Beijing - Apr 2007

4 days before the end of March, I had to make a quick decision on how to get up to 17 new engineers trained up to support the customers in China, Taiwan and Australia. With no trainings, they were not certified for a lot of things and effectively unproductive. On Tuesday, I made the decision to host and deliver a training in Beijing together with one of my Japanese specialist. Training was to start on 2nd April - less than a week away. I was worried that the Australian and Taiwan engineers could not make it in time due to issues in getting the China visa, but in the end, they managed to show up on the first day. 2 trainers and 16 students - that was still a handful to manage for trainings.

I am not going to bore everyone with training, but I shall elaborate more on my side trips to the Great Wall, Ming Tombs, Wang Fujing, Tiananmen and Forbidden City. I had an Australian and a Taiwanese in my class and both had not been to any of the tourist spots before. This was also the first time in Beijing for the Australian, Frank. So I ended up being an unofficial tour guide for the weekend. This would have been my 4th trip up the Great Wall in Badaling and I swear that this time, it seems that we made it up to the top faster, less tired and less sweat. Can't understand this. The first time I was up there was when Beijing was having a heat wave and it was the hottest day in Beijing in 50 years! My legs cramped up and I was sweating like a hog. This time, I panted at some sections (especially the steep slopes and high steps), but other than that, it seemed almost easier. The day was a blustery 2o deg C or so. It still boggles my mind why the Mongol hordes would even consider invading Beijing through the mountainous wilderness. I am even more amazed by the will of the people of days gone by to have put up this wall in the middle of nowhere, with no modern tools. On the way up, there were rubbish bins with some hilarious ENGLISH on the sides.

Next stop after the great wall was the Ming Tombs and like most obedient tourists, we ended up in Ding Ling, one of the biggest tombs. With the coffins of the emperor and emperess about 6 stories down, think of the manpower required to dig down and prepare the burial tombs. And the coffins!!! - must have taken many people just to lift them and move it into place. To top it all off - 13 tombs are spread out all over the beautiful piece of real estate. WOW!!

When HK was handed back to China, they promised that nothing will change for "50 years". Well, I have been visiting China since 1990 and I can safely say that Tiananmen will not change for at least 50 years. The same photo of Chairman Mao is still in the same place and the walls of the first gate "Tiananmen" are looking the same as when I first laid eyes on them more than a decade ago. The only thing that I really missed was that the Mao mausoleum was closed for renovation. I had so wanted Frank and Chester to see Mao's corpse still lying in state all these years.

No writeup of China is complete without a review of food encountered. There is a lot of ducks going around China without a quack. One of the regular appetizers served to diners are duck tongues (and spare parts of duck, cow, pig and every other animal that is eaten in China!). This is an acquired taste!. Certainly not one of my favourites. Then in another restaurant, I came across this fugly seafood - still wiggling and wriggling all over the aquarium. Yucks!! It looks like what remained after the palace make staff had been Eunuchnized, i.e after their little brothers were cutoff - they served them to..........

One of my favourite was the famous Beijing Duck (Kao Ya) served at Quan Jude. We tried the one at Wang Fujing and believe it or not, there was already a queue at about 4pm (for dinner!!).The ducks served at Quan Jude evencomes with a certificate that authenticates the number of ducks they have served since 1864!!

Last but not least - there was this restuarant in Wang Jing (5th ring road) which had an opened area showing how they prepared longetivity noodles. The noodle is made as one lonnnnngggg strand. If you can find the end of it in your bowl, try to slurp it in in one big slurp.

Well 2 weeks went by in a blink of an eye and I was back home mid Apr. Next round of travel is a series of punishing week in Delaware, USA (week of 7th May), Shanghai (week of 14th May), Penang (week of 21st May) and Fukuoka, Japan (week of 28th May). I think I will need at least 2 weeks leave after that to recover.