In Beijing

So apparently Forbidden City is about 500 miles long. After walking for 3 hours from one end of Tianamen Square to the other end of Forbidden City, we were treated, to a hike up some big hill to look at Forbidden City. Forbidden City has 9,999 rooms, and the emperor had 3000 concubines. Then we took pedi-cabs to lunch in some lady's studio apartment. Erol bought some balls at a Chinese antique market. Now we are en route to olympic stadium type area. Rehashing old memories on bus, currently arguing over strategy paper grades.

The Packing Odyssey

Wow.  Packing for this trip turned out to be an interesting Decision Models problem.

How do you meet all the requirements of the trip (outdoor/indoor, formal/informal, length of stay) while staying within the weight and luggage guidelines? (i.e. constraints)

The new guidelines require the checked-in bag to be no more than 44 lbs. and a carry on to be 15 lbs while on domestic flights in China.  So we're stuck with the least common denominator. Not cool.

Oh well, in the end I had to do some 'shake n bake' to get things situated (change of bags, dropped some stuff).

Looks like we're now in good shape.

Basic Itinerary

7 days to go and counting.  Trying to get organized and packed.  Thought I'd lay out the basic itinerary of the trip

• We land in Beijing.  We'll be there for 5 days.
• Next stop is Xi'an.  We'll be there for 2 days.
• Next stop is Shanghai.  We'll be there for 4 days.
• During the Shanghai visit, we will also see Suzhou and Kunshan
• Last stop is Hong Kong.  We'll be there for 2 days.

 A good mixture of business study and tourism, with several opportunities to venture out on our own to explore.

We live in interesting times

"We live in interesting times" - this is an old Chinese saying.  As we make our preparations to go to China, I can't help but pause and reflect on the events of the past week and what impact it may have on our upcoming trip.

China is the biggest sole creditor of the United States and with recent downgrade in the US credit rating, relations are a bit sour at this time.  I am curious to see what this will mean for us average Americans as we travel to The Middle Kingdom.

We still have 12 days to go and that can feel like an eternity when dealing with a global stock market down spiral.

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Welcome!

Welcome to Zhongguo'11, the WEMBA 2011 GATE trip to "The Middle Kingdom".

Feel free to post thoughts, ideas, pictures and videos as time goes by.