distance I could hear people yelling, clearing their lungs for the day ahead; elders paced the long paths, forward and backwards, swinging their arms to warm up.

As the sun appeared over the horizon, small tai chi groups formed and began their slow movements in unison; the man in the photograph above practiced alone.  The park is very large, and the ample time I had in the morning gave me a chance to walk its length from north to south and back again.

Corridors in Tiantan Park near the Temple of Heaven.  Around the park, men flew kites, women played badminton, and more and larger tai chi groups swayed through the morning cold.  Here along the corridors, groups would later gather to sing Peking Opera and play cards.

My last shot before having to run back to the hotel for the day’s activities was this one of the Temple of Heaven, an icon of China.  After years of seeing the Temple of Heaven model in Disney World’s EPCOT, seeing the real thing finally made me feel that I was truly in China.

This perfect day for pictures continued with our trip to the Forbidden City.  Many tourists had arrived before us, so it took a bit of effort to work our way through the crowds.  We entered through the east gate of the city; we were not able to see Tiananmen Square on the south side, because it is being renovated in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the People’s Republic in October.  Those repairs are to continue through the seventieth anniversary of the May Fourth movement and the tenth anniversary of the clampdown on the Tiananmen demonstrators, which will keep people off of Tiananmen Square on those dates.  Pictured above is the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Forbidden City’s most important building.

Our group moved smartly through the huge city layout, as we had much more to do this day if we wanted to be back at the hotel in time to shop.  The Forbidden City impresses with its size, but it doesn’t take long before all the structures begin to look the same, with their unchanging golden roofs and high red walls.

In the eastern part of the Forbidden City, we were required to wear these strange ill-fitting orange footies; I have no idea why, as the pavement in that part seemed no different.  At least it makes for a funny picture.

The Nine Dragon Screen in that eastern portion of the Forbidden City.

Fu dogs are ubiquitous in Beijing, but this one was particularly large and grand.

One of many decorated panels in a display hall along the eastern side of the Forbidden City.

The north gate of the Forbidden City, where tourists exit.  Few relics are on display, courtesy of the Guomindang taking everything they could carry with them to Taiwan fifty years ago; so, surprisingly, a few hours is actually enough time to see this huge place.  In the distance, literally across the street, is a high pavilion in Jingshan Park; no doubt the view from up there back over the Forbidden City is a magnificent one on clear days like this.

After the Forbidden City and a very fast visit to a cloisonne factory, lunch took place at a large restaurant near the Summer Palace.  The meal was heavily Western-influenced, like most of our meals here, and this time even included french fries!  We let our tour guide know that he needn’t go quite that far.  Then it was on to the Summer Palace, which provided a beautiful dramatic opening view across Kunming Lake to the main complex on Longevity Hill, shown here.

A boat on Kunming Lake, which covers most of the Summer Palace grounds.  We took a quick walk through the Long Corridor at the base of Longevity Hill; it would have been nice to have had more time to linger over the many paintings on the rafters overhead, as well as wander through the gardens and hills and bridges around the lake, but our group was ready to go do some serious shopping downtown - an opportunity we had not had before now - so we kept moving along.  At times, rushing through the grounds, I had to keep convincing myself not to worry because I’d be back someday.

Wangfujing, the street in front of our hotel, also happens to be a main shopping street in Beijing.  Our group took full advantage of that when we returned to the hotel in late afternoon.  Browsing the book stores, I found a book written in English explaining the meaning behind the Long Corridor paintings we had just seen at the Summer Palace, and I was very happy to purchase that.

The way one pays for goods in Beijing is worth a mention.  Every store, no matter how small, has at least two people working inside: an assistant freely moving about the store, and a clerk inside a tiny plexiglass enclosure handling money.  To purchase my book, I gave it to the assistant, who wrote up its cost on a multi-copy receipt.  She had me take three receipts to the clerk while she kept the book.  I paid through the glass and the clerk gave me back two copies of the receipt to take back to the assistant, who took one of them and gave me my book all wrapped and ready to go, along with the remaining receipt.  It’s certainly not an efficient system - for small stores, it’s extremely inefficient - but it does limit the exposure of the store’s money, and it does keep people employed, which is no small thing as China transitions to a market economy.

I planned before the trip to visit a McDonalds, because of a book I had read on the McDonalds culture in the Far East and because Beijing is the least modernized of the cities I’ll be visiting.  A very large one was close to the hotel, near where the original Beijing McDonalds was forced to close a number of years ago and torn down for a new shopping mall.  McDonalds in Beijing and the US are surprisingly similar in style and appearance; the differences aren’t even worth a photograph.  The only differences are the Chinese characters alongside the English on the menus and the low prices: value meals cost less than two dollars.  The clerks even bring french fries to your table if they aren’t ready when you order.  They do limit the number of napkins and ketchup packets - those aren’t left in the open - but I asked for more and received them with no problem.  Few patrons were there, and those who were treated it as nothing special; men read newspapers, couples chatted over their meal and then left, and one girl studied her schoolwork.  I had expected a crowded place of people staring in wonder at the menus and hanging out for hours just to be cool; instead, it was me who was left staring in wonder at how easily McDonalds has merged into Beijing city life.

A bigger surprise came when I stepped into a department store on the way back to the hotel.  Upscale and gorgeous, the store had cosmetics counters spread across the entire floor full of nicely packaged Chinese-brand merchandise.  Sales clerks were attentive and helpful; this was no Friendship Store.  Walking through, I was surprised to emerge into a full-fledged mall, with seven floors of upscale shops!  My jaw literally dropped, and I took the photograph above.  Clerks were dressed nicely, sometimes in stylish uniforms.  Many stores had just clerks and no customers - it was 8pm on Sunday night, an hour before closing - but still, many people were out shopping, and some were indeed buying.

It turns out that this was the Sun Dong An Plaza, the very mall that replaced the McDonalds a few years ago.  Quickly walking the entire mall took an hour.  The place even has a movie theater; if this long day hadn’t worn me down, I would have gone in to see what was showing.  An amazing place - and on my way back to the hotel for the night, I saw many other malls being built in this same area; construction was going on even at this late hour.  This isn’t really Beijing - is it?

Our fifth and last day in Beijing started with a visit to IBM’s research center, where Chinese voice-recognition technology is being developed.  The head of Human Resources told us about the challenges of hiring and retaining good people - a big issue in China - and the president of IBM Greater China graciously hosted an excellent lunch.

With a few hours available before our flight to Shanghai, we quickly arranged a visit to the Lama Temple, a major Buddhist site fairly close by.  The air was thick with incense, and monks and worshipers mingled amongst the many tourists, as shown above and below.

Temple worshipers light their incense sticks.  The temple is in a busy area of town with many low buildings surrounding it, not an ideal setting for a place of worship.  But the interiors of the temple complex buildings are impressive, with each succeeding chamber gaining importance as one moves through.

The temple complex culminates in this structure containing a huge eighteen-meter-tall Buddha carved from a single tree; pictures weren’t allowed, but even if they had been, I couldn’t have fit it into a single photograph.

Leaving the Lama Temple ended our visit to Beijing, a city that impressed me far more than I expected.  From here, our bus took us to the airport for our flight to Shanghai.  That too was impressive: though only a ninety-minute flight, the very efficient flight attendents served us a full dinner without once looking rushed.  Our bus met us at the airport and took us from the west side of the city through its center east to the Bund and the Peace Hotel, our accomodations for the next few nights.