Beijing

As I had problems updating the blog directly from Beijing here is a short summary.

After an intensive but good day in the office with meetings from 09.00 to 17.30 I met up with Johan Nilsson who's working in Beijing for a couple of months. As I wanted to buy some silk for Maki Johan said he would take me to silk market in Beijing. It was an interesting taxi ride when the taxi driver suddenly started shouting in chinese and Johan trying to explain in english that he actually had a map that the taxi driver could look at but that didn't seem to help and I couldn't help laughing at the situation. Finally Johan found the address written in chinese and the taxi driver calmed down and took us there.

One of the really cool buildings they are working on in Beijing seen from a distance. All around Beijing they were working on buildings and the whole way from the hotel to the office was like a large construction site. Guess they are really keen on imroving the view of the city in time for the Olympics.

Inside silk market. Don't know why it's called silk market when only a small section is for silk. The rest of the five storage building contains small booths where they sell everything from Ipol (looking identical to the somewhat more well known product Ipod but that must surely be a coincidence) to fake Breitling watches and Gucci bags. "Can't understand who buy that fake stuff" I thought when I proudly walked out from the place with my 11 meters of what must be 100% pure silk to the best price in China.

After the cultural shock in the silk market with people pulling your arm shouting "mista, mista, buy something nice for your wife! good price just for you!..." it was good to round off the day with something more familiar. So a quiet mexican restaurant that servered burritos and corona felt like a dream. And after that we met up with Mats, long gone Kista colleague that has been working in Beijing for 3 years. A couple of hours chatting at a jazz bar made a good end for the first and extremely short Beijing trip. Wouldn't mind to go back soon for a bit longer stay and then I would like to see the forbidden city. This time it just couldn't compete with the mexican restaurant.