Travels in China
In a complete knockoff of Warpus’ great travel threads, I will recount my 2018 trips to China. My adventures there are really three different trips. The first two were combined and the third involved a second flight overseas. This was my first trip to Asia.
Ask anything you like at any time.
Unless people ask, most of the business stuff I will leave out and focus on the cultural part. Most of my pictures of the business trip are people and are not very interesting anyway. The best stuff is in part two.
The reason for my trip was business. Our Think Tank group was invited to meet with different groups of business leaders to meet people with money and influence, learn about how China does business and pitch our particular brand of thinking about economic development. In October 2017 we had sponsored a strategic summit in Albuquerque and invited over 100 Chinese businessmen to come to the US to discuss how we might build a trusted network that would allow both NM and China to benefit economically. A Chinese business associate who lives in NM was our partner in this and we used his contacts to make it all work.
The summit was successful and as a follow up we made plans to visit China in March of 2018. Four of us would go. We would visit 7 cities over two weeks and meet with many of the folks who came to the US in 2017 plus a host of new people. None of us spoke any Chinese; our US associate did and we had translators arranged in each city. I had a Lonely Planet Guide to China. For the business part of the trip all of our accommodations and transport were taken care of and paid for in advance (not the flight to China though).
Since it was going to be my first trip to China, I decided to extend my visit and spend two more weeks traveling in China on my own and see the things we missed during the business part.
After I returned to the US I was invited by one of our contacts to return to China in June for a week to contribute to two projects he had underway.
Business trip
· Beijing (airport)
· Kunming
· Nanning
· Ganzhou
· Shenzhen/Guangdong
· Xi’an
· Baoji
Personal Travel
· Xi’an
· Pingyao
· Beijing
· Changsha
· Zhangjiajie Park
· Beijing (airport)
Second Business Trip
· Hong Kong (airport)
· Shenzhen
· Changsha
· Changde
· Hong Kong (airport)
This map shows the cities I visited and trains I took. All other travel was by air. The fast trains are in green and the slow train in red.
Red dot cites: first business trip
Green dot cities: personal trip
Blue dot cities: second business trip (June)
China is a big place
Distances (straight line):
· Beijing to Kunming: 1200 miles
· Beijing to Changsha: 850 miles
· Beijing to Xi’an: 600 miles
· Nanning to Ganzhou: 500 miles
In a complete knockoff of Warpus’ great travel threads, I will recount my 2018 trips to China. My adventures there are really three different trips. The first two were combined and the third involved a second flight overseas. This was my first trip to Asia.
Ask anything you like at any time.
Unless people ask, most of the business stuff I will leave out and focus on the cultural part. Most of my pictures of the business trip are people and are not very interesting anyway. The best stuff is in part two.
The reason for my trip was business. Our Think Tank group was invited to meet with different groups of business leaders to meet people with money and influence, learn about how China does business and pitch our particular brand of thinking about economic development. In October 2017 we had sponsored a strategic summit in Albuquerque and invited over 100 Chinese businessmen to come to the US to discuss how we might build a trusted network that would allow both NM and China to benefit economically. A Chinese business associate who lives in NM was our partner in this and we used his contacts to make it all work.
The summit was successful and as a follow up we made plans to visit China in March of 2018. Four of us would go. We would visit 7 cities over two weeks and meet with many of the folks who came to the US in 2017 plus a host of new people. None of us spoke any Chinese; our US associate did and we had translators arranged in each city. I had a Lonely Planet Guide to China. For the business part of the trip all of our accommodations and transport were taken care of and paid for in advance (not the flight to China though).
Since it was going to be my first trip to China, I decided to extend my visit and spend two more weeks traveling in China on my own and see the things we missed during the business part.
After I returned to the US I was invited by one of our contacts to return to China in June for a week to contribute to two projects he had underway.
Business trip
· Beijing (airport)
· Kunming
· Nanning
· Ganzhou
· Shenzhen/Guangdong
· Xi’an
· Baoji
Personal Travel
· Xi’an
· Pingyao
· Beijing
· Changsha
· Zhangjiajie Park
· Beijing (airport)
Second Business Trip
· Hong Kong (airport)
· Shenzhen
· Changsha
· Changde
· Hong Kong (airport)
This map shows the cities I visited and trains I took. All other travel was by air. The fast trains are in green and the slow train in red.
Red dot cites: first business trip
Green dot cities: personal trip
Blue dot cities: second business trip (June)
China is a big place
Distances (straight line):
· Beijing to Kunming: 1200 miles
· Beijing to Changsha: 850 miles
· Beijing to Xi’an: 600 miles
· Nanning to Ganzhou: 500 miles
Spoiler :