More Properties, Stanford, Donghuamen
Trip Start
Apr 26, 2006
1
6
13
Trip End
May 10, 2006
Beijing,
China
Monday, May 1, 2006
I ran into John, who was on the same tour as me in the local 7-11 outside of our hotel. We talked some more about the other various investment properties and the ones that our group joined. We basically agreed that the the best properties were the ones you find on your own.
We decided to check out the office space property next to our hotel (check out the pictures). The property was essentially the same price as the Zhubang space John bought but the quality seemed better.
Stanford Alumni Association
Every Fall stanford has alumni association travel study programs. In essence, it's not all that different from the high-end tours except that the program is led by a professor affilated with Stanford University
Donghuamen1
. Most of the members were successful alumni 40s or older, which is understandable considering that the tour is priced in the $5-6k range and spans 3 weeks. The event was arranged by the group to meet some local alumni in Beijing, most likely to get an more in depth view of China from the lens of on the ground alumni in the region.I found out about the event when I emailed the local alumni association chapter. By attending the event, I got a chance to mingle with local alumni and alumni from the states. I have to say that the value of this networking experience was off the charts. Part of the reason for coming to China on this trip, was to look for jobs. Yet it was and had been difficult to find opportunities in China as I found out that the best of jobs are found through word-of-mouth. One of the alumni who was in the same department as me was extremely helpful in helping me find contacts. He made an email introduction to his contacts in IBM, Oracle, Accenture, and professional recruiting group. I guess that's why I paid $50k for that fancy piece of paper from Stanford...
The only issue is that the week of May 1st is a national holiday and most of the offices are closed in China. As a result, most of the people won't be able to receive or read my resume until next week. I am flying back on the 5/8 so I don't think I will be able to make it to any interviews on this trip. However the thinking is that if I can line a couple of interviews up in a row, that I would come back and knock them all down at once.
Donghuamei Night Market
The night market was a 10 minute walk from the Grand Hyatt and I went there for dinner. The night market is a bazaar of kebab and street foods. While the prices are more expensive than other night markets (because of its location in a tourist area), it is still relatively cheap by US standards. A meat kabob is about $1 and noodles are like $0.50. For the truly adventurous there are insect/arachnid kabobs, weird seafood kabobs and other weird stuff. Check out the pictures for the range of foods offered.
