trevor.ware's blog

Most of our delegation enjoyed the Great Wall this afternoon.  After a bus ride of approximately an hour we arrived and began our ascent of the wall.  As I climbed the uneven steps I couldn't help asking myself, "Can you imagine building this thing?"  Just as you'd think, the Wall extends as far as you can see.  And steep!  It was all we could do to walk a short distance.  It seemed we were walking straight up.  None of us could do it in one continuous trip.  All of us were panting!  We joked that we could call it the NUL team building event only because, luckily, everyone came back unhurt.
 

Great morning of business.  While yesterday was focused on "getting to know you" today was focused on "getting things done".  Our first meeting was with the Ministry of Education.  Unlike other meetings, we went in focused on discussing three specific proposals.  The first, creating a Confucius Institute at Xavier University and 4 other HBCU's was well received.  It was, in fact, directly in line with the desires of the Ministry.  The two proposals, including exchanges of students and teachers, was also well received.
 

The Chinese are treating us very well here.  Our 47 person delegation, partially sponsored by the China-United States Exchange Foundation, includes 7 Urban League affiliate Presidents, several NUL staff including Marc Morial who leads the delegation, many international businessmen and several journalists.  The Chinese have quoted the 1 Trillion buying power of African Americans.  They've given our delegation the status of heads of state.  Several of our meetings have been held at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse.  Many of our dinners have been in halls reserved for visiting dignitaries.  We've enjoyed dinners in the same facilities President Obama enjoyed during his visit 3 months ago.
 

What an exciting evening!
 
An hour or so prior to our first official event I took the liberty to walk the streets sightseeing.  Our hotel is a few blocks from Tiananmen Square.  The Grand Hotel Beijing is on a major thoroughfare which, if you were to look quickly, resembles a major thoroughfare in most East Coast large city business districts. However, like in most cities, the real flavor of the city lies beneath.  Two blocks from our hotel I found the most amazing Chinese market filled with vendors offering noodles and other soup dishes to mitigate the edge of the cold.  Lots of dishes served on a stick: from fruits to vegetables to meats.  On this market street there was even a Chinese street theater performing!

In the wake of Google, Inc.’s recent experience in China it’s been interesting to do my own observation of technological liberties available in China.  Ours represents a relatively high-level cultural and trade delegation.  We’re staying in a fairly modern, Western style hotel in Beijing, China’s second largest city.  However, my experience is that some of the popular social networking sites in America, including Facebook and Twitter, are not available.  You can type in the URL, but there's never a connection to the site. Fortunately there seems full access to www.laul.org and www.nul.org.  We’ll have to make that work for us during our stay.

Well, we made it from Shanghai to Beijing.  The travel was relatively uneventful.  The one hitch was that our valet didn’t find us at the airport, so we paid a taxi driver the equivalent of $72.00 to drive us from the airport to our hotel.  Perhaps its just the people we’ve interacted with at the hotel and airport, but it seems like everyone here speaks English.  The Grand Hotel Beijing is an atrium style hotel with nice appointments.  I’m looking forward to a leisurely morning, but I do want to get out “into the streets” before we meet with the full delegation this afternoon at 5:00pm.