On the trail of Marco Polo 3 – Beijing and Qingdao
Wednesday and Thursday was spent in Beijing, where we arrived late on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, TLWB had organized another presentation open to all those interested. We had 90 people registered and, in the end, over 75 turned up. Once again Mnova NMR, NMRPredict Desktop and the alpha version of the Mnova MS plugin (more on this very soon in this blog)Â were all received with enthusiasm by the attendees, representing many of the Universities in the city and some of the biotechs and CROs. As a result of this presentation, a couple of meetings were organized for Thursday.
Wednesday night, we went for dinner to Zhi Li Hui Guan, a fantastic restaurant in central Beijing, just by the western gate of Tsinghua University. This restaurant is trying to recreate the cooking style of North Eastern China in the XIX century, in the period of the Qing Dynasty. The restaurant is truly spectacular, with a beautiful building, some dishes out of this World (everything was excellent but, for presentation and excellence of preparation, I have to highlight the ‘beef in a box’ (unfortunately I do not know the name of this dish, I just looked at the photos in the menu!). This is brought to the table inside a wooden box, and it is a dish designed for and only enjoyed by, top government officials of the time. The box is beautifully decorated and must be opened in stages, affording to that who opens it longevity (this is represented by a very long  which must be removed before the box can be opened) good fortune, a first layer containing 6 dishes with different sauces, and prosperity, the bottom layer, which holds the most tender beef you can ever hope to taste. A truly amazing dish and a great restaurant. If you are in Beijing, don’t miss it.
Mike, Santi and Hongyu Liu in Beijing
Beijing people are extremely proud of their city, and with good reason, it is as spectacularly beautiful as it is congested. I benefited directly from the pride and generous hospitality of one of them, our driver Mike (this is his Western name), who was taking us back to the hotel to collect our stuff after presenting at the last CRO of the day. Mike was shocked when he heard I had not had time to visit the city or do any sightseeing, and he took it upon himself to take us to Tiannamen Square and around the Forbidden City, where we took some photos, and then running us to the spectacular Terminal 3 of the Beijing Airport, delivering us there 45 minutes before the departure of our flight to Qingdao. Thank you, Mike – he is, by the way, with me and Mr. Liu in the photo to the right.
I found some more interesting facts about China in Beijing. The first, I was amazed by how early children get up and attend school. I went running past a primary school at 6.00 and the kids were exercising in the playground, ready for a long day of education (6.00 until 18.00, I believe). This is of course one of the reasons why Chinese American returnees (many of them are coming back to work in the pharmas, biotechs and CROs of the large Chinese capitals) are finding it very hard to convince their children to come back with them. This is also one of the reasons why China is having no difficulty acting as a conveyor belt in the mass production of highly qualified scientists.
I found the standard of NMR knowledge to be very high at both presentations we gave, with most organic chemists there used to concepts such as apodization of 1D or processing and analysis of 2D correlation such as 2D NOE.
Another interesting fact is the high quality of the labs and facilities, i.e., the research and development infrastructure. Most of these have been created in the last few years, and this means that they all enjoy very modern facilities, normally purpose built by the government and then either sold or rented to these companies. These facilities are normally outside town, but most companies run coaches all over the city, collecting their employees to take them to work and delivering back to the cities at the end of the day.
This is all from a very quick visit to Beijing. Just a few comments on Qingdao, where we spent Friday training the TLWB stuff. I was amazed by Qingdao, which is the city where the sailing competitions were held in the Olympic Games. It has a population of 5 million, very beautiful beaches, excellent accommodation at very reasonable prices (how about a huge kingsize bedroom for €60 per night with breakfast and internet included in the Haiqing Hotel, the hotel used by many of the Olympic delegations during the Games? BTW, every single hotel in China appears to have free internet access, this is something that hoteliers in the West should really learn from). Qingdao is also famous for its breweries, probably as a consequence of having been a German colony in the XIX and early XX century, and has a beautiful German quarter, with alpine and Bavarian style villas in leafy streets surrounding some excellent beaches. I think this would be a fantastic place to spend a beach holiday, and a very economic alternative to the European resorts (Cote d’Azur, Costa Brava, Riviera, etc.) If you made it there, do not miss Yangguang Jiari a fantastic fish restaurant where you pick your food prior to cooking from tanks and ice buckets (see Qingdao photo gallery).Â
