Thursday through Sunday were spent in class. This is one of two electives that are part of my Executive MBA program at the University of Maryland. The class was Service Marketing, which was a very interesting topic. A lot of the marketing activity built around a service offering involves making the intangible elements tangible, whether it’s the environment, collateral, people who will deliver the service or processes that will support service delivery.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about the class was that it was divided in such a way to favor case discussions and presentations by teams. The professor had assigned some pre-course reading and a case write-up to familiarize the students to process of analyzing a service case and developing sets of recommendations relevant to service marketing. This equipped us to review additional cases and make team presentations of analysis and recommendations. This was much more interactive and educational than a straight lecture.

I really enjoyed getting to know my classmates, and I enjoyed the team that I was on. The class was actually very diverse with a number of countries represented, which was a bonus that I hadn’t originally expected. The students were working in a number of very impressive functions both for local Chinese firms and multinational firms. There were locals and ex-pats as well as big-company executives and entrepreneurs. I hope to keep in touch with my classmates, and I was actually sad to say good-bye when the class came to an end.

Today I am in Xi’an and really taking more of a recovery than heading out for any sort of night on the town. Tomorrow I am off to see the terra-cotta army, and I am sure that I will have many pictures to post after that particular trip.

Laura and I began the day in Ritan Park, which is very near to where she and Bruce live. We spent a good deal of time walking around and seeing all of the morning exercisers. The health culture is a very interesting element of Chinese culture that I think would be a good idea to import to the US. Granted it doesn’t produce the beefcake that is the standard American gym bunny, but even very elderly people are pretty mobile here.

After some more homework I headed to the Forbidden City to take a tour of where the Ming and Qing emperors had called home. This is a space many Americans may be familiar with from the movie “The Last Emperor.” The size of the complex is extremely impressive, and it alternates between open spaces and relatively small yet ornate buildings. Clearly the concept of comfort differed from Western royalty, because there is no real equivalent of Buckingham Palace or Versailles in terms of an overwhelming single structure. The enormity of the complex, though, definitely makes a strong impression as to the grandeur of the imperial household.

I left the Forbidden City by the back exit and walked around some of the local neighborhoods. I ended up in an art gallery and bought a silk screen of bamboo and a small painting of one of the Confucian fables.

The silk screen image of the bamboo appealed to me because the artist was showing it to me referred to bamboo as “this gentleman.” I was thrilled because it recalled an ancient Japanese text about a joke played in the imperial court there, which imitated the Chinese imperial court. The punch-line of the joke is a poetic allusion to bamboo as being “a gentleman.” I had read this text in my undergraduate years (though the name escapes me for some reason), and the multi-level allusion appealed to me greatly.

The Confucian fable painting was three men and quotes the master’s comments that a person can learn a lot from any three people trying to work on a given task (I may be missing the nuances of this story). The moral of the fable is basically that no one person is good at everything and we can all learn something from the people around us. The message of humility is a very appealing one.

Tomorrow and the following four days are going to be in class, so the pictures and reportage from China may slow for a while. Here are my pictures from today: Ritan Park & Forbidden City.

When Laura got back from her Chinese language class we headed out to lunch at a local restaurant and then we headed to Tiananmen Square for a bit of being shameless tourists. I added pictures from Day 2 to this page: China Trip, Days 1 and 2.

Today I hired a car and driver to head to some of the sites outside of the city. I took a visit to the tombs of the Ming Emperors. This was a good foray outside of the city, and the site was worth the visit.

The BIG item for the day today was a visit to the Great Wall of China. All I can say is that several people back in the states are lucky that I had no mobile phone service at the Great Wall. Time difference or no, several people would have received a “Guess where I’m calling you from! The Great f’ing Wall of China!” The Mutianyu section of the wall was not very crowded at all. The weather was a little overcast, but nice and cool. I spent a good amount of time walking along the wall, climbing up steep climbs and trying not to fall down them. I don’t think any of the pictures I took could ever capture the real scope of what it’s like to stand on the Great Wall and look out in all directions and just see this feat of engineering undulating (is that the right word?) along the mountains.

Pictures from the Ming Tombs and Great wall are here: Ming Tomb & Great Wall.

After classes end this weekend I’m off to Xi’ain to see the terra-cotta army and be a shameless tourist. After that I’ll have three days in Shanghai to walk along the Bund, shop on Nanjing Road and generally just exerience a few days of really big city living.

The flight from Washington was the new United Airlines direct flight to Beijing. I treated a 13.5 hour flight pretty much like a camping trip. I also had a lot of work to get done as prep for the MBA classes in Beijing: a huge amount of reading that needs to get done and a case write-up on Starbucks. I’m not done, but I made good progress on the flight. I was really amazed that or trajectory took us very close to the North Pole and even more amazed at the view out the window. Thankfully I managed to sleep for several hours, too. For a 13.5 hour flight it all went pretty fast.

I met Laura and Bruce at the Beijing airport and came back to their place to get cleaned up. After some catching up we went for a walk through the city. It was a hot, clear afternoon. Despite a clear sky there was still some dust in the air, and I know the climate will take just a little getting used to. We went to an open air market full of really fresh fruits, vegetables and spices. The food was very fresh and fragrant, and I can still almost smell the spices from the spice vendors. We had dinner at a restaurant near the market.

At about 8 PM I basically collapsed from fatigue. Now it’s 3:30 in the morning and I’m awake. No surprise– I’ll be caught up with the local schedule after a few more hours of sleep this AM.

I hope to find some time every day (or at leas every few days!) to jot down some thoughts on the day preceeding. I am also going to be posting photos as I take them, and you can see my shots from my flight over and first day in Beijing here: August’s China Trip, Day 1.