Beautiful Beijing: the great capital

Last week I’ve been in Beijing, which has been totally great. I went to the great Capital to prepare a management trip in March and April. One of the modules of a larger Baak-program will be in China. It will be a trip of one week in which 20 Dutch managers will visit Beijing and Shanghai. Goal of the trip is to introduce the Chinese market and culture to the group and give them more experience in doing international business and overcome cultural differences. The trip will consist of different company visits and network dinners. In the last four months I’ve developed so much network in Shanghai, that I felt no problems at all to make it happen there. However, for Beijing I was a little nervous, because I hardly had any openings there. Beijing and Shanghai are seen as the Amsterdam and Rotterdam of China, but the cities are geographically definitely not close (more like Amsterdam and Rome). So my goal for these five days in Beijing was to prepare the program of the trip for March in Beijing and get a general network started there.

The trip was a great success. I met so many interesting people and companies in Beijing, more than I possibly can put in the program for March. And I was not alone, because Isabel (a beautiful Chinese girl) helped me to move around in town. She was my Cross Cultural Consultant and did a great job. Isabel has lived as a student in Beijing, before she move to Canada. Now she flies everywhere across the world. She really knew all the hip bars and restaurants in Beijing – delicious and reasonably priced. In my five days we had 15 meetings all across town. Three a day, which made us spend lots of hours in the taxi - all lot of traffic jams (just like home). One of the most interesting meetings was the diner we had with Paul Denlinger on Monday night. Paul works as a consultant with a focus on internet startups. He is critical on the developments and current situation in China. He also keeps a blog in which he collects his thoughts – check it out http://www.chinavortex.com/.

For the management trip in March we went to Atos Origin (they did the live streams of the Olympic games - http://www.atosorigin.com/en-us/olympic_games/), Printing company Elanders, the ZhongGuangCun Science Park (http://www.zgc.gov.cn/) and Internet consulting company Plus8star (http://www.plus8star.com/). Magnus Miller of Eilanders was a very positive and nice guy. Eilanders is growing fast in China. In two years from 1 to 280 people working. My god, I’ll be happy if I have 5 people working here for De Baak in two years. Next to all these companies the Dutch managers are also invited by the Dutch Ambassador in March - a happy development. It will definitely be a really nice program in March and personally I can’t wait to go.

Me and Isabel made long days in Beijing, so I haven’t really been able to enjoy much of the Cultural sites. However I made a night walk around Tiananmen Square and had a lunch with Isabel at 798 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/798_Art_Zone) – the big artist community located in Beijing. Beijing is really the cultural capital, something I miss sometimes in Shanghai – you cannot have everything all the time. One thing is certain, I want to go back there a lot more often and this trip has been a great start in getting to know the city and its people better. Next to all the business activities I also met a Chinese girl called Angie, beautiful and sweet. I hope to see her again soon – she wants to look for a job in Shanghai, so let’s see what will happen.

I came back on Friday night in Shanghai and had a very nice weekend with a nice dinner at my house yesterday and of course playing music…. Shanghai is still good and really feels like home, more and more. This Friday I’ll return to Holland for 2 weeks. My last days here are busy (what's new?), but I'm ready to go back to the Netherlands – I’ve enough stories to tell and experiences to share.