NOTE: This is part 2 of my SES China Experience Series.
After packing my things Wednesday night, I went straight to bed. Three hours would be more than enough I thought. I woke up around 4:00 AM and arrived at the old Manila international airport around 5:00 AM. The Cathay Pacific check-in queue was long. While waiting in line, something dawned on me. In my rush to reach the airport, I forgot the one thing everyone was reminding me to bring along: a nice, thick jacket to fight the unforgiving Chinese climate. I wanted to ask someone at home to bring the jacket over but I convinced myself that I would be alright. It would be summer there soon and it shouldn’t be colder than Tagaytay. That’s what I honestly thought. Mistake #2.
No highlights for the 2 hour trip to Hong Kong. I guess everyone was trying to catch a quick nap. The 2 hours we spent at the Hong Kong airport were uneventful too. I was trying to scout around for other SES participants but since everyone was speaking Chinese, all I picked up were key terms like Google, search engine, Yahoo! and Baidu. There were a few caucasians waiting in the same gate and they had that SEO look to them (don’t ask).
Nanjing
When we touched down at the Nanjing airport, I saw what would be the definitive mental image I have of Nanjing weather in March. There was this airport personnel on the tarmac wearing this really thick thermal jacket and hugging himself because of the cold and the 2:00 PM sun was blasting away. Scary! That’s when I realized how cold it really was. Now the 10ºC to 14ºC weather may not sound extreme to some, but for someone who thrives in tropical climates, it was punishment supreme.
Nanjing was an eye opener. Except for the Communist party officials and their green military uniforms, everything else looked pretty capitalist too me. The 1-hour trip to the city proper gave me a glimpse of the booming Chinese economy: massive construction projects, a nuclear plant (I know I know but hey that’s still a highlight for me), people and goods on the move…the things I saw were completely unexpected as I thought I was originally going to a rural part of China.
We checked in at the posh Xuanwu Hotel around 3:00 PM (yeah guys here’s your link love for all the help). It’s not as grand as some of the five-star hotels here in the Philippines but Inway Ni and the other SES China organizers said it was the best hotel in town. After 4 days at the hotel, I’m tempted to agree with them.
Networking Party
I got the word earlier that there was going to be a networking party later that night. I’ve been to similar events back home but this was my first SEM networking gig. I knew there were going to be a lot of people at the event so I thought the best way to stand out would be to dress down. Armed with a bunchload of business cards I headed down to the function hall. The first thing I saw was a sea of black suits. Intimidating. But once I saw a few people in casual wear the initial fright quickly wore off. I convinced myself that I was going to wiggle myself into the flow of things tonight. I constantly reminded myself that not only was I selling myself, I was actually selling the Philippines. I love the feeling! It’s not everyday that you get to sell the Philippines to a room of 100 or so non-Filipinos.
After a few hours or so, the main started to break into smaller groups: Chinese speakers on one side and English-only speakers on the other. The bilingual people were crisscrossing the room, fully aware of the advantage they had over the single language people. I was grouped with the English-only speakers and from that group I was able to meet a lot of interesting people.
To be continued: SES Personalities I Met and Their Stories