The Post of Eternal Heavenly Glory

There is a bit of a theme to buildings in Beijing. I may be wrong, but I believe the Emperor had a sack of 20 tiles inscribed with adjectives including "heavenly, eternal, ever-lasting, glorious, wonderful, benevolent, and harmonious." He then reached into the sack (or perhaps the eunuchs did it), drew 3 (x,y,z) and the next building had its name: "The x, y, z Hall". After 1949, the critical word "people" was added to the mix. I'd venture a guess to say that there were probably at least 10 tiles with "people" in the sack.

So yes, for those of you who didn't know, I decided to make a weekend journey to Beijing. It was a bit spur of the moment, but I had the chance for two good interviews and a generous Microsoft Beijing employee even offered to be my tour guide for the weekend. I'm sitting in my hostel after an epic day that included Tienanmen Square, the Forbidden City, Tsinghua University and the Summer Palace. We capped the night off with a delicious dinner of Peking duck... for those of you who have seen one of my favorite movies "A Christmas Story", you will laugh to know that the duck was indeed smiling at us.

Tomorrow I head to the Great Wall and then hopefully the Lama Temple. Monday, I'm meeting with the head of Microsoft's Research Center in Beijing (one of only five worldwide) and also with a partner from a top Chinese law firm to get the details on how the Chinese regulatory environment is affecting offshoring.

On a side note, and after being pestered by my mother as to why I have been slow to update my blog, I must inform you that this is a transmission from behind the "Great Firewall of China." In addition to blocking facebook (tragic), twitter (less tragic), and Youtube (meh), they block Blogger and Picasa. I have tons of pictures to show everyone but between slow internet and a dangerous ballet of proxy servers, I haven't been able to upload them. Rest assured that when I get to HK (or at worst, Seattle), I will barrage you with more cheesy pictures than you could ever want.

Before I go to bed, I have to say that I am enormously impressed by China. No, this is not just to appease the censors after I mentioned the firewall. This country has accomplished an amazing feat by developing so quickly. You can fault the pollution (which is terrible), but the infrastructure here often puts the U.S. to shame. I was a big believer in Fareed Zakaria's theory on the "rise of the rest" even before I visited India and China. Seeing these places first hand has made me realize that this is very likely to be their century. I don't think America will fade into irrelevance any time soon, but we need to realize that these countries are a BIG deal. The more we understand and respect them, the better off we will be.