June 17, 2007
Dalian (CHINA)
Day-Outing with HP China
This
morning I met Tina, Scarlett's friend, at the office
complex for Hewlett Packard in Dalian's Software Park.
The complex was an impressive collection of modern
buildings with household names such as IBM, Microsoft
and Neusoft.
While waiting for the remaining employees to arrive Tina showed me around the HP complex, and I was surprised to learn the company was founded in 1939. Apparently, the San Francisco garage out of which Bill Hewitt and David Packard worked was the start of Silicon Valley.
After
a couple hours on the bus we reached our first
destination: a cherry orchard. My height (compared to
the average Chinese) put me at an advantage for picking
the best cherries - something Tina surely appreciated.
Personally, I have never cared for cherries, but these
were too fresh to pass up. Our eyes were bigger than our
stomachs, though, because our bucket was still full of
cherries when we left.
Embarrassingly, we were the last ones back on the bus after cherry-picking, and the punishment was unanimous: I had to sing using the bus microphone. This was hardly the kind of situation I wanted to find myself in with a group of people I hardly knew, but I realized it was also a great chance to become one with the group. Without music or lyrics for support I resorted to the one song I can never forget: the American national anthem!
Everyone had a good laugh out of it and I was off the
hook without losing face.
We ate lunch under one of those massive tents you find at weddings, but the food was nothing to write home about. Nevertheless, it is always nice being a guest in China because everyone at the table takes on the responsibility of serving you - no matter how competent you may be on your own.
After lunch, there were a variety of activities to choose from in order to accommodate the wives and/or children who came along for the day. Some chose to partake in "grass skating" (shown to left) while others opted for golf. I chose golf in the beginning, but couldn't resist going down the grass slide with my camera on video mode.
I have never been much of a golfer - nor do I even care for the silly sport - but I am fortunate enough to have a good stroke and I can thus look good doing it. Many of the other Chinese golfed far better than me, but it didn't matter because everyone was there to have fun. In general, the Chinese are far less open about being competitive - likely to prevent people from losing face.
That is the second time I mentioned losing face today, and it is because such concerns are paramount in the Asian business world.
We arrived back in Dalian in the late afternoon, and I was completely wiped out. Tomorrow I will head off for a two day outing at a mountain northwest of Dalian with the other REU students and the Chinese graduate students who work at our laboratories.