Today was a brain-storming day, for us – the manufacturing team – mainly three questions had to be looked at

• specific questions / requests for clarifications for our first client
• high-level setup of the agenda for the presentations
• review of the available data and material, to get it sorted by topic and relevance

Based on the internet connection speed and the good availability of coffee, tea and all sorts of cheese cake, we decided to spend the day at the local Starbucks outlet (on the other side of the street from our hotel) – as did all the other groups.

Given the intake of coffee and tea, we had some fruitful discussion and ended up with a good list of questions to ask, as well as an approach on how to continue. We got back to the hotel for further work (i.e. a deep dive into the material) only after having tried a good selection of cake.

Let’s see how it goes … but one thing is sure, I have neither worked a full day in Starbucks before, nor did I go through a working dinner in the backroom of a Chinese restaurant (see yesterday’s blog entry) … we still need to decide, where to head for tomorrow – so, let’s see 😉

Working Dinner

Yesterday it worked … the note Elaine had prepared for us did the job; based on the note we “became” Buddhist Vegetarians and thus ended up with true vegetarian dishes.

This turned out to be a manufacturing team only dinner, so we used the opportunity to continue the discussion on our Statement of Work before and around dinner… we even had our little meeting room 🙂

Night Market

Today Claire, Deepak and myself took a walk through one of the night markets; on the way we also made new friends 😉

Heavy Manufacturing

Our second working day in Wuhan; today we were driven into the outskirts of town to visit our second customer – a heavy manufacturing company, producing hydraulic pile drivers, pressing and manufacturing machinery.

A guided tour through the manufacturing floor gave us a good impression of the process and the product. It was a quiet interesting experience being at an actual heavy manufacturing company and seeing the production process; especially with all of us having an IT or IT-related background, where work tends to be virtually and the final product can hardly be touched).

During the following meeting the chairman and his executive team gave us an overview of the company, its history and its challenges – – thus giving us the input to define what in detail to deliver. After a fruitful discussion we got invited to what they called a simple business lunch and which turned out to be a full banquet with 20+ dishes in the restaurant of a nearby hotel.

That simple lunch was an interesting experience. All following standard rules – from the seating (most senior member of the delegation right-hand of the host, the next senior member – here me – on the left side of the host, etc.), to toasting and the order the food was served. The food itself was superb, a wide selection with all sorts of flavors; also Deepak – our vegetarian teammate – was taken care of with many proper vegetarian dishes to choose from. Overall an amazing and highly appreciated experience.

After lunch we moved back to the office to close our meeting, basically summarizing the points identified and making sure we get a common understanding on what we will work on – a big thanks to Elaine, Theresa (our two interns) and Lesley (our DOT contact) for their help in interpretation.

Lost in Translation

We learned how it can go without interpretation yesterday evening. Eight of us went for dinner into a small local family-run restaurant; everyone was friendly and it was a nice place – the menu of course in Chinese and no one in the house to speak English. To not confuse them totally, we decided to all eat vegetarian, so we told them “wǒmen bù chī ròu” (“we do not eat meat”). We a) ended up with enough dishes to feed 15 people and  b) 60% of the food included meat. Nevertheless – the food was good, the owner friendly, the place clean – so we will be back tonight – just with a note from our interpreters stating what exactly we are looking for … will post tomorrow if that worked 😉

CSC China 15 Program Launch

Today was our first official day in the CSC program – the official program launch.

Most joined for breakfast around 07:00 / 07:15, many being nervous … we got on the bus a good half hour later, the driver making sure we reached the Wuhan East Lake New Technical Development Zone in time (even by using horn and siren).

The official meeting started at 10:00 and covered speeches from the parties involved; Emad did a fabulous job representing our team to then have every member introduce her- or himself.

After lunch we divided into the sub-teams with Claire, Sanjiev, Deepak and myself being the Manufacturing sub-team. Together with our interpreters Elaine and Theresa we left the Wuhan East Lake New Technical Development Zone and went for the one hour drive to our first customer, a manufacturer of high- and medium-voltage distribution and switch devices, as well as other switching technology.

The discussion on the way mainly dealt with what was ahead of us – but in the end there was nothing to worry about, we had a very friendly welcome, a good starting discussion with the company’s chairman and executive team. After the discussion and joint brainstorming we got a full guided tour of their show room and the plant.

For me – and for many others on the team – this day included a number of first times

• first time with external clients
• first time in a situation with simultaneous interpretation
• first time driven to work under siren and horn (felt like in a US fire truck) – and not being in firefighter, police, ambulance or military business
• first time experience of Chinese business culture

I guess, the feeling was probably like being on a trade delegation traveling to a foreign country with a high politician/ leader; someone mentioned it felt like suddenly working for the UN.

All in all an exciting day – and this is just the first one of more to come … nervousness changes to anticipation … looking forward for tomorrow 😉

Today we had our first official internal meeting, starting off with an introduction of the CSC participants, the DOT management team and our interns; followed by some background on the program, the setup and our clients.

The fun part was to come after that … presents … and a big Hot Pot team dinner. We left the hotel and took Wuhan’s elevated ligth railway …

The Hot Pot was classic DIY food, we got a pot of stock with fire underneath, plus the ingredients required for a good soup and just combined as we pleased … and got closer together as a team, also involving our interns (who will help us us interpreters and cultural guides).

The team is growing slowly; members getting together slowly from all parts of the world. Four of us ventured out for what was planned a one/two hours walk down to the river after breakfast. The others turned out as crazy as I am about exploring new places … so instead of just heading to the river, we ended up crossing the river on a ferry … on the side we basically ran into the Yellow Crane Tower with its parks, pagodas and pavilions. On the way back chance once more hit and we came across a hawker center and had a dive into the real local food, ordering by pointing, seeing our food prepared straight in front of us … good and cheap. We made it back to the hotel at 17:30 (and another ferry ride) … in time to prepare for dinner.

I made it safely into Wuhan, met my first team colleague at the arrival gate … super-friendly welcome by the local team at the airport. I am now in my hotel room, just showered some of that jetlag away … now of to some first explorations around the hotel.

By the way: sunshine, 22 degrees Celsius 😉