Day 3 - Silicon Valley of China and Hong Qiao

Trip Start Jun 28, 2009

Trip End Jul 26, 2009

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Flag of China Beijing, Beijing, China
Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Today we went to what is referred to as the Silicon Valley of China. It is a place where they make software for computers. It is called a ZhongGuanCun Software Park or ZPark for short. It is a semi private venture since they have three investors but at least on of them has ties to the government. The government has given them the power to allocate the land in this industrial park like place. This is because all of the land belongs to the people; the people meaning the government. Phase I and II of he project covers 675 acres and an amazing 60% of that is green space. The idea is that the nature is a more creative environment for the software engineers. One of the reasons for this is that there is not much parking as the living quarters for the engineers is on-site. The most interesting building is one that each of the four wings look like computer mice and the the structure in the middle is made to look like a CD ROM. Driving by the unfinished building, it looks like a flying saucer. This park includes many companies including international companies like IBM; each company has 2 research and development buildings. We visited Hangwang Technology. They showed us some really neat things that they are working on including OCR (Optical Character Recognition). They use this to create products such as scanners that turns what it scans into a editable word document instead of a single image. They also showed us a scanning pen and writing tablets that can sense pressure differences to change the thickness of the strokes, important especially in Chinese writings.

Leymo Coffee

It can then recognize the characters and turn it into text. ZPark also has what they call and Incubation center for smaller companies to help them grow. I enjoyed the presentation, but it was hard to understand parts of it. ZPark provided an English speaking woman who gave the introduction. But the presenter at the business did not speak Chinese so a couple of people with us provided translations.

We at lunch at a new restaurant for lunch today since the ZPark was an hour and a half away. It was really good. We had chicken with cashew nuts (which was awesome). We also had some good cabbage. There was some corn beef with a spicy red powder.

After lunch we went to the Hong Qiao Market. This meant that we had to ride on the subway. Overall the subway went much better than I had anticipated. One thing that helped is that they have a flat rate of 2 yuan to travel, much easier than the metro. They also repeated the stops in English and the kiosk had an English button. This is a very English friendly city. The side to get on the trains has glass and then there are automatic doors that open, much safer than US subways. The subway is also very clean, almost spotless. There are new flat screen TVs hanging up, which we all know wouldn't last a day in New York or DC. When we went to get on we had a couple people get stuck in the doors and left behind, but they were able to catch up as we only went three stops down.

At the market, which basically felt like a 4 story flea market, it was almost chaos.

Presentation at tech company

I felt like a fish in a pool of sharks. Every single merchant is yelling at you when you walk by trying to convince you that they have the best products and the guy's next door are fakes. We just decided it was best not to make eye contact. There was a floor of silks, one of knock off bags and luggage and then a couple floors of miscellaneous things. All and all, it was an experience. We took the subway back instead of getting a taxi, and it was uneventful.

When we got back, before dinner, Jim, Lee, Janet and I went to the grocery store to get a couple sodas. They don't sell anything by the 6 pack or case, everything is individual. When you check out, they ask you if you want a bag. Well it turns out the plastic bag costs 0.20 yuan which is basically like 3 cents.

The memorable part of dinner was lemon chicken and the dumplings. I could almost eat a whole plate of dumplings by myself. They are really tasty especially with soy sauce and vinegar. We had steamed broccoli as usual which was good.

After dinner, Jim, Lee and I decided to take a walk in a different direction. We got to see more local markets. It is really interesting to see the different shops. But you have to be really careful crossing the street, the walking signals seem to be only a suggestion.