Day 6 – Two GREAT Business Visits, Jade Budda Temple and Silk Factory

Wow, this trip is really going quickly! We could easily stay here for a full two weeks – one week in Beijing and one week in Shanghai. Today was our last day of business visits and it didn’t disappoint.

Our first meeting of the day was with Mr. Alvin Wang Graylin a high tech entrepreneur who is the CEO and co-founder of mInfo a mobile search and advertising company. mInfo was the official mobile search provider for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Mr. Graylin had a very interesting perspective to share with us. He was born in Shanghai and then moved to the US and completed all of his education (elementary and high school, MIT undergraduate engineering degree and MBA) and the start of his career at Intel. He therefore has both a Chinese cultural background and a western economic framework that has helped to shape his perspective and enable his success.Here you can see the group with Mr. Graylin.

Mr. Graylin was refreshingly frank and we perceived that he told us about how business is “really” done in China. For instance, he emphasized how important it was to do things the local way rather than importing western business practices. You have to work the Chinese way. He explained that you have to know the rules, but also you need to bend the rules, find the grey area, and always find someone to actually cross that fine line for you. He also emphasized the importance of guanxi – or relationships. For those interested in starting a business in China he explained how important it was to make a lot of friends because friends do business with friends. He also said it is critical to know the Chinese language if you want to do business here.

Between visits we were able to make a quick stop at a local Starbucks. Luciano was VERY happy about this. It was also a terrific place to take pictures of the beautiful Oriental Pearl television tower.

Our next visit was to Magna where we met Mr. Fred Kao who is Vice President of Asia operations. Mr. Kao is a Toronto native who was asked by the CEO of the company to craft their China strategy. Magna has only been in China since 2003. At the beginning of his presentation he shared with us some “Chinglish” signs that he finds interesting – it was a good ice breaker. One of these was a sign that said “No Louding”. Another sign read “Full Bottom Massage.” Can you guess what these really mean? I think you can guess the first. The second actually was a sign for a foot massage…. NOT what you were thinking :). Mr. Kao was an excellent and enthusiastic speaker who was very knowledgeable about the really dramatic changes that have taken place in China and Shanghai in the past seven years. Here is a picture of the group at the Magna office.

Lunch was at the floating Hailong restaurant on the Huangpu river. I thought you might like to see some of the yummy food we are eating. This first picture is of bok choy and mushrooms. I have just loved all the different mushrooms we have had almost every day in China.  We also had a wonderful "vegetarian" beef dish and sweet and sour pork seems to be very common in Shanghai.  Also Vickie says in Shanghai it is common to have fried rice (w/o soy sauce) with the meal rather than plain rice.

After a quick stop in the “happy room” to change from our business clothes to our tourist clothes we were off to see the Jade Budda Temple. On the way we saw this man carrying an amazing number of bamboo chairs. Vickie said that as a Shanghai native she has seen many such vendors, but never one with quite so many chairs!

At the temple we learned that in 1882, an old temple was built to keep two jade Buddha statues which had been brought from Burma by a monk named Huigen. The temple was destroyed during the revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty. Fortunately the Jade Buddha statues were saved and a new temple was built on the present site in 1928. It was named the Jade Buddha Temple. Here you can see a portion of the temple. Those red ribbons contain wishes that visitors leave there in hopes of having them fulfilled.

The two precious jade Buddhist statues are rare cultural relics and also porcelain artworks. Both the Sitting Buddha and the Recumbent Buddha are carved from whole white jade – each from a single piece of jade. Pictures of the jade buddhas are not allowed so please Google them for pictures.

The temple offers a tea ceremony and we were pleased to be able to experience this. Did you know that you should wash tea leaves before you actually use them for making tea? We tried a number of herbal teas which had a variety of medicinal uses.

The silk factory was our next stop. We had an interesting tour and learned that the life of a silkworm is 45 days – FYI the silkworm lifecycle is a very typical science project for Chinese children. We also saw how thin silk strands are that come from the actual worm. They are usually grouped into ten strands to make them stronger and functional. We got to see how silk can be stretched out – see us helping! Silk comforters are a very common wedding present. They are non-allergenic and very light – cool in summer and warm in winter.

After dinner some of the group went on a Huangpu river cruise to see the beautiful buildings lit up on both sides of the river. Here you can see us in front of the Oriental Pearl television tower and you can also see the skyline in this next picture.