Day 16 - 30th August: Mt. Hua (Hua Shan)

#ibmcsc China 30

Mt. Hua or Hua Shan ('Shan' means Mountain in Chinese) was conquered today...well almost...since we reached almost the top of it by cable car :) But, it seemed like an achievement as after the cable car, we climbed 4 of its highest peaks. Looking back, I can't believe I actually walked up to all those peaks!

Mt. Hua is one of the 5 most sacred mountains in China and has a long history of religious significance. It is about 120 kms from Xi'an and it took us about 3 hours to get there by road.

The map on the right shows the map of Mt. Hua which has the highest altitude of of about 2155 meters (7070 ft.) at the South Peak. It doesn't sound much compared to Himalayan ranges but the beauty of this mountain is the steep hike and the treacherous routes. We actually had to climb up a rock using chains with small footholds carved in the rock. There are some other routes on the mountain where they just have wooden planks on the side of the rocks with iron chains to hold on to. We took picture but didn't dare to even put one foot on that.

I have marked our hiking route on the map:

Our Hiking Route

The red line on the bottom right is the bus route that we took to reach the base of the mountain from where the cable car starts. The right side shows the cable car route which is about 4.2 kms long and is one of the scariest rides that I have been on to. The ups and downs and then the final steep ascent takes your breath away. After we got down from the cable car, we started our hike to the 4 peaks.

Route 1: From the starting point to the West Peak (2082 mts.)
Route 2: Down from the West Peak and up to the South Peak (2155 mts.)
Route 3: Down from the South Peak and a visit to the 'Planks in the sky' point which we didn't dare to try
Route 4: Hike to the East Peak (2096 mts.)
Route 5: Hike back to the starting point through the Central Peak

This is one trip I will recommend to everyone visiting China and Xi'an.

The 3rd and the most crucial week of CSC starts tomorrow. We have 3 days Chinese holiday coming up this week so just 3 days to work on our deliverables, conduct a workshop and present our initial recommendations to the GM of ZHHZ during our weekly checkpoint meeting. It is going to be a busy week.

Entrance to Mt. Hua

Easily the most terrifying cable cars that I have been on

The West Peak with the ascent route

'Planks in the sky' route

Ascent to the East Peak

'Chess Pavilion' view from the East Peak

Climbing with chains for support

View from the cable car...looks amazing

Picture taken from the Internet just to show 'Planks in the sky' route... we didn't dare taking this route :)

Day 15 - 29th August - Community Service Day...

#ibmcsc China 30

Today was our Community Service Day and as I wrote yesterday, there were many activities planned for the day by our NGO partner VSO and the local community center. As soon as met at the hotel lobby, Shen Shuo from VSO handed the day's agenda to us with our national flags printed on the first page. We decided to take a picture with everyone holding their flags and as they say, a picture speaks a thousand words, this photo sums up the CSC program. 10 Team members from 8 different countries, all volunteering as a team representing IBM.

We received a very warm welcome when we reached the venue and we had a short introduction from all of us. The participants from the local community included kids, students from high school and elders. From IBM side, we had sessions on Language and Culture, Career Planning and Brazilian Samba dance lessons. I was part of the Language and Culture team and it was fun talking to the kids and students. They were very curious to know what kind of festivals we have, what languages we speak, Bollywood and much more. One of the things that I told them was about a festival called 'Rakshabandhan' which is being celebrated today in India.

From the community's side, we got lessons in Calligraphy, Dumpling and Noodles making and Chinese dance forms. Thankfully, I was not part of the dance group but I learnt to draw a few Chinese characters and also, the Noodles making process.

The day ended with all of us exchanging gifts and expressing our heartfelt gratitude for making us feel a part of their community.

The Team

Answering questions on our culture

With all the kids...all of them are so cute...

Calligraphy lessons for Wagner and me

Spreading the dough for noodles

Dumpling and noodles lunch

With the gifts from the community center

Day 14 - 28th August: Barbeque time...

#ibmcsc China 30

It was a quiet day today which started with a visit to the client's office to continue our work on the project and ended with a wonderful dinner at a Korean barbeque restaurant. One more cuisine tried and added to the list. We would really like to try the cuisines of all the countries my team members come from, like the dinner at the Indian restaurant, but it is difficult to find the right restaurant which serve those cuisines. But we are still looking...

Tomorrow is an important and interesting day as it is the Community Service Day. This is part of every CSC assignment where the team visits the local community to interact with them. Tomorrow, we are visiting a community center where we are going to learn to make dumplings, Chinese calligraphy, weaving and some Chinese dances also. We are also going to interact with some school children and we will teach them about our language, our culture and our dance forms (some of our group members are performing Samba from Brazil).

Looking forward to tomorrow....

The city looks beautiful in the evening

Our food...with a few vegetarian options too...

Ready to dig in...

Day 13 - 27th August: Correlation and Dependencies...

#ibmcsc China 30

We have so much information about our clients, their issues and the causes that it sometimes becomes difficult to make sense of it all. So, we decided to build a correlation matrix and dependencies chart to understand how things fit together. I think it was very useful and it helps us identify the cause and

Correlation Matrix

effect along with the cascading effect. We can now build a story around it and help our clients understand how fixing one thing can lead to an improvement in various areas.

Another interesting aspect of the day was the gift giving by Irena, our Slovenian colleague. She had brought some paintings from Slovenia and each painting had a story to tell. She went through each one of them and told us the stories. Thanks to her, we now know Slovenia a bit more.

That is the beauty of this program. You get to know people from different cultures and learn about them. This should be in the 'must-do' list of every IBMer who is part of any virtual team that works across countries and continents. You can never get this exposure sitting in the office and talking with others on phone.

Irena explaining her gifts

Day 12 - 26th August - Street Games...

#ibmcsc China 30

Yet another day spent in brainstorming, data gathering and presentation preparation. There are so many thoughts and ideas that we need to discuss, shortlist and finalize. Giving a structure to everything is the biggest task at hand right now. We attempted that today with some correlation matrix and dependencies chart. Days are passing by quickly and we need to be ready with the first cut of the presentation by Tuesday, which is when we have the next checkpoint meeting with Mr. Zhao, the Founder and GM of ZHHZ Incubation Center.

However, we have been able to finish our working day by about 5 PM everyday which gives us some time to explore the city and meet the locals in the evening. The evening walk today gave me such an opportunity. Buying fruits from the local market without an interpreter meant talking in sign languages or using the translator app on the phone, which was not add that difficult actually. I also saw groups of people at many places on the side walks watching some game played in the middle. It seems Chinese Chess (Xiangqi) is a very popular past time for people here, not just for the people playing, but for the onlookers as well. Though I did not understand the game, it was fun to just stand in the group and observe.

We also decided to have some street food for lunch and found a place which sells all the steamed food in small bowls placed in huge steamers. You just go and point whatever you need. I had some beans, eggplants and some Tofu along with rice and everything tasted great.

Everyday seems to offer something new here...

Street Food

Chinese Chess

Day 11 - 25th August: Some more history?

#ibmcsc China 30

The biggest work-related accomplishment for today was that we were able to develop an activity plan for our team. We decided on 6 major work-streams that we need to work on which are primarily the pain points of the customer. We then divided each work-stream at the task level and assigned each task's ownership to one of the team members along with the target date for closure of that task. We believe we have a good plan in place to ensure we get all the deliverables prepared in time.

Not too much to talk about work today so I think we have time for some history lesson now ;)

Canjie

We visited the Baishui county in Shanxi province on Saturday (22nd Aug) for apple picking with our clients and one of the places that we saw during the visit was a tomb of a historic figure called Cangjie. Legend has it that he had four eyes and he invented the Chinese characters. Many people do not believe that he was the sole inventor of the characters but they still think that he existed and contributed to it.

The tomb or we may call it a temple, since there is a statue of him and people offer prayers there, was an interesting place to see. The place was full of Cypress trees and as per the guide, all of them are more than 3000 years old. In fact, I did not find anything at the temple less that 1000 years old, except the priest there, or maybe even he is that old :)

This mix of history and modernity in China still amazes me.

Ring the bell three times for good luck!

Two trees in one...both more than 3000 years old

Day 10 - 24th August: The validation...

#ibmcsc China 30

Today was an important milestone for our team as we met Mr. Zhao, the Founder and General Manager of the ZHHZ Incubation Center, to present what all we did in the last week, our understanding of the organization, the issues, possible causes and our focus areas for the next 3 weeks. We were worried we will be told that we have not understood the issues well and a week's efforts would be wasted but thankfully, that was not the case. Mr. Zhao completely agreed with our

Presenting our analysis

analysis and was happy that we were able to zero in on to the problems. He also committed his time for this project and we will be working with him very closely now to identify the solutions. This validation was very important and we felt so good after the meeting...

One thing that amazes me here is the entrepreneurial spirit in the young people. Mr. Zhao is just 27 years and has already started a few companies on his own. The ZHHZ Incubation Center is also owned by him and the passion that he shows while talking about his vision for the company is very inspiring. Even the employees of the company, whom we met for dinner at an Indian restaurant, also want to start something of their own one day and they must be like 20-25 years old. It is wonderful to see and I hope to learn a lot of things from all of them and apply in my professional life back home.

We are having 14 hours days almost everyday, though not all for work. It is a bit tiring but there is no other way if you really want to interact with the local people and get immersed in the culture...I am loving it...

Day 9 - 23rd August: Protecting the king...

#ibmcsc China 30

Today was the day most of us were looking forward to...the visit to the Terracotta Army!

The Terracotta Army or Warriors is a collection of thousands of sculptures made of Terracotta (baked clay) which were buried in 200 BC along with the emperor Qin Shi Huang to protect the emperor in his afterlife. These were discovered in 1974 and the site was opened for public in 1979.

The Terracotta Warriors

The tomb of the emperor is also nearby but it has not been restored for public yet.


It is a sight to behold as you enter the pits where they have excavated these warriors. Thousands of warriors ready to greet you along with cavalry and weapons of that era. The excavation and restoration is still going on at various sites. The sculptures are being found in pieces and as per the guide, it takes 2 archeologists about 6 months to restore one sculpture. We went on a weekend, otherwise we could have actually seen the archeologists working on the pits and at the restoration site (also known as the 'hospital for the warriors'). It is all awe-inspiring and the whole experience is difficult to put in words.

Everyone I met at the museum spoke to me about our Prime Minister, Mr. Modi, visiting the Warriors a few months back and how the entire museum was shut down for security purposes. I also got to know about the Warriors in details when those pictures were published in the newspapers back home. I had never imagined that I will be visiting the place just a few months :D

All lined up to protect the emperor

At one of the three pits

A day very well spent with visits to Ban Po Village museum and the Terracotta Warriors with just a small hiccup at the end. We took about 4 hours and 30 mins to travel 40 kms back to our hotel :)

It was all due to heavy rains and flooding all the roads leading to massive traffic jams. The driving here reminds me of home and helps me not be homesic...ha ha...

But, as they say, everything is an experience and we got all that time more to spend with the team in the bus!

Cars waiting for the water level to go down...

The weekend ends and we are back to work...

Day 8 - 22nd August: Apples anyone?

#ibmcsc China 30

Today was the best day of our stay in Xi'an so far...and it will be tough to beat in the coming days...

With our amazing hosts

A 13 hour long day but we enjoyed every moment of it, all thanks to our wonderful clients at ZHHZ Incubation Center and their General Manager Mr. Zhao. We visited Mr. Zhao's home town, Baishui, which is about a couple of hours from Xi'an and met his parents and other relatives. He has a huge apple orchard which is maintained by his parents and lucky for us, it is the harvest time for apples in this region. Moreover, Baishui is called as the 'Home of the Chinese Apples' and as per Mr. Zhao, they have the best apples in China. After having a few apples straight from the trees, we can attest to that. These were the most juicy and tastiest apples that I have ever had.

We also got to see the countryside with corn, wheat and grape fields, all ready to be harvested. Mr. Zhao's family also extracts the Sunflower seeds and his house was full of
dried Sunflowers and the seeds to be sent for making the Sunflower Oil.

As I mentioned in one of the posts earlier, Chinese people love eating and love offering food to the guests. We were taken to a restaurant today which specializes in Tofu. This restaurant is run by a farmer family and they grow all their vegetables themselves and make their own Tofu. I could have never imagined that you can make so many different and delicious dishes with Tofu. There were about 20 different dishes at the table and every dish had Tofu as one of the ingredients. We were full just by tasting all the dishes.

Chinese are outstanding hosts and we met some of the nicest people today. I wish we have more and more such opportunities during our stay in Xi'an where we get to meet the people, interact with them and experience their culture.

There are so many other things to write about today's trip but I think I will keep a few things for the future posts. Tomorrow, we are going to the see the most famous tourist place of Xi'an, the Terracotta Warriors and I am sure, it will be an interesting day as well.

Just a small sample of the Tofu dishes...

The best apples in China

Day 7 - 21st August: The connection...

Monk Xuanzang

#ibmcsc China 30

Today was a regular working day with nothing much to talk about. So, let me tell you an interesting story about Buddhism and the China - India connection.

We visited the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an during the city tour on our first day here and this story relates to that Pagoda. A Chinese Buddhist monk named Xuanzang undertook a seventeen year long journey to India in 600 AD in the Tang Dynasty. He was concerned about the incomplete and misinterpreted nature of the Buddhist texts in China and wanted to visit to India to learn more about Buddhism and bring more sacred texts to China. He spent thirteen years in India and studies at the ancient university at Nalanda.

On his return to China, the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an was constructed and the sacred texts brought by him were kept here. Our guide told us that during this journey, a Giant Wild Goose showed path to Xuanzang and that is why the pagoda has been named such.

There is a novel called The Journey to the West about his journey which was published in the 16th century and is one of the greated classical novels in Chinese literature.

I found this story extremely interesting and maybe I will get to visit a few important Buddhist places in India one day.

The route that the Monk Xuanzang took

Day 6 - 20th August - Too much to do...

#ibmcsc China 30

Happy Chinese Valentine's Day! :D

Yesterday was a packed day that started with waking up at 6 AM and sleeping at 12 in the night. I did not get time to blog yesterday so I woke up early today to write down my thoughts before today's busy day starts.

But, the good thing about yesterday was that it was not all about work. It was a mix of work related meetings, discussions, brainstorming sessions and then fun time in the evening. A day well spent!

We are making some headway in our project with the Incubation Center but we still have this feeling that something is about to change in the requirements or we are going to un-earth something that will lead us to a different path. There are still more discussions planned today and we would like to finalize our scope and put a structure around our approach as soon as possible. The most fruitful part  was a brainstorming session with the employees of the organization using a 'Fish Bone' diagram which helps us identify various causes for a problem and hopefully, narrow those down to the root cause. We need to continue engaging the employees to get some meaningful inputs....

Brainstorming Session with the employees of ZHHZ IC

 Our team member James (from UK) had his birthday today and the celebration was fun!

James...in his birthday cap

We didn't think we have had enough fun for the day and decided to explore the city a bit more. We had heard about a fountain show at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and decided to see the show and then, guess what, eat at an Indian Restaurant!

The show was good but a bit crowded even though it was a working day. I guess, all the local people were out to celebrate the Valentine's Day.

The Indian Restaurant called Ganges (the name of the biggest and holiest river in India) was near the Pagoda and I took the risk of suggesting it to the team members. I didn't know how the food would be but all the team members are very sweet, they didn't complain even if they didn't like it :D

Jokes apart, the food was really good. Almost the same as what we get in the restaurants in India. Mango Lassi, Gulab Jamun, Malai Kulfi, Aloo Parantha, Butter Chicken, Palak Paneer, Dal Fry and Naan...wow, we had a lot of food!

And it was good to finally talk to a local person without taking the help of the interpreters. In fact, I was the interpreter for the team as the owner of the restaurant spoke in Hindi :)

It was a wonderful day yesterday and I hope, we are able to progress even further in our project today. Talk to you tomorrow....

The Musical Fountain Show

The group

The India Restaurant

Waiting for the food...in anticipation

Day 5 - 19th August - A new day...a new restaurant :D

#ibmcsc China 30

The meetings with the clients continue and today's day was spent talking to the employees of the Incubation Center, preparing a high level project schedule and presenting it to the clients' management team. We believe we are making good progress and getting more and more insights into the organization and their challenges. There are still a lot many questions to be answered but we will get there in the next few days.

The most interesting part of the day was the lunch. Isn't it always the most interesting part? :D

We went to a Hot Pot restaurant near the client's office and I must say, it was something completely different than what I have experienced so far. It is a restaurant where the food is cooked right at your table. Chinese love eating and the quantity of food that was served provided us the proof. Multiple varieties of mushrooms, fruits, vegetables, bamboo roots, salads and lots and lots of meat.

To top it all, while the food is being served, they offer to shine your shoes, provide an apron, give you a zip bag to keep your phone in so that it is safe, a lens cleaner to the people with glasses to clear if they get foggy and a hair band for the ladies to tie their hair. And of course, a nail polish service for the ladies on the way out :D

I would definitely like to visit this restaurant at least once more before I leave China!

The walk back from the office to the hotel was interesting as well. Taking in all the smell of the street food, observe people going about their daily work, buying a few things from the local shops and taking pictures...what else can you ask for?

Hot Pot Restaurant

More discussions and documentation tomorrow at the client location....

Day 4 - 18th August: Taking it all in...

#ibmcsc China 30

It rained in Xi'an today...both literally and figuratively. We are overwhelmed with the amount of information pouring from all the sides and still trying to put a structure around it all. We had our first visit to the client's office today (refer my yesterday's blog to know more about our clients ZHHZ Incubation Center) and spent some time going through the documents and talking to the employees to understand how the center works.

Gathering all the required information and making a sense of it in such a short period of time is going to be challenging.

Our team meeting at the hotel in the evening helped us understand what all the teams are going through. I think this meeting every day will be critical to understand if we are going in the right direction and at the right pace.

Doug also distributed the gift that he brought all of us - the famous Jardine's Chili. We will have to wait till we reach home to use it but I am sure it will be great. Thanks to Doug!

In serious discussion...

Day 3 - 17th August - We are here to work...

#ibmcsc China 30

After a very enjoyable weekend exploring the city, it was time to get down to work. The official kick-off with the clients happened today and it gave us a good opportunity to get to know our clients better. Our sub-group got the approval from our clients to mention the organization name and to post the pictures on our blog so I can finally talk about our project.

Our client is the Zhong Hai Hui Ze Entrepreneurship Incubation Center (
http://www.zhhzbiz.com/service.asp) which is a privately owned incubation center for supporting graduate students in Xi’an City. They are pioneers in this field and are very proud of this fact. As any other growing organization, they too have a few challenges and we will be working with them over the next 4 weeks to help them develop a plan to address some of those challenges.

Introduction Time

The kick-off today included an introduction by our clients and then by all the CSC China 30 Team Members. The lunch following that and a couple of hours of discussion with the clients gave us some good face time and helped break the ice. Quite a productive day today...

Another highlight for me was the cycle ride on the top of the Xi'an city wall in the evening. It was an experience that I will always remember. The 13.7 kms ride with the city lights on both sides of the wall and wonderful views from the top of the wall, who could have imagined that I will get to experience all this one day!

We go to the client office from tomorrow and get into more details of the project. Good luck to all the CSC China 30 Team Members! 

Day (2) 16th August - Are we ready?

#ibmcsc China 30

Today's day was dedicated to the orientation by VSO and IBM China Citizenship Manager (Jasmine) to have us ready for some serious work from tomorrow. I believe all of us are nervous but excited about meeting our clients tomorrow and getting to know them more. The biggest challenge will be the language and ensuring that the message does not get lost in translation. Our translators will play a crucial role in the discussions.

The orientation session was followed by a wonderful dinner by VSO and I still can't believe all of us had our entire dinner with chopsticks. It was fun and challenging at times but we managed it well :D

I must also admit, Chinese food is much much tastier and amazing than what I had expected it be...that too for a vegetarian person like me...that says something...will keep trying new dishes in the coming days...

It is going to be an interesting day tomorrow. A formal meeting with the clients along with some media presence and our first dose of communicating through a translator. Looking forward to it!

Day (1) - 15th August - Nice to meet you Xi'an...

#ibmcsc China 30

We saw so many places and experience so many things in the last 8 hours that I will fill pages if I start writing about all of it. So, I will skip the details but our today's city tour, courtesy Shen Shuo and Paul from VSO, included long walks under very warm conditions to cover The Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Tang Dynasty Theme Park, The City Wall and the Muslim Market.

Modern yet traditional

Xi'an is a large city (though Chinese consider it as a medium sized city) with about 8-9 million people, almost the same as Bangalore, and it is beautiful. What's nice to see is that it is a modern city with a good amount of history, culture and old architecture mixed in. I think this building that I saw from the top of the city wall sums it up for me.

There is so much to see and now it seems even a 30 days stay may not be enough. But, we will make the most of the time that we have.

Here are a few highlights of the day through the pictures:

The Big Wild Goose Pagoda

The Big Wild Goose Pagoda

My name in Chinese characters means a Beautiful Lotus Flower :D

The majestic city wall

Muslim Market for the street food