This morning, we went to the Olympic park to see the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube. Unfortunately, the Water Cube is closed until August, so we had to content ourselves with only seeing the outside of where Michael Phelps won everything. Both the inside and the outside of the Bird’s Nest were pretty interesting, though the inside didn’t seem as huge as I had imagined from what I saw of it on television two years ago. I did climb to the top of the top part of the stadium, which gave me a great view of the entire stadium – the design really allows for any person in the audience to have a decent vantage point.
For lunch, a few of us went to a different Korean barbeque in the U Center. The style of food preparation was pretty similar, though I missed the random assortment of side dishes. Since Dr. Gao was eating with us, we were able to get a better idea of how one is supposed to eat the meat after it is cooked – we had been eating the meat right off the grill, but normally people wrap the meat in lettuce leaves with sauce.
In the afternoon, we had our third company visit at Lenovo. Our tour guide was very good at English, and the tour was well-polished and gave us a good overview of the company’s products. The tour made me want to own my own Lenovo computer, and I will probably consider buying one the next time I am looking for a laptop. Unfortunately, this tour felt like a sales pitch to me – we didn’t get a good look at the inner workings of the company. We did get a brief history, but it felt like only a short lead-up to showing us the products. I found the presentation at Tsinghua Solar more helpful: though it was harder to understand the speaker, he talked about the inner workings of the company in detail before showing us the products, and I didn’t feel like he was just trying to sell his products.
In the evening, many members of our group went with Krysta to see some of Beijing lit up after dark. We spent a couple of hours on a cultural street, which was a narrow alley with many antique and tea shops. Like Suzhou Street in the Summer Palace, this was how I had pictured the entire city of Beijing before my arrival. I had fun looking at items like Chinese baby shoes and bronze liondog statues and being fed tea by many of the shop owners. After leaving the street and successfully ordering dinner for our large group, we made our way over to the Tiananmnen Square area. Though we weren’t allowed to enter the square, we got to see all the government buildings, monuments, and Forbidden City lit up. Finally, we took the subway back to the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube, which were lit red and blue respectively. I would have liked to see the Water Cube changing colors like it did during the Olympics, but it was still nice to see.