Day 12: Beijing, Thursday, June 28, 2012

After yesterday’s first impressions of Beijing by bicycle we were already aware that Beijing is a city of superlatives. In China things are big, but in Beijing everything is bigger. Therefore, our schedule for today was ambitious. First, we visited the Temple of Heaven, in order to discover the historical Beijing, which was followed by a visit of the urban planning exhibition that gave us an impression of the metamorphosis of the old Emperors’ Beijing into the modern metropolis it is today. In the afternoon the group split up and some of us strolled around the largest art gallery in the world, the Factory 798, and the others visited the Lenovo headquarters in the Zhongguancun Industry Park.

Today’s first stop was at the Temple of Heaven, a large complex of religious buildings. It was set up for the emperor of the Ming dynasty – regarded as the son of heaven – for his annual ceremonies of prayer to heaven for good harvest. The Temple of Heaven is a beautiful park, four times the size of the Forbidden City, located within the outer city walls of Beijing. It was constructed in 1420 by the architect of the Forbidden City. Despite the rain we got a good feeling of the large dimensions of the park and its spiritual character. All the elements in the park were carefully chosen, for example the dominating colors are green and blue, representing the Earth and Heaven, respectively. Furthermore, the construction of the temple is based on the heavenly number three and the predominant architectural shapes are squares, standing for the Earth and domes, representing heaven. The worshipping building used to be reserved for the emperor only. In 1970, for the first time commoners were allowed in the park and nowadays it is the many locals exercising, dancing, singing, playing cards and so on that create a nice and cheerful atmosphere.

Locals playing cards in the Temple of Heaven park. (Photo: Bettina Niklaus)

Temple of Heaven with the three Chinese characters meaning pray – year – hall
(Photo: Bettina Niklaus)

Daniel, finally with a real tourist guide’s flag (Photo: Bettina Niklaus)

In the Urban Planning Exhibition Hall the impressive relief of the city of Beijing of 1949 caught our interest of Beijing’s urban development. Comparing it to a very accurate 3D model of today’s Beijing, we could see how the city grew five times bigger since then. Until today the city is developed according to a master plan, arranging all buildings along the central axis from South to North. All important sites are located along this axis, like the Forbidden City, the drum and bell tower and the Olympic stadium, the so-called Bird’s nest.

Lightshow in the Urban Planning Museum demonstrating Beijing’s city structure.
(Photo: Bettina Niklaus)

Visiting one of Beijing’s most modern architectural sights, the CCTV tower in the CBD, we learned that it was designed by Rem Koolhaas according to the nomadic radical structuralism style. The building serves as office space for approximately 10’000 people. Some of us then went on to the Factory 798, the world’s largest art district, located in a deserted industrial area. The creative atmosphere there inspired some of the students to do performing arts themselves.

And another group picture… this time posing Chinese style in front of the CCTV tower.
(Photo: Annie)

Gierina and Simon performing spontaneous art at the Factory 798 in Beijing.
(Photo: Bettina Niklaus)

In the meantime the others visited the headquarters of Lenovo, a Chinese IT manufacturer in Beijing. Full of energy and motivation after a super delicious street food lunch, we enjoyed a very informative presentation of Koka, a young, dynamic and very talkative marketing associate, elaborating Lenovo’s strategy to become the world’s number one PC supplier. Lenovo’s global strategy is the perfect example for explaining FDI with Dunning’s OLI paradigm. In order to gain an ownership advantage, Lenovo acquired foreign IT firms, like IBM to enter the US market. For the location advantage, Lenovo has diversified its R&D on many parts of the world, to gather up-to-date information and for the internalization advantage, Lenovo produces most of the things itself in China, for purposes of control and quality management. It was also very interesting to hear, that Lenovo chose Beijing as its headquarters location, because the access to superior information of the government is necessary for the company’s success.

“For those who do” – Lenovo’s branding slogan to become world’s number one.
(Photo: Andrea Keller)

GIUB students playing the Chinese version of Hacky Sack with random tourists and Chinese people.
(Photo: Andrea Keller)

The highlight of today’s program was the Olympic Parc with the Bird’s Nest. The “inofficial marketing manager of Herzog and De Meuron”, Professor Zumbühl, provided us with background information about this example for Swiss-Chinese cooperation, as the Bird’s Nest was designed by the Swiss architects Herzog and De Meuron in cooperation with the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Waiting for dusk to experience the illuminated Swim Hall and Bird’s nest by night, we finally had time for some serious souvenir shopping and snatched some cute Panda kites. To fill the time gap, we performed our own Olympic games in the disciplines of silly jumping around.

The Olympic rings… (Photo: Mario Huber)

… and the jumping competition in front of the Bird’s Nest. (Photo: Mario Huber)

Overwhelmed with all the impressions of big and busy Beijing, we all enjoyed dinner in the quiet and very Chinese hutongs near the Hostel.

Step count on our pedometer: 22,547

Bettina Niklaus, Andrea Keller