I tend to meander as a tourist. Some would say I do the same in my writing. This is a big country and China 2.0, a group of 10 bloggers from the UK, Amsterdam, assorted and assorted parts of the US, moved yesterday at a pace that made me fearful, we were going to try to meet every start up, eat every delectable morsel, visit each "can't-miss" take-your-breath-away" timeless, historic point of interest that Beijing, a city of 17 million, with a history of 2000 years has to offer.
Unfortunate, from my perspective is that we are seeing and doing so much that I have not had nearly the time to write that I want to have. I can't even Twitter our business meetings, because two out of three of them have offered no Internet connection, It is early morning, Beijing is dark. I am going to try to give you an executive summary of what I have seen and done since I last posted. My forehead aches with what I have taken in,
1. A walk with the Kaiser. Sunday afternoon, Kaiser Kuo, Renaissance thinker, American ex-patriot, rock star (literally), China expert and director of Ogilvy Asia's multimedia practice took me for a three-hour walk through his neighborhood, which is the most modern, urban section of Beijing. We walked through the largest high end mall that I have ever seen, where designer-label brands offer goods that I cannot afford worldwide. Pedestrian traffic was on the sparse side, as it was a week earlier for me in the Union Square section of San Francisco, We toured an incredible supermarket, where a sign prohibited taking pictures. My takeaway is that there is a Chinese elite who can usually buy whatever they wish, but these days, they are cautious, indicating our economy and China's are interdependent on each other.
Kaiser took me to his home where I met his beautiful wife his four- and two-year-old bilingual children, admired his view and his sword collection and marveled that he rented 2500 square feet in a high rise at a price that would get you a studio in the San Francisco Mission District. We walked more through the clean, street of reflective glass high rises, pausing to examine "The Crotch," as Beijingers call it. The $1.2 billion, still unfinished China national television building. Many people hate this building. I remember that in San Francisco, the Trans America Pyramid was hated when I first arrived. I had moved there from Boston, where the John Hancock Tower was equally loathed. Now they are icons of their respective cities.
2. The Summer Place. Giving you a condensed version of The Imperial Palace, is sort of like showing you a scale model of The Great Wall. It only gives you a shadow of the reality. The Summer Palace was built by a tranquil lake, West of Beijing for the emperors whose, Forbidden City in Beijing Summer was too hot and central air conditioning had not yet come to China. It is no longer outside Beijing. The fast-growing place has expanded and overtaken this historic paradise.
Dave Wolf, A Californian who has lived in China for the past 14 years, played host giving us a remarkable walking tour filled with facts and vignettes of who lived here and what has happened here. Our group spent two hours walking, clicking and starting to know each other. If you ever have the opportunity to come to Beijing, visit this place. But give it at least a half day. Out two-hours was a mere skim of what there is to see there.
3. Lunch with Kaiser & Andrew Lin. We had yet another elegant meal at the "Middle 8th Restaurant" [Translate that to Middle Earth] where we divided into two groups. Kaiser spoke about the social and political environment at his table. Because I had spent so much time with him, I sat at the table where Andrew Lih , another America ex-pat, whose new book "Wikipedia Revolution" comes out in a few months, spoke to us about start ups and social media in China. I learned that the 100-million bloggers, estimate I was planning to use at my CNBloggercon talk would have drawn laughter. The real number is closer to 25 million. Bulletin Board Messages remain much more popular, with nearly 70 million people enjoying anonymity as they exchange information and opinion. Most blogs are very social. They are rarely political and almost never business related.
In the afternoon, we heard from three very different early-phase Chinese tech companies. I will try to write about them later today, if the slave-driving schedulers allocate me some time.
