Today was pretty short since our flight was delayed and a lot of our time was in a bus on the way from the Beijing airport to our hotel in Tianjin. Luckily there were no holdups in immigrations or customs, and we got out of the airport pretty quickly. The transit system right around the airport was really nice, and Darcy commented it looks a lot different from before the 2008 Olympic Games. On the bus we met Brian Kwok, our guide who coordinated most of the trip. He told us a little about his background as a Chinese travel agent and some more about Chinese culture. He started his business in Los Angeles after graduating from USC, and he decided to move his operations to China after realizing the large potential for business in the travel market in China.
Around 8 PM we got to Tianjin and went out to dinner at a “hotpot” or “firepot” restaurant. Hotpot/firepot is a Chinese meal where everyone sits around a table with boiling water and spices in the middle. A server comes and puts raw meat in the water, and then you take it out with a spoon when it’s done cooking (usually when it begins to float). You also have your own little bowl of sauce to dip the meat in. We had beef, lamb, and whole shrimp (eyes included!) and it was super spicy and really good. One thing we learned was that “whole” animals (e.g. eyes on the shrimp) are considered more exotic, so it looks like we got some pretty fancy stuff.
After dinner we checked into the hotel and walked around the city a little, but most people were really tired so almost everyone went to bed pretty early to rest up for our first day of corporate visits.
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