Blogs from Qinhuangdao, Hebei, China, Asia

16/7/2012 After about 36 hours we are finally in the town we will be working, Qinhuangdao. The journey was long, boring and very tiring. The first plane was fun, the aeroplane was quite new and the "ICE" entertainment system kept us amused! Even the plane food was ok! Then we arrived in Dubai and had to wait 4 hours which was very boring, but we both fell asleep for about half an hour in the waiting room. The second flight left Dubai at 11AM Dubai time, and took 7 and a half hours. We both slept most of the way and I didn't eat anything as the food was horrible. We stayed for one night in a hotel in Beijing. I've included a picture of the toilet we were greeted with, but thankfully they had normal ... read more

The work retreat that really took me out of my comfort zone "In order to promote better communication and understanding among our workers, we are sending you on a roadtrip to the scenic area of Beidaihe for this year's 'Worker's Travel Retreat.'" Roughly translating, this was the notification we all received in the hotel computer system two weeks ago, after a couple weeks' anticipation and speculation as to where we would be headed. I admired the purpose of the retreat, and I thought I would save what little face I had by going, so long as I didn't do anything fool-hardy along the way. But truth be told, I didn't want to go. Not at all. Because, while I might make a few new friends and get to know my coworkers better, this was truly an ... read more

Some relative slack today so I am going to focus on what I have seen for living in China so far. I gather that most everything is condominium and that renters can rent from the owners and many will purchase condos and rent them as investments. I think this is historical because during many years of communist rules, there were few investment opportunities but as far as I can tell, communism doesn't exist in China any more. The highways are littered with billboards advertising so many different things (of all of the things that they had to copy from America, why did they have to copy this one?). Banks compete with each other and each bank seems to either represent a province or region or an employee group. I think the airlines now compete with each ... read more

Took about 3 hours to drive from Beijing to Qinhuangdao. Very lush green the whole way and just about the entire way is fully landscaped with trees and flowers and it is very impressive. I never knew China was so lush with greenery everywhere and perhaps most people don't notice but when you live in Phoenix, any lush green landscapes stand out. The city streets, whether Chengdu, Shangliu or Beijing have a wide variety of cars and there is a fair number of very little Chinese cars that obviously sell for much less than the type of cars sold in Europe and America and have to meet the western safety standards for collisions. On the highway from Beijing to Qinhuangdao it was entirely different. It became obvious to me that I was seeing a very large ... read more

As usually, our little trip to Qinhuangdao didn't go very smoothly... Firstly, Kerstin had to wake me up in the middle of the night telling me she left her passport at school. Great! So after having exhausted our concierge's cell phone and the school's phone without getting a response, she decided to head over there herself. Fortunately, he did wake up and she managed to get her passport after all. Next morning, our flight to Beijing was leaving at 07:00. When we were standing at the check-in desk of Hainan airlines at 06:25 we were told to go over to the Air China desk. With sleep still rubbing out of our eyes, we did as we were told.. Ofcourse she told us in turn that we were flying on Hainan, so send us back... Here she ... read more