Lenovo, Baby

In light of the Olympics which officially kicked off as of August 8th, 8:08PM, on the 8th second, I finally got myself to put this blog together. Eight by the way, is pronounced 'ba' in Chinese, which closely resembles the pronunciation of fortune, 'fa'. Therefore, the obsession with the number eight amongst Chinese.

As exhibited in the title of the page, this is meant to be more or less a photo blog. I took over two thousand photos during my two week trip in China. With this blog in mind, I figured why use words when you can use pictures? As you can imagine, it took a bit of time to sort through all of the photos and select which ones to post. For my fellow shutterbug enthusiasts, all (most) photos were shot with a Nikon D50 (one of the earlier Nikon digital SLRs) using a Tamron 17-50mm F2.8 lens.

I'll kick this off with a little company spirit - a compilation of Lenovo billboards, logos, etc. It was refreshing to see the strong Lenovo presence in China. Combined with the sponsorship of the Olympics this year, we are literally all over the place there.

Here we go.

In the airport after getting off the plane....

At the bag carousel picking up our bags....

Other terminals...

Even in the desert....

Lenovo, baby. :-)

Americas' torchbearers at the Lenovo headquarters in Beijing. Andres (Columbia), me (US), Shanley (Canada), Jason (US).

Caroline (fiance) with the Olympic torch from Torino

Lenovo parade truck

Giant-sized X300. The other side of the truck had an oversized IdeaPad. How cool is that?

Lenovo banners....

And people.

Lenovo baby!

For the sake of chronology, I recommend starting from June 28th using the archive menu on the bottom right of this page and navigating through this way.

Last Stop: Shanghai

Shanghai was like a breath of fresh air. As mentioned in the previous entry, at this point in the trip, I've had just about enough of all the touristy temples and scenic landscapes. I was ready for some good food, good shopping, and the taste of a true big city. We found all of the above in Shanghai.

View of Nanjing St. from our hotel room.

Street markets.

Nanjing St.

I (we) swear the Yoshinoya in Shanghai is 10x better than the ones we have here. As a matter of fact, we ate here, twice.

Near the front of our hotel.

Kids at Jade Garden.

Goldfish pond at Jade Garden

Old man taking a break

Streets of Shanghai

Jade Garden at night

You can only pack so many pairs of drawls for a lengthy trip. Towards the end of the trip, I had to do the good old hand wash and hang.

In line for some of the best Xiao Long Bao (steamed pork bun) in town.

Stacked and steamed

Absolutely delicious.

Crossing the bund.

Indoor view of Shanghai from one of the highest towers in the world.

And that concludes my trip to China. Hope you all enjoyed as much as I enjoyed sharing. Cheers.

Journey to Xi'an

Our journey to Xi'an began with a plane cancellation. Luckily due to a very angry and persistent group of Chinese people, they literally fought to get the airline company to get us another plane. I've never seen anything like it before in my life. They made a circle around the ticketing counter until they got what they wanted - a flight to Xi'an. Thanks to them, We made it to Xi'an as planned.

Even Xi'an's got a little night market. Unfortunately, due to stomach issues, I could not sample any of the street vendor's snacks.

Here we are at a famous temple in Xi'an. I prayed for my stomach problems to go away so I could start enjoying good food already.

Terracotta soldiers

The many faces of the Terracotta soliders. At this point in the trip, I was ready to get away from all the historical/artsty/temple type stuff. And so we did. Shanghai is next.

China's Capital City: Beijing

I was reminded of why I wasn't particularly fond of living here the year I studied abroad. Literally from one block to the next, you can see the effects of the smog. See that Tag Heuer billboard? Notice it's a bit murky. The people above probably had to ask for directions cause the building they were looking for was covered in smog! Maybe not, but you catch my drift. Supposedly cars are being restricted to operate on alternating days before the Olympic games. Not sure if it's making a big difference though. Los Angeles traffic's got nothing on Beijing. Now that's bad.

Now don't get me wrong, they did clean things up a bit, especially around the most touristy areas. One other thing I noticed was that all the cheapy Xia Li cab cars (burgundy red ones) from 2002 when I was there are all gone. They have replaced them with clean looking Hyundais, the red and blue ones.

The Olympic stadium (aka bird's nest) camouflaged in smog.

Now onto the Great Wall of China.

Working our way up...

Taking photos along the way...

...as well as rest stops.

Guns of steel. Oh yeah.

Almost to the top... and breaking a few rules along the way.

We made it. Actually, not really. You can't really ever 'make it all the way' when it comes to the Great Wall.

Lady taking a page out of Humpty Dumpty's page.

Workers at the bottom of the Great Wall.

The Forbidden City.

Young boy playing his own game of soccer.

These two were nice enough to allow me to photograph them. Think they're together by chance?

Quite possibly the scariest looking boy I've seen in my life.

And that's it for Beijing.