Meeting the Cast
Trip Start
Apr 26, 2006
1
3
13
Trip End
May 10, 2006
Beijing,
China
Friday, April 28, 2006
I made my way to the Starbucks where we were supposed to meet and I met the group of people on the real estate group that I will be travelling with over the next few days. The group was an interesting dynamics of Taiwanese, HK investors from California. I said my introduction to the various people and proceed to make small talk with the rest of them. Jeffrey was a Shanghaiese agent leading the tour and he had two assistants Jackie (Taiwanese women) and John (younger American Born Chinese). The rest of the investors where:
Terry and Jessica
Terry and Jessica was an couple in the mid-40s who was here to invest in some property. Jessica was an engineer at Cadence and her husband Terry had some sort of EE simulation company back in San Jose as well
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. Terry was a HK immigrant to California while Jessica was from Taiwan. This pairing was not all that much different from my own parents with my dad being from HK and my mom from Taiwan. Terry had some of the weirder quality traits that my dad so I guess it must be an HK thing. Specifically he makes jokes that aren't that funny and he likes to call everybody a "rich guy" (especially me) and proceeded to laugh at his own "joke".Robin
Robin is by far the most irritating person on the trip. She is Taiwanese and probably in the mid to late 30s. The most annoying thing about here is that she doesn't like to act her own age, always saying that she's still young. More irritating is that she's a clingy woman trying to be "independent" by coming on this real estate trip. Everything she does she does with an attitude and with a sense of entitlement. Yet she can't make any decision on her own and has to call her husband all the time on decisions. She likes to pout and give attitude so that she gets her own way. She probably did that when she was younger back in Taiwan and I've noticed that in general Taiwanese guys are tolerant to a fault (I can also see why they get a mistress in China on business because these type of Taiwanese women are irritating). Well I found her to be ABSOLUTELY ANNOYING and I immediately knew that she was going to grate on my nerves
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.John
John was a cisco manager/engineer of some sort. He was a guy in his mid-to-late 30s. He was originally from Taiwan and seemed like an decent fellow
Older Malaysian Chinese Gentleman
I forgot his name but he and older gentleman who was 1 year from retirement. He wanted to invest his money in some properties in Asia so that he and his wife could spend their retirement days among the properties. I really liked him as he was soft-spoken and thoughtful in his comments. He was also a tech-guy in that he had build a career doing IT packaging for SanDisk (and equivalent companies)
Younger Malaysian Chinese
I forgot his name as well but he was similar to the older gentleman. Soft spoken, thoughtful guy who didn't say more than was necessary. Tech-guy as well.
Guy from LA
The last person was a guy from LA
Zhubang_Room3
. He was interesting and talked a lot. Apparently he was Taiwanese but had a Korean wife and 4 small kids. I'm not sure what his background was but he seemed ok. The only irritating part was that Robin and him hit it off and he sort of encouraged her nonsense.Zhubang Sunshine Business Hotel
The Zhubang Hotel is located in the Chaoyang district on the 3rd Circle of Beijing. The area is a newly built business center on the outskirts of town. Driving around the area, you see pockets of Soviet style old apartments and ghettos interspersed with new developments. It is very different from my previous trip (where I stayed next to the Forbidden City) in the sense that this area is probably more indicative on what to expect in Beijing.
The hotel is pretty spartan with only the necessary amenities. The rooms are nice with western styled decor in a spaceous studio apartment (minus the kitchen) layout. It is relatively far from all the shopping and tourist spots but because taxi's are cheap by US standards, getting around should be a problem. The good news is that there are plenty of 24 hour fastfood-style local eats within walking distance making it very convenient albeit relatively isolated.
