Trip to Beijing

2 weeks ago, Daggi and I went to Beijing on a "business trip". Maybe not exactly business, but we went to have 5 interviews with pulp&paper-people (for our thesis), and visit Norske Skogs factory in Hubei. And of course, since we were there, we had to take a trip to the Great Wall! :)

2007-04-10 Beijing

The first night we arrived we ended up with being a little disappointed with our hotel. We're not picky of any kind, and had only chosen the hotel on the basis of location, as it was close to the interviews we had the next morning. Anyway, to put it short; it isn't appropriate by a 5-star hotel to put business cards for "massage" under your door 3 times a day! And if case you wondered if it maybe was just some innocent massage, I wouldn't think so. I've never seen the "young russian lady"-massage on the massage menu at Dragonfly Shanghai, at least...

Linda, me and Marrie

The next day we had two interviews that went quite well, althou we were kind of shocked that the first one was with a lady. I had greeted her as "Mr Dong" in all the mails I'd sent her, but she didn't mention it, so neither did I ;) Later that day we had two interpreters arriving from Weifang. Daggi have really good guanxi with the GM at the factory he bought some gensets from, so he gladly lent us two girls to help us do interviews with Chinese people. They had never been to Beijing before, and didn't say no to a paid "vacation" =)

Daggi, Marrie and Linde on the train

Tuesday night we took the train to Shijiazhuang, a 2,5 hour trip from Beijing, to visit Norske Skogs factory. The train trip itself was surprisingly nice! It smelled a little funky, but what can you really expect! We were situated in bunk beds, 6 in each "booth". It was rather quiet, the other Chinese people were either sleeping or behaving, and they sold beer:) Quite nice!

Small piece of Norway

The factory visit at Norske Skog was great! None of us had ever seen a paper mill before, and it was some quite amazing machinery! The factory area was huge...600 x 600 meters, and big enough for 2 factories, actually. I was quite amazed, after seeing some fish factories in Vietnam, that the whole process was automatic! From the waste paper came in till the rolls were finished and ready to shipped out. In Norway it's how you have to do it since the labour cost is so high. But in China I would expect at least a little more people carrying stuff around :p The factory is actually China's 3rd largest newsprintmill, and still has only 300 people working there, and that is including sales teams and other office rats!

Tired of waiting, are we??!

The same night we thought we had a train ticket for 17.30, but as it turned out our Chinese helpers had bought tickets for 5.30! Now, I think it's quite amazing that they managed that, since they speak Chinese. I mean, if it was me, it would be like a 50/50 chance that I'd get it right. But on the other hand, it is quite amazing that the lady who sold the tickets, didn't think it was strange that people arriving at 23.00 at night, wanted tickets back 6 and a half hours later... Well, that's China for ya!! For us it ment we had to sitt 2 hours in a nice Chinese-train-station-waiting-room-smell, as well as a 3,5 hour traintrip back (since the train on the way back wants to stop on EVERY station!). Nice trip, anyhow :) And when we came back to Beijing, we had a hotel booked by one of the interviewees, so it was qualityassured;)

2007-04-12 Great Wall

The next day we booked a trip to the Great Wall. But as most of these tourist trips are, we had to stop on several of places where you get 5 min of explanation of what this is so Chinese and great, and 30 minutes to walk around and buy stuff. In this case; some old green stones, or some really expensive herbal medicine. Finished with that, and some tomb of some old emperor, it was set for the Great Wall! (See pictures in the album above).

That is one amazing wall!

And have no doubt; the wall really is amazing! Even if they built it today, it would be incredible!

Yeah, a funny thing about the emperor tombs! There are 13 of them, but they don't know how to open them. Because all emperors where burried with all their valuables (gold, silver and stuff) and sealed in a air-proof tomb, they set a huge fire before they closed the door, and created a vacuum in all the tombs. So if they open it know (they tried with one), everything gets destroyed because of oxidation (or something...). I think that's kind of cool :p

2007-04-14 Tianjin

The following weekend I took another train trip, and this time to Tianjin to have my IELTS test. The train trip this time was a little worse, as I sat upstairs in a two-story train, and it was sooooo hooooot! 30 degrees, at least!! Tianjin was not a very exciting city, but as with most small Chinese cities, it's a lot cooler to be a foreigner there :) Just finding a taxi made 10 Chinese people stand next to me and stare at me ;D The hotel standard did also decrease, as I had to pay for myself now. This one was so filthy that they called me at the room, twice each night, to ask if I wanted "Massage? She very beautiful." :) And at the breakfast, there weren't one single bit of food that could vaguely remind you about a Western breakfast. And I had to pay 5 kuai ekstra for coffee, which happened to be lukewarm Nestle instant coffee.

The IELTS is an English languagetest Emerson requires all international students to take. For most Norwegians it is a formality, but nevertheless it has to be done! The test consists of a listening part, reading part, writing part and a 15-minutes oral test. Personally I think everything was dead easy, but the Chinese students (I was the only foreigner) seemd to take it a little harder.

Anyway, with all the tests out of the picture, my application to Emerson is pretty much ready to be mailed :) Exciting!!