Day 3 Still Beijing

Again, I am at the end of Day 4 but will try to remember day 3.  I am so tired at night that I cannot work on this and now must play catch-up.

We started the day early and headed northwest of the city to Reinke Corp Beijing operations.  Reinke makes center pivot sprinklers and has a manufacturing plant here.  It is in the Muyong district of Beijing Province (of which Beijing is the capitol) and we got a tour of the plant and a lot of information that I can't remember.  All I do know is that they make a lot of money with very few employees.  And we got a baseball cap that says Reinke.  The manager of the plant is a Chinese born U.S  citizen named John Liu whose home is Omaha when he is not in China.

We then had a surprise visit to the headquarters of the of the Muyong Financial District which is kind of like an SID in Omaha.  We got weak tea and a long marketing video all in Chinese.   This took another hour. 


Lunch was at the Brickhouse Restaurant and Hotel near the Great Wall.  It is owned by an American married to a Chinese woman and it feels very modern.  They have a sustainable garden and a very green operation.  Their selling point was that Michelle Obama spent time there and really liked what they were doing.  Obviously, this did not impress my group.  It was really cool and I loved the whole lunch which was good because the next hour was sheer hell.
 
Joan said we had to walk a few blocks to the lift that would take us to the Great Wall.  It turned out to be two miles at a 50 degree pitch that almost killed me.  I am not sure that everything is as okay with my heart as Dr. Koster says.  All of these old people just kept on walking and I struggled the whole way.  It was embarrassing and kind of frightening.  My chest still felt bruised today.  The view, however, was worth it.  What a monumental feat!  While it turns out that you cannot see the Great Wall from space, it is still really impressive and I am glad I made the trek.  The pollution that hung over the horizon was disturbing but made for a beautiful sunset.

The a two hour drive back to the hotel (the traffic here is horrendous....no one really knows how to drive but they all have agreed not to make a fuss about it and just try not to kill anyone!)  We got back at 6:30 pm and had to meet this jerk from the Soybean Board who was taking us to dinner.  We had an hour drive (we were two miles from the restaurant but the traffic was torture) and then a long boring Lazy Susan dinner (again!!!) then a much shorter drive back to the hotel.  The only good thing was that I got a glass of wine out of the deal. 

We have to have our bags ready to be taken to the train by 7 am tomorrow even though we don't leave for two days so we need to make sure that we have everything we need in our carry-on bags.
We don't get to bed until after midnight and have to be up at 5:30 am.  This is a hard trip.