Schlagwort: work

Shanghai III – Hangzhou

Today we traveled to the city of Hangzhou, located south-west of Shanghai. But first we had a delicious breakfast in our five star hotel. They offered toast, marmalade, honey, fried egg, bacon, a lot of fruits, some Chinese stuff and a lot more.

Then we drove to Hangzhou. The ride took about three hours on a very good and smooth highway, but the speed limit is 120 km/h. And we had to pay a toll of 9€ for it. We arrived at our hotel (Haihua Hotel), which again looks great, we have a perfectly fine room with shower and toilet for ourselves. Life in luxury! „Shanghai III – Hangzhou“ weiterlesen

Shanghai II – picture day

We awoke, each of us in their own room and met at 8am to eat breakfast in the hotel. Shortly after we checked out of the hotel and our driver named Chen gave us a ride to two of our companies project sites. One of them are twin towers, one a bank, the other for an insurance company:

twinsThe total investment adds up to around 8 billion Yuan. Each tower has a height of 250m with 55 floors. They use a handy technique, where they work their way upwards, using something best described as building blocks. Floor by floor they move higher, finishing one complete floor every week. The towers are planed to be finished around the end of 2016. Kenny and the engineers showed and described everything about the planning, the parts used and the building procedure. the most interesting of cause were the cable management. Copper, Fiber, cable ducts and how all fits and works together. Vast number of pictures ahead „Shanghai II – picture day“ weiterlesen

Shanghai I

Today we said „Goodbye“ to our by now beloved dormitory room, because we will spent the next three or maybe four nights in Shanghai. After the (maybe) last toast breakfast for a few days we took the bus to get to Lili’s home. Her friend Tina, who visited the Summer Palace with us, was so kind to give us the ride to Beijing South Railway Station. We already knew the place since we also left to ZiBo from here. Before boarding the train we met with Kenny and bought some hamburgers to have for lunch later. At 11:10 am the train left with ten minutes delay, still better than in Germany the past days I guess 😉 The ride was quite comfortable, you have a lot more leg space than in a plane or in the Deutsche Bahn. It took a little more than five hours to get to the Shanghai Railway Station. We slept most of the time, but when I didn’t I took at least one photo of the speed the train was driving most of the time.

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305 km/h, that’s about ICE speed.  „Shanghai I“ weiterlesen

Grand Epoch City & Massage

Early in the morning we started our day with our usual toasts, sadly we couldn’t find the ones we bought after the cinema in our Lotte Mart. But still much better than donkey in the morning 😉 We didn’t take our usual bus (No. 983), instead we took the No. 420 bus to get directly to Lili’s home. The plan for today was to visit a finished project of the company and then to enjoy a foot massage afterwards. On the ride to the project Lili gave us some details about it. The name is „Grand Epoch City“ and is used mainly as an convention center during the summer. The Citic Group, which our company is part of, invested about 500 Million Euro into this project. In a total area of 2,85 km² there are three or four hotels, a 18 hole golf course, two Buddhist temple, restaurants and a lot of parks. All hotels together have a capacity of about 4000 people.

After a car ride of about 1½ hours we arrived at the City and were picked up by a electric cart to bring us to the first hotel. We were greeted by the manager who took us directly to the dining hall where we had lunch in a separate room. The food was again so much we took most of it with us. And we guess it must have been some really expensive food, there was fish, jellyfish, lamb, pork, beef, pigeon and salad. It was a feast again!

After lunch we visited one of the presidents suites and could get a brief glimpse of the live of the rich people: „Grand Epoch City & Massage“ weiterlesen

To endure the bad breath

Hungry we walked to the bus stop. We forgot to buy additional toasts.  After waiting almost 20 minutes for the correct bus to arrive, we were pleasantly surprised by a very swift bus ride ~30 minutes. That must have been some kind of record. The problem is the unbelievably bad stench rushing by your nose frequently, caused by the bad breath of almost all passengers, words can’t describe. While finding yourself in crowded and smelly setting like a bus ride, you begin to let your mind wander. Maybe I should buy a family pack of mints or gum, carrying it with me at all times to offer mints to the ones in need. A friend of mine called this bad breath phenomenon:
„The downfall of the Chinese society“.

20 minutes early we arrived at the office. Just after we settled in Kenny and Lili were delighted to let us in on the  „To endure the bad breath“ weiterlesen

Taking a shower in Beijing

Today was just a normal work day, so it’s time to give you a little insight into our daily routine concerning body hygiene.

At the end of each day we take a shower, but it is a bit different compared to Germany. First of all we do not have a shower in our room. That means, if you want to take a shower, you will have to walk across the yard to another building. So at the end of our first day here, we had an appointment with Zhu & Li who wanted to show us the showers. When we met, there were also 4 other students with them, who were introduced as „school mates“. So we went to the shower building in the ground floor, first floor is for the girls. Inside the building are just some lockers and a big room with two walls in the middle. At each wall there are about ten shower heads with a small device beside them. So we all undress, take our shampoo and most important the card we also use for the food at the school with us. To start showering, you have to place the card on the device beside the shower, then water will run. The price is about 0.5 Yuan per minute (that’s very cheap).

GOPR7643 „Taking a shower in Beijing“ weiterlesen

Chinese friends and presents

When we arrived at work we were greeted by Lili who was very concerned about my wellbeing. She brought some cake, Chinese medicine and heat pads. At lunch we discussed the plans for the days to come. We agreed to visit the Forbidden City on Wednesday and next week we will be traveling to Shanghai from Monday to Wednesday to visit the city and additional construction projects of our company. Because of all the gifts from Lili she offered to drive us back to school after work, which we gladly accepted.
At school we met Zhu who informed us, that a package had arrived for us. Alex‘ mother sent us a lot of Germany themed gifts, which we will be handing out as a thankyou to the ones who treated us best. For the company we now have poster of the Brandenburg Gate, for which, with the help of a friend of mine, we will get a frame custom made. We are certain, they will put it up on the wall in their office. It is going to look marvelous!
While resting in our dormitory a Chinese student came to our door to meet us. The young Chinese student called Ding Tong had no problem with making himself right at home. He thoroughly searched through all our belongings while making a comment from now and then.

IMG_20150504_222937In return he helped us translate and explain to us the various Chinese medicine we brought home. When his friends arrived to pick him up, we scheduled a Ping Pong duel with some of them. Allegedly they are quite good – we’ll see about that 🙂

After showering we ate dinner, delicious rice with chicken and chili for Alex and good old Vollkornbrot imported from Germany for me – less delicious.

Lili promised us to take us to a foot massage this week, hopefully tomorrow 🙂

See you
Lukas and Alex

 

Happy Valley

Today was a day free of work, because tomorrow is the first of May and many employees do no need to come to the office. Only the more important ones do. We picked this day to be the day we go to the amusement park located in Beijing called Happy Valley. We anticipated, that today the park would be less crowded. We were right only to a certain extend.
Happy Valley is located south-east of Beijing. Our Chinese version of google maps called Baidu Maps predicted, that a trip to Happy Valley by public transportation would take 1 1/2h, because of an uncompleted subway traffic network. The right choice was to take a taxi and that we did. 6€ and 20min later we arrived at the place of fun and adrenaline.

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The park covers an area of over 560,000 square meters and has „Happy Valley“ weiterlesen

Tesla P85D

0-100 km/h in 3,3 seconds, f*ck yeah!

But first things first. After our usual breakfast we took our usual bus and were again lucky, the traffic was not too bad. We arrived perfectly on time at work where Kenny had some interesting building plans for us, about a construction site we would visit in the afternoon. Soon after lunch (delicious as usual) Lili took us to the south-west of Bejing, which took about one hour. We met her son who arranged a test drive of the newest Tesla car, the Tesla P85D.

It is a fully electrical four-wheel drive car with 690 horsepower generated by two motors, one in the back and one in the front. Nearly everything in the car is controllable using a giant 17″ touchscreen. There are no „normal“ buttons for controlling for example the temperature or the sunroof. You can choose how high or low the suspension may be, how far the sunroof may be open and so on. Here are some pictures:

„Tesla P85D“ weiterlesen

Cheesy & Furious 7

Our daily morning routine was interrupted by the locked door of our dormitory. Normally these are only closed during the night, but sometimes, the older ladies at the counter lock them, when they take a break or whatever. We wanted to catch our bus, but we couldn’t. We spent a few minutes trying to find someone, but in the end we managed to find the door opener, pressing the button through a window of the office.
We caught our bus and it was a surprisingly fast trip due to unusual low traffic. The sleeping overweight snoring Chinese business man next to me obviously felt sad, that he could not cuddle with me for a longer period of time.

In the office we got to work while drinking a freshly brewed coffee. Soon after we were allowed to attend a staff meeting. We did not understand a word they said, but everyone was cheerful with a big laugh now and then. For lunch we had a tasty duck leg with a lot of side dishes.

After a few additional hours of work Kenny, Johnny and Lili drove us to see the new „Cheesy & Furious 7“ weiterlesen