My first full day in Beijing began with an early breakfast at my hotel. They put out a buffet that would put all but 5 star hotels to shame. Not being educated in culinary matters I can’t describe all of the delights, but it more than satisfied my growling belly.
My first venture of the day was a trip the the Apple Store at Sanlitun Village. Just show any taxi driver an iPhone and say Apple Store, and I was sure to be promptly ferried to my destination … or so I thought. Nope. It didn’t take long to realize that Beijing taxi drivers are generally not web savvy netizens. They have a hard time keeping track of the untold thousands of destinations in Beijing to pay much attention to coolness of Apple. But I suspect it won’t be too long before every taxi driver understands the power of GPS enabled smartphones and the iPhone 3GS in particular. I pulled up the Apple Store location in Google Maps on my iPhone and then hit the location tracker button. This brought up a pulsating blue dot showing our current position (within feet) and also displayed the final destination (the red pin). Ah … “here we are … and here’s where we need to go” (in my very rusty Mandarin).
Apple Store Sanlitun - Nov 13, 2009
The Apple Store at Sanlitun was only modestly busy as one might expect on a Thursday morning. I had a brief chat with a Sanlitun store employee and left my business card for John Ford, the Store Manager. I wanted to say hello and thank him for his work at the helm of Apple’s first official store in China.
This iPhone GPS and location tracking proved to be immensely valuable later in the day.
After a brief respite at my hotel, I was off the TEDxBeijing. Directions (in Mandarin) and map in hand I jumped in a taxi and off we went. Just to play it safe, I launched the map on my iPhone and hit location tracking. Good thing. My cabbie took a wrong turn as evidenced by the blue pulsating dot. I tapped my cabbie on the should and politely showed him my iPhone and helped him to realized that we were moving in the exact opposite direction of our destination. A quick u-turn and we were back on course. Now closely monitoring my iPhone, it wasn’t long before I recognized that my cabbie had again veered off in the wrong direction. Another polite tap on his shoulder and my iPhone was before his eyes once again. Alas this wrong turn would not so easily be corrected. Beijing traffic at rush hour proved to be impossible for a turn around. So I showed my driver an alternative route and literally guided him to the TEDxBeijing location. Were it not for my iPhone, we’d still be driving around Beijing.
TEDxBeijing was great. Not quite so tech heavy as other TEDs … but many passionate entrepreneurs who lived their dreams. CNN anchor Kristine Lu and Kaiser Kuo (Ich bin ein Beijinger) were among the featured speakers.
I particularly enjoyed the presentation by Dominic Johnson Hill, founder of Beijing based Plastered 8, a tee-shirt design business that is just steps from my hotel. His penchant for breaking rules and creative marketing enabled him to build a cool brand image that resonates with China’s youth. Apple’s marketing team in China could genuinely benefit from spending time Dominic. If nothing more he is a hoot. That dry Brit sense of humor is killer.
It was great to finally meet many iPhonAsia readers in person at the TEDxBeijing Conference. Special thanks again to Frank Yu and Cindy Jiang for the invite to TED and for introducing me to so many interesting people in Beijing.
I met up again with Cindy and a group of iPhonAsia readers on Saturday for a special welcome to Beijing dinner – Peking Duck was the main course. More later …
iPhonAsia Travelogue series (Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong):
- iPhonAsia Travelogue Part 1: Wheels down in Beijing
- iPhonAsia Travelogue Part 2: Getting Oriented in Beijing
- iPhonAsia Travelogue Part 3: Into the heart of darkness – shopping the Beijing iPhone blackmarket
- iPhonAsia Travelogue Part 4: No stop signs in Beijing – The Shanzhai ji counterfeit culture
- iPhonAsia Travelogue Part 5: Secret rooms with hidden Shanzhai treasures (Shanghai)
- iPhonAsia Travelogue Part 6: Warming up in Hong Kong
- iPhonAsia Travelogue Part 7: The Hong Kong iPhone market
