Hello from Xi'an!

Hooray! I have internet access. And I am literally sitting in the nicest hotel room I have ever been in. For some reason I was upgraded to a suite with a king size bed. Other than the fact that the couches look a little worn it's very, very nice.

This is my second day in China. It's been such a long trip I am starting to get my days mixed up. I flew here from Korea on Thursday. I had a business class ticket for that leg. Business class is nice in that you have a ton more room than in coach and the food is way better, but it's a pain in the rear in that the flight attendants are constantly attending you. I actually like to just chill when I am on a plane.

Anyway, I landed in Shanghai in the early afternoon ... I gained an hour on the trip so I guess it was around 1PM after leaving Korea at 12:40PM. While we were descending into Shanghai I was looking out the window. Most of what I could see where small farms and there were canals and channels running throughout the area. Bordering some of the channels were small farms with fenced in areas facing the canal. Within this backyard area there were tons of white dots. I was wondering what they could be. As we got lower I noticed the fence continued into the water. Well, the dots turned out to be ducks and geese being raised as livestock. I've never seen anything like it!

I had no trouble whatsoever going through customs and immigration in either Korea or China. Once I got through customs in Shanghai I grabbed my bags and was met right away by our Regional Manager for China, Kent Zhou. We hung out at the airport for a few hours waiting for a flight to Xi'an. I was able to check one of my bags at the airport and can retrieve it when we get back. It was nice to offload a bag!

The first flight we were supposed to be on to Xi'an was canceled or changed or something so Kent ran around and made new arrangements and we actually ended up being able to leave half an hour earlier than we had originally been scheduled.

By the time we landed in Xi'an it was dark out. After getting our bags we headed outside to grab a cab. The first cab in line didn't want to take us because we had an hour drive. We ended up riding in a fairly new Audi which was kind of nice. The air in the area seemed hazy or smokey and I really couldn't see too much of the landscape. What I did see were mostly square concrete buildings.

There was virtually no traffic on the highway except for trucks. The trucks were older and typically had their beds covered with fabric, not like the 18 wheelers you'd see in the states. Some of the overpasses were decorated with lights making it look like we were driving in a giant video game.

The aircraft factory we were visiting is actually located about an hour from Xi'an. We got in to town and headed to the factory hotel. The hotel, which serves as the place to stay for VIP's visiting the plant, is right next to the plant entrance. To call it a plant isn't really accurate either. The production area consists of many, many buildings. Inside they produce civilian and military aircraft for use in China as well as subcontracting work for Boeing and Airbus.

We rolled into the hotel and had a quick bite to eat. I had a ham sandwich and some french fries, nothing too crazy. Afterward I headed right up to my room. I called home and tried to read a little bit, but I was so wiped I was falling asleep so lights out!

In the morning I was woken up by happy Chinese music playing on a loudspeaker outside. The music was accompanied by a variety of cheerful annoucnements. I got up and looked out the window and there were bicycles streaming by the hotel. I found out later that the music and announcements serve as the town alarm clock. Almost all of the residents work at the plant and are called to work in the morning using this system. This dates back 20 years or more from when the factory was producing aircraft for the military. The old system, as a tradition, remains today. Kind of wild!

We had a driver to take us in to the plant for our meeting. I was pleasantly surprised to be meeting with high ranking women today. One of them is on a VP level for the company while the other is a first level manager. It's great that they have the opportunity to rise to leadership positions within the company.

The factory was interesting. Our distributor rep, James, was very good about explaining the business to me. He told me that the factory employs about 18,000 workers, but that the number of workers is misleading. The amount of work isn't that plentiful. Further, the technology and equipment is lagging behind the rest of the world so they don't have the capability to manufacture cutting edge aircraft at this time.

It's sort of backwards from the way we do business elsewhere. Most of the time the engineers in the factory have experience with aerospace tooling and know exactly what they want to use for a given application. Here the Chinese would like us to supply them with a turn key solution based on the application. In other words, we would do all of the work specifying the tool. The surrounding area was interesting too. There seemed to be a lot of unfinished construction projects, the land was dug up in many places, and there were workers doing metal fab work out in the sun. There were huge roads with almost no traffic on them. I could see a bunch of kites flying in the sky in the distance. The new buildings seemed old and worn out before their time and the surrounding town was the same way. While there was no litter anywhere everything seems to have a thin layer of dust in it. It looks like a town would that hadn't been used in a long time.

Tonight we had dinner with the two high ranking women managers from the plant. It was fun. The dinner was served on a lazy susan and there was a great variety of foods to choose from. I had jellyfish, jellied beef soup, calamari, young willow tree salad, bamboo shoots, cucumbers with sauce, spicy beef, dumplings stuff with cucumber and egg, fried dough, fish, and fresh fruit. Believe it or not the jellyfish was so rubbery that it was crunchy! All in all the food was very good.

After dinner we drove back to the city of Xi'an. The drive was about an hour. Getting through town to the highway we had to dodge other cars, people, and bikes that all take up space on the road. One on the highway it was clear sailing again. When we got into the city of Xi'an traffic got much heavier. This seemed to be mostly taxis and trucks with a few private vehicles thrown in. The mix of foot traffic, bike traffic, and car traffic was crazy. It's amazing there aren't more accidents. It seems people cut in whenever there is an opportunity whether they are walking, riding, or driving. There were a few times when we were inches from another car, person, bus, or bike.

As we approached the city the guys pointed out the bell house, or bell tower, to me. Like churches in the US this building rang chimes to mark time throughout the day. It dates back 1400-1500 years. As we got deeper into the city we also passed through the old city wall. Dating back about 1200 years the wall is in amazingly good shape and decorated with lights and rice paper lamps.

And that brings me to now.. sitting in my very nice suite at the Howard Johnsons in Xi'an... I should have an interesting post tomorrow. We are going to see the Army of Terracotta Soldiers, the old city wall, and flying back to Shanghai. Shanghai is the last stop before I head home... Whew... it's been a long trip.

I'll post some pictures later... time for bed...