Kay-tea-way and the dancing noodles

5/10/13

Last day in Xi'an went well. It warmed up but was still a very pleasant temperature. We visited two companies - Siemens and Shaanxi Auto Group.

At Shaanxi, it was interesting how obviously tied to the government they are. This company produces heavy duty trucks including being (I think) the only producer of trucks for the Chinese government. An interesting note that I have is that for most of these business presentations we've been given, there is a dedicated presentation room with impressive graphics and technology.

After we got back from the company visits there were quite a few who did their own thing but 2 main groups split off with intent to meet later in the evening. They did either dumpling dinner or disco noodles. I was with the disco noodle crowd which ended up being a hot pot dinner with the finale of a guy stretching noodles while tossing and throwing and dancing around. It was quite impressive and fun. Culture note: the waiter would not take any tip at all and said that 'his job was enough of a 'blessing' and that he could not accept more than that'. not verbatim

Our disco noodle waitress took us to a karaoke place we had previously planned to visit and we ended up with the 'presidential' private suite (with private bathroom -what!!?? to date the nicest of the trip) and we sang our lungs out for the next 2 hours (Jennifer literally lost her voice). It was 'clutch'.

We tried to meet up with the other group but that failed. It has definitely been proven difficult to 'meet up with you later' when you don't have a way to communicate with each other.

My side note for the day - supermarkets in China are crazy and when Jess and I went for a quite moment, we were definitely the only white people in that building. Probably also the only ones able to speak English for that matter.

Tomorrow's agenda - traveling to Beijing and will meet up with the Japan GLP group.

We got to experience authentic Chinese karaoke - kay tea way - and saw a guy dancing with noodles. What cultural fun!

~Elizabeth Bauman

Me and Mary in the Shaanxi showroom

Jess and I with our required booties