China

Well I'm back after a week in China - Shanghai, Tianjin and Beijing. Was supposed to go to Haikou, which is on an island and I'm told its very nice, like Hawaii there - but plans changed and I was in the rather colder north instead. Every time I go to China it seems faster-paced, with ever growing opportunities. Shanghai, of course, is known for the incredibly fast growth of the Pudong area, with its high speed mag lev train, its impressive skyscrapers, and the Zhangjiang high-tech park, which is where our Shanghai office is located. Here's our intrepid China team in the office: Jimmy, Jonathan and Pu.

I was less familiar with Tianjin, which promises to be the next great economic development zone a la Pudong. Tianjin is the third largest city in China, behind Shanghai and Beijing (fourth if you count Hong Kong) - and practically no one's heard of it in the West! Its about 2 hours drive southeast from Beijing, near the coast. The Chinese government is putting massive amounts of money into Tianjin to develop infrastructure for manufacturing, ports, air travel, and corporate parks and incubators. They are very interested in healthcare and growing their biopharmaceutical industry as well.

While in Tianjin, we met with Dr. Liu Xiaocheng, president of the TEDA International Cardiovascular Hospital, the largest in Asia with more than 600 beds and 16 operating rooms, performing 10,000 surgeries a year. The interesting thing about this hospital is that, under Dr. Liu's guidance, it serves both the very very rich and the very very poor - and both get the same quality of medical care. He has set up the hospital to offer 6 classes of service, which deliver different levels of amenities to patients - but the same, high quality of medical care to all. In this way, the wealthy patients subsidize those who can't pay. At the highest level, one can get an incredible suite of rooms, including a conference room, office, private indoor garden, private gym, full kitchen - for $3200 USD per day. But for only about $6.70 per day, one can get a bed in a shared room (2 patients to a room) and the same quality of care as the $3200 patient. Dr. Liu has a special program to treat orphan children with heart problems, which he is very proud of. He says: "Its just like an airplane. In the front of the plane they have the first class. In the middle, business class. And at the end, economy class. But they're all going to the same destination. It's the market!" Very cool. I'm sending them a check for the orphans, but they couldn't figure out how to take a US contribution while I was there.

Tianjin itself is a nice-looking city. It was an old colonial city, and its active commercial and manufacturing environment included many European concessions in the 1800's. Here's a nice link with old pictures. It featured prominently in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. The architecture of the old part of the city is a charming mix of Chinese and European, the streets are lined with old trees and old-fashioned streetlamps. I was sorry I could not spend more time in this part of the city. I was told that Herbert Hoover spent 20 years in Tianjin as an engineer before returning to the US to become president. (My Chinese hosts were a bit dismayed when I told them that Hoover did not have the best reputation of all our presidents, having been tagged with responsibility for the Great Depression. Oh well!)

Back in Beijing last Friday, where I stayed just one night before flying home. Long enough to have a delightful dinner at a pretty good Yunnan restaurant with my friend Zhang Quen (R) and my new Burrill colleague Wang Pu (L). I like most Yunnan food, but this place had not one but TWO kinds of worms (deep fried bamboo root worms and fried fireroot worms) on the menu - gives a whole new meaning to the word 'grub'!! (Click here for an interesting newsletter on edible insects (yup, they have recipes), and here for the website of the Research Institute of Resource Insects - I kid you not, in Kunming, Yunnan province, they do research on edible insects!) Anyway, we passed on the worms, but did enjoy a bottle of Great Wall cabernet which was not California, but passable. Here are my charming dinner companions - to friendship, with no worms!

Family Week

Only a few of my friends have blogs of their own, and one that I really enjoy is the Hurlblum blog, of friends Nancy Blum and Bill Hurlbut. Bill recently posted this about a special holiday they call 'Family Week'. In this hurried time when we always mean to spend more time with our friends and loved ones, but frequently put that time off, I think its great to actually 'formalize' it around a special day for the family. Here's Bill's post:

"Since 2001 we have made our own tradition around the anniversary of the day we added Lucy to our family.Family Week, as we call it, starts with Gotcha Day, February 23, the day we actually received Lucy from the Gao Yu Child Welfare Center. This is rather low-key celebration doesn't involve parties or other big events, it is simply a time to reflect on our family and what it means to us to have each other.In the evenings during Family Week, we watch videos, starting with the Gotcha Day tape and including whatever others come to hand. We talk about how we felt, what else happened that we didn't catch on film, and we answer questions from the kids. We usually watch some parts of Liam's early years and catch a few random favorites from among the many concerts, parties, vacations, and other events that have enriched our lives together.There are no pictures of this event we can share. No picture could capture the closeness, the togetherness, the satisfied happiness of Family Week. We invite you to declare such a week for yourselves. Even if you don't have children, you do have a family that is worth celebrating."

Ohio and India

Well, I am home in Connecticut again, after three weeks on the road. First week in San Francisco, next week in Ohio for the Case Western Reserve U. board of trustees meeting, and the last week in Mumbai.

Ohio was cold and snowy. I stayed in the old house, which is now emptied of many furnishings and people since Paul and Laura moved into their house in December. It was a bit lonely and empty, but a good chance to do some measurements and plan renovations, which I now hope to start in the late summer. The new house is cozy and warm and it was great to see Paul and Laura and the kids, even though I spent most of the week working.

From Ohio, on to Mumbai - one snowstorm in Chicago, one missed connection in London, one unplanned 11-hour layover at Heathrow, a re-scheduling of cars and hotels in Mumbai, and a 10-hour flight via India's Jet Airways later, and we have gone from 9 degrees F and snowing to 32 degrees C, sticky and humid.

My experience on Jet Airways, by the way, though unplanned, was superb. Flat bed-seats, great service, extremely courteous staff - I compare them very favorably to larger, more well-known carriers to India. I would fly Jet over British Airways to India any day based on this one flight!

Mumbai - and India in general - is bursting with energy. All the nervous talk you read in the press about overheating the economy is dismissed with a wave of the hand by the Indian bankers and businesspeople you meet. Sure, there will be ups and downs - the Bombay Stock Exchange (or SENSEX) dropped about 500 points last week due to the jitters around the world about China - but most Indians feel their time has come and are creating new business opportunities everywhere. It is an exciting time to be working in India!

One of the biggest barriers India will face is the need for new infrastructure to support this explosive growth. While things like Internet access, telecoms and air travel (domestic and international) are pretty good, more basic stuff like electricity, roads and traffic are a nightmare. I calculate I spent about half my working hours in India this week in meetings and the other half sitting in traffic. Mumbai is bad, Hyderabad is about the same, and Bangalore takes chaos and gridlock to a whole new level. The view shown in this picture was pretty typical of Mumbai traffice, except for the fact there are no motorbikes or motorized rickshaws in the picture. These latter are miniscule three-wheeled vehicles powered by a 2-cycle engine, designed to seat the driver in front and two passengers with no room to spare in the rear. While ordinary cars are often (but not always) found in lanes of traffic, these (along with the motorbikes) seem to be designed to fill every interstitial space in the traffic matrix, which then operates according to a mysterious set of rules that I have yet to decipher.

One conundrum that caught my attention was the signs that are often found on the back of brilliantly decorated trucks, which say something like: 'Blow horn please' or 'horn OK please'. Most people seem to think this invitation to make noise relates to the truck driver's inability to see what is around him as there are no mirrors. But since basically every vehicle seems to be wildly and randomly honking anyway, it does not seem as though it would be very instructive to the driver for yet one more vehicle to add to the cacophony.

Power failures are also common in India. During the week I was there, there were two major power outages affecting millions of people in Mumbai and Western Maharashtra province. Signs like the one in the picture, warning people not to climb out of stalled elevators, are thus common. Fortunately, the power outage did not affect my trip nor was I stuck in an elevator between floors, although after seeing this I was more inclined to use the stairs than before!

Anyway, I am home again (finally!) in CT and it is good to be here. Michael is also home for a week for spring break, although he will be spending it mostly with his friends on a skiing holiday in Vermont. Nice to see him, even for a brief while and we will see if we can get a 'guest blog' out of him while he's home!