Today was our company visit to Lenovo in the morning. Initially I was almost more excited about this one than CapitalBio. When we got there, I was thoroughly satisfied by what I saw. The way Vanessa put it before we went, “you’ll leave Lenovo wanting to buy something.” Well, she was definitely right. We started off the tour when our guide asked a volunteer to throw a paper airplane through a hole in the wall. I didn’t really get this until the guide told us that the significance of the airplane was that one of their early tv commercials featured a kid throwing a paper airplane that slowly grew into a spaceship. In the beginning of our tour, we learned the history of the company. It was a company started by 10 guys in a house. We also learned the reason behind the name Lenovo. At first, the company was called Legend, but after awhile they decide to change it to Lenovo, keeping the “Le” of Legend and adding “novo,” which means “new” in Latin. They are a company founded on innovation, and that is their fundamental idea. After learning the history, they took us to see some of their products and designs. Probably the coolest thing there was the Olympic torch for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Lenovo was commissioned to design a hand held torch to light the big torch. The guide let us take it out of its case and hold it. This specific torch, he said, was only used for one of the legs of the torch lighting ceremony. Either way, it was really cool to hold one of the torches featured in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Then we got to their newest line of computers and tablets. They had a lot of really cool stuff and I kind of wanted to buy everything there. We also got to see some of their original products to see the progress that they’ve made to get to what they are marketing now. Lenovo is the leading supplier of electronic goods in China, and it is easy to see why. I haven’t seen too big of a market for them in the States, possibly because the US competitors such as Dell, HP, and Apple have such control of the computer hardware market. I really liked that company visit because it was the most entertaining (probably because they let us play with their stuff) and the most informative about the actual company. After we left, we went to a really nice restaurant not too far away from our hotel that was apparently famous for its Peking duck. From our table, you could see the chefs carving up the ducks, and each duck you bought came with a certificate of authenticity from the restaurant. The duck was fantastic. That has definitely been my favorite meal so far. No matter what else they brought out for us, the duck went great with it. The only thing that I thought was strange was that they also brought the head of our duck out sliced in two, so you could eat the brains inside. One person from our group ate the duck brain. I figure I have had enough weird stuff to eat for one trip. After that really good lunch, we had to go to class where we learned a little bit about Chinese politics. I thought it was a pretty boring lecture, but the lady had a lot of Chinese characters on her slides, so I tried to learn a few of them and that entertained me. I wrote down all the characters for the dynasties of Chinese history.  If I had more time to spend here, I would probably make a real attempt at learning some of the language. After lecture was over, a small group of us wanted to go to the Silk Market. We rode on the subway to get there, but we made the mistake of going during rush hour. We got to one of the busiest subway lines and had to go one stop on it. We attempted to push our way on the train, but we sort of bounced off the huge crowd of people. I had learned at the Forbidden City that the Chinese don’t have a concept of personal space like Americans do, but that was crazy. We finally got there and went around looking for stuff and bargaining the price down. One guy said he wanted to kill us because we were Americans. I left that area pretty quick. After making a less crowded trip home, those of us who had gone to the Silk Market still had to work on our business presentations which are the last graded things we have to do. Because we were all so tired, we just decided to have McDonald McDelivered. I ordered (or tried to order. the person didn’t speak very good English) a big mac combo and three cheeseburger combos. We ended up getting three cheeseburgers and three big macs and no combos at all. It’s times like those that I really hate the language barrier. Anyway, I’m tired, so I’m going to bed.