Which excites you more, the sight of thousand-year old Great Wall or Starbucks at the street corner of Beijing city? People travel far to seek experiences at home. Familarity of caves is key to our survival.
It is genetic that I always pattern a new city to wherever I have been to before. QingDao (é’å²›, a city at the tip of a north-eastern China peninsula) makes it easy: it is San Francisco. They are geographically similar. Both enjoy mild climate, clean air from the sea, and vibrant lifestyles of foods, pace, and outdoor activities. Sangri-La hotel is right next to the famous May 4th Square, where people jog, roller-blade, hang-out, and eat. A few elderly rigged light-emitting devices on kites and fly them high after dark. It is a cool sight to admire.
I flew here to speak to 150 or so deans of Information Science or Technology colleges — merger of Computer Science, Network Technologies, Information Science, Computer Engineering, etc. departments as well as an incubator branch for high-tech entrepreneurship. This is the 3rd time they have met. I spoke on Sun's roles in China, particularly for academia. The thesis is obvious: our open technologies are perfect matches, our high-touch approach creates strong bonds, and our engineering presence strengthens our programs.
Germany occupied QingDao, now more than 8 million in population, for 17 years (1897—1914) and started the beer industry. You know this city from its namesake drink, spelled slightly differently as TsingDao Beer. The company established a Beer Museum next to its headquarters. The same street has been commercialized into QingDao Beer Street on which every restaurant serves freshly brewed beers of many, many varieties. This street offers good beers, fresh seafood, nice weather, brisk crowd, eager and friendly merchants. I ordered cask-conditioned and stout beers, grilled fish, stir fried veggies, some clams. Just sat back to take this all in nicely.
Chinese know this city as its adjacency to LaoShan (å´‚å±±), one of the origins of Taoism. (That sounds strange, but this religion is over 3,000 years old.) The famous fable described a Taoist demi-god who lived here. A mere mortal tried to learn from him but could not deal with the disciplines. One day, after lots of whining and begging, the master demonstrated how to walk through walls. When the mortal returned home and tried, all he got was a big bump on the forehead.
The tour guide told the fable and pointed out the very wall the mortal demonstrated his stupidity.