Spending time in Beijing as a tourist is different from spending time in Beijing as a businessperson. I've met a number of interesting people who are also here on business, perhaps temporarilly like me, or perhaps permanently.
One of the interesting things I clued in on this week was in the China daily: President Bush: is amazed with China. This country needs to create 25 million jobs a year just to stay even. Given the current stress over the economy and job creation in the United States, I'm wondering if we will be able to keep up.
Still, many of the jobs here are unskilled. It seems like every streetcorner has a soldier standing guard. There are plenty of people working at the hotel to attend to my every need. It seems like things that could be done with a machine are done by hand, simply because someone needs a job.
Of course, the best perk about being here on business is that I can interact with the local people and learn more about how they live. A lot of it is just day to day stuff, like the wife of the main contact at client I am working for just had a baby, so there's some excitement about that. Everybody has been talking about the holiday and asking me how I enjoyed my trip to Thailand. All around good times.
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