All over the country

The Trip of The New Manager was a huge success and now I find myself to have a three rest holiday in Xi’an, which is the old capital before Beijing and famous for its Terracotta warriors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi'an), which are really impressive. I’ve arrived here two days ago with Angie and will go back to Shanghai tomorrow. Xi’an is a beautiful city with a rich old history and many great sights. The atmosphere here is different from Shanghai. Although it is a very large city with over 6 million inhabits it feels quite local, definitely not international. Only when you are at the tourist hot spots I meet other foreigners. There are many large avenues with gives the royal feeling of an old capital. The streets down town are packed with large warehouses and fast food places, which totally makes it difficult at first to feel the unique features of a ‘new’ city (there all the same!). On the night of arrival Angie and I had the local specialty, which is a bread noodle soup. We, the costumers, had to break some small hard small breads into little pieces, this took us about 40 min – I must say we were definitely hungry after. If you ever set foot on Xi’an ground it worth to try, but I didn’t find it very delicious.

I’m here in Xi’an to rest a little after the intense trip of last week with The New Managers of de Baak. Saturday the group flew back to Holland after an full schedule lastly for 7 days. Jessica (Chinese logistic manager), Isabelle (Chinese cross cultural consultant) and I received so many compliments by the end of the week. That was just great. The managers also made their own report on this week which you can find on the http://dnm141.blogspot.com/. In this report I hope you can read their enthusiasm between the lines (it's in Dutch).

During the trip I’ve seen so many interesting things. A few of the high lights for me personally where the visit to (1) the Silk Factory on Thursday in Jia Xing, (2) the Creative discussion meeting I organized with PlusEightStar and (3) our visit to the Deputy President of ZhongGuanCun. The Silk Factory was placed on a huge terrain with multiple factories – I was exposed to big hallways full of noisy machines and literally hundreds of workers producing the most beautiful fabrics. ("Twente" in the 21st century I think). The Creative Discussion meeting with PlusEightStar was an great event with 40-50 attendants and it gave me a good starting point in the network of Creative entrepreneurial people in Beijing - want to see if I can create connections between this starting network in Beijing and the Creative community in Shanghai.

The visit to the management of the ZhongGuanCun was fascinating. It was a very official meeting and we were with a delegation on twenty people. When you’re with a big group a lot of things are going very different compared to when you visit just them by yourself. It gives it a very official feeling, and this is also the way in which the Chinese view such a group. I feel this is a great experience to have, to get a better understanding of the way China works. It was very nice that Isabelle was there to share her remarks and insights to gain an understanding for the group, but also for me personally.

It’s already very late, so quickly to bed. After tomorrow another new period in Shanghai will start with: (1) a trip to Thailand, (2) the visit of Harry Starren, CEO of de Baak, to Shanghai (mid-May), and (3) the feasibility study of my project with the Consulate. Further personally I want to keep my focus on my developments in Chinese and music. I have no clue how I can manage it all, but I will pull it off in the end, I’m sure.