BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA
It's been a crazy week, I've been working in three countries and I am writing this Blog on my final leg of a marathon 22,000 mile trip which started last weekend in Beijing.
It has been sometime since I visited thebigword offices there and I was amazed at both the change in Beijing itself and an enormous change in our office especially from when we opened there seven years ago.
In the past, Beijing was a low cost operation providing services to our network of customers around the world, there were very few local Chinese companies using us and the main work in China came from the foreign companies based there.
Over the past few years this has all changed and following the Olympics four years ago it is now a slick, modern, exciting city and much cleaner than before. Our operation has also changed as Chinese companies have evolved and are demanding higher quality than ever, as they now sell their goods and services directly overseas as opposed to selling through foreign agents. This is creating many opportunities for services such as thebigword.
Our Beijing staff have reinvented themselves as a professional, talented team eager to take on more and more and we now plan to expand our operations over the next two years. The staff were a joy to visit and I had the privilege of awarding five long term service awards.
Now on to the most challenging part of the trip. With my colleague Kenny, our Global Director of Technology, we took the time with our in-house Chinese Communications Officer Fiona, to climb the Great Wall, well, not all of it as that would take a great deal of time but we made the 5km trip to the 8th lookout stage. Sounds like good exercise until you realise that many of the steps up the mountain are more than half a metre high and where there are no steps it is almost like walking up a vertical hill. You will find a picture of the three of us at the end of the 4th stage all smiles but behind my smile is pain and by the time I got back to where you get the chair lift down I had almost lost the will to live.
Chair lift? Oh no not for us! Enthusiastic Kenny and respectful Fiona suggested that we toboggan down the rest of the mountain (about 3km) on a shaky plastic flimsy looking carrier that you sat on and held on to some pole. Adding insult to injury there was an on-going announcement as we lined up for ages repeating the message “people over 60 or pregnant should not take the toboggan” my colleagues looked nervously at each other as they are aware that I have just celebrated a special birthday, so bravely I told them not to worry as I was sure that I wasn't pregnant!
OMG, I survived, just. It was so scary especially as I found it hard to slow down and couldn't remember whether or not you are supposed to lean in or out of the bend.
If you think that was bad enough, we then had a night out with our wonderful staff where we presented five year long service awards. The theme of the evening was Halloween and I undertook another activity at which I am more rubbish than climbing and tobogganing combined and that is Karaoke, see picture below.
Truthfully it was an amazing trip and I am so proud of our fabulous committed and talented staff in Beijing.
I am now on the second flight of the day, the first being from Tokyo to London where I visited our Tokyo office and I will update you next week with my adventures there, but I have to say this flight is very exciting for me as I am now heading from London to New York.
Have a good week and thank you all for the great response from last week’s blog where I received many positive comments regarding our sweet moments project which starts in two weeks time.
Larry
It has been sometime since I visited thebigword offices there and I was amazed at both the change in Beijing itself and an enormous change in our office especially from when we opened there seven years ago.
In the past, Beijing was a low cost operation providing services to our network of customers around the world, there were very few local Chinese companies using us and the main work in China came from the foreign companies based there.
Over the past few years this has all changed and following the Olympics four years ago it is now a slick, modern, exciting city and much cleaner than before. Our operation has also changed as Chinese companies have evolved and are demanding higher quality than ever, as they now sell their goods and services directly overseas as opposed to selling through foreign agents. This is creating many opportunities for services such as thebigword.
Our Beijing staff have reinvented themselves as a professional, talented team eager to take on more and more and we now plan to expand our operations over the next two years. The staff were a joy to visit and I had the privilege of awarding five long term service awards.
Now on to the most challenging part of the trip. With my colleague Kenny, our Global Director of Technology, we took the time with our in-house Chinese Communications Officer Fiona, to climb the Great Wall, well, not all of it as that would take a great deal of time but we made the 5km trip to the 8th lookout stage. Sounds like good exercise until you realise that many of the steps up the mountain are more than half a metre high and where there are no steps it is almost like walking up a vertical hill. You will find a picture of the three of us at the end of the 4th stage all smiles but behind my smile is pain and by the time I got back to where you get the chair lift down I had almost lost the will to live.
Chair lift? Oh no not for us! Enthusiastic Kenny and respectful Fiona suggested that we toboggan down the rest of the mountain (about 3km) on a shaky plastic flimsy looking carrier that you sat on and held on to some pole. Adding insult to injury there was an on-going announcement as we lined up for ages repeating the message “people over 60 or pregnant should not take the toboggan” my colleagues looked nervously at each other as they are aware that I have just celebrated a special birthday, so bravely I told them not to worry as I was sure that I wasn't pregnant!
OMG, I survived, just. It was so scary especially as I found it hard to slow down and couldn't remember whether or not you are supposed to lean in or out of the bend.
If you think that was bad enough, we then had a night out with our wonderful staff where we presented five year long service awards. The theme of the evening was Halloween and I undertook another activity at which I am more rubbish than climbing and tobogganing combined and that is Karaoke, see picture below.
Truthfully it was an amazing trip and I am so proud of our fabulous committed and talented staff in Beijing.
I am now on the second flight of the day, the first being from Tokyo to London where I visited our Tokyo office and I will update you next week with my adventures there, but I have to say this flight is very exciting for me as I am now heading from London to New York.
Have a good week and thank you all for the great response from last week’s blog where I received many positive comments regarding our sweet moments project which starts in two weeks time.
Larry
