My life in a blog

IMBA Chinese Track student at The University of South Carolina, Moore Business School, I'm currently living in Columbia, SC and traveling all over the place

Check out my other blog: My life in pictures http://akillianopix.blogspot.com or better check out my Flickr account www.flickr.com/photos/adifromusa/

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Guangzhou... doing business in China

the fair building
Today meant my first visit to another city in China. I flew over to Guangzhou, in Guangdong province South East China.
Here, these days hundreds of thousands of people come to see the famous Canton Trade Fair which is the biggest Import/Export Fair in China. This is represents the 101th anniversary of the fair.

First impressions:
- people from all over the planet and all the continents want to do some sort of business
- three different huge expo complexes that hold different products
- people all over the place
- different vegetation here, humid and hot temperature with lots of rain and clouds
- people speak mostly Cantonese which is very different from Mandarin, but you can get around if you speak Mandarin
- the hotel complex that we live in is like a little city itself and it is said to be the property of the richest man in China


Tomorrow, we start visiting one of the pavilions, being highly interested in importing Chinese appliances to Romania. Hope we are going to have a good day.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

latinos... try something new

Time runs definitely different in Beijing than in the US. It seems that there are different time flows all over the world...

Yesterday, we decided to start doing the homework (作业) earlier and try a new experience in the evening. "That's Beijing" magazine represents an important guide for life in Beijing, so we decided for the first time to follow an event.

The announcement said: Every Tuesday night, free salsa lessons at a club called "Latinos."


Even though we arrived too early, we had the opportunity to know the manager of the club and set some initial guanxi with him. Not only there were some free beginner lessons there but also because of "The Ladies Night," all the girls got to drink for free for the time being there.


The place was a very good experience, very good music, good Chinese dancers and probably for the first time in my life, I experienced a live salsa/merengue/bachacha band (most probably one of the best in town).

Who could imagined that in a hidden spot in Beijing there are Latin hearts pumping on the dance floor??