Thursday, August 26, 2004
So the past week has been fun...
I spent a couple of days in Hong Kong, and got to hook up with my sister, who has been living there for several years. Last time I was there was in 1995 before it was handed back, and I couldn't see much of a difference this time - the place still felt much the same.
After Hong Kong we went to Xiamen in Fujian Province. Dell has its China manufacturing there, as well as the local telesales teams. Xiamen was a really interesting mix of modern buildings and road chaos. We would be in a taxi driving along a 6 lane highway and suddenly there'd be some guy crossing the road, or someone stopped on a bicycle. The lane markings seem to only be an advisory there, as most of the cab drivers would drive between lanes as often as in them.
I'm now in Shanghai. We've been working the past two days, and we get two days off from tomorrow (because we worked through the last weekend). Shanghai is interesting compared to Xiamen, if only because you could arrive here and not be able to tell it apart from any major Western city (except for all the bicycles here).
Shanghai is also surprising for all the skyscrapers here. There are the landmark buildings you would see on postcards, but there are also lots of large hotels, business and apartment buildings too.
Another surprise was that all the hotels I've stayed at since I arrived all had broadband access - even the one in Xiamen. And while the government supposedly blocks access to certain sites, its not really affected any of the sites I would want to visit. For example, I am able to access Blogger with no problem, which quite surprised me.
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I spent a couple of days in Hong Kong, and got to hook up with my sister, who has been living there for several years. Last time I was there was in 1995 before it was handed back, and I couldn't see much of a difference this time - the place still felt much the same.
After Hong Kong we went to Xiamen in Fujian Province. Dell has its China manufacturing there, as well as the local telesales teams. Xiamen was a really interesting mix of modern buildings and road chaos. We would be in a taxi driving along a 6 lane highway and suddenly there'd be some guy crossing the road, or someone stopped on a bicycle. The lane markings seem to only be an advisory there, as most of the cab drivers would drive between lanes as often as in them.
I'm now in Shanghai. We've been working the past two days, and we get two days off from tomorrow (because we worked through the last weekend). Shanghai is interesting compared to Xiamen, if only because you could arrive here and not be able to tell it apart from any major Western city (except for all the bicycles here).
Shanghai is also surprising for all the skyscrapers here. There are the landmark buildings you would see on postcards, but there are also lots of large hotels, business and apartment buildings too.
Another surprise was that all the hotels I've stayed at since I arrived all had broadband access - even the one in Xiamen. And while the government supposedly blocks access to certain sites, its not really affected any of the sites I would want to visit. For example, I am able to access Blogger with no problem, which quite surprised me.
