Quite a lot has happened since I last had time to update. It's already been two weeks! And, once again, it's 10:30 pm and I'm still at the office. This time though, it's because I'm working on some non-class things, like this post! For now, this post is just gonna hit the main events - First, there was Silicon Dragon 2012 in Shanghai. I somehow rearranged my class schedule to take a Thursday off of work, thanks to some Herculean organizing by my 2nd grade TA Ms. Xu. The event was... interesting I found out about the event after David Kohl or the Northwest China Council( nwchina.org) pointed me in the direction of Rebecca Fanin's books *Silicon Dragon* and *Startup Asia* ( http://rebeccafannin.com/). I'm interested in entrepreneur-type stuff, and figured the startup business landscape in China must be fascinating on many levels to anyone who knows anything about it (I didn't). So, after subscribing to the mailing list on the website and returning to China, I found out there was a Silicon Dragon 2012 event coming up in Shanghai. I figured I'd go check it out. I was the first one there, and I managed to meet Rebecca herself near the auditorium to pass on a 'hello' from the NWCC organizer. The venue was KIC, the Knowledge and Innovation Center. KIC is doing some pretty interesting things for its space to make it a beneficial place for startups to nest until they fledge. I think I did about everything wrong. I don't have business cards, so I couldn't play the card-trading game properly (yes, yes, I know I need to get some even if they just say my name and email). I've never worked at a startup and was not actively scheming one. I didn't know any of the Who's Who of business in Shanghai, and for my current employer, I put my schools name, so I had people coming up and being like, "so.... what do you do?". "I'm a teacher." I'm renovating little mindspaces - not business models. I even got a "oooohh, that's ..... interesting." from a Chinese girl who was probably more than happy to find more impressive and well-connected people to talk to. So, I listened to the panels and watched the Q&As and tried to talk with a few people who mostly reminded me just how like a fish out of water I felt. ... or, maybe like a bird in water. A bird that's not a duck. My break came when I recognized one of the facilitators at the post-event catered buffet. I thanked him for facilitating, and he invited me to sit with him and asked how I'd decided to come to the event. He was Frank Yu, co-Founder of Kwestr.com ("Gamify your life!"). He suggested a few different startup meetup groups and informational events in Shanghai, including www.TechYiZu.org . Then he remembered that one of the founders of TechYiZu is a Reed alumnus, and offered to put me in touch! Hooray! Later, I talked with Sarah Yang of startup MNE Creations( http://www.mnecreations.com/), a gaming company that specializes in educational games for high school and college students. So, if any of you programmers want to go work in China... I think they're looking for people. ... In general, it seems like startups and growth companies in Shanghai are having a hard time finding people who are both competent at both speaking enough Chinese and being reliable and qualified workers - regardless of nationality. We got regaled with several stories of such difficulty. There's a lot of projects going on, so ... if you're feeling adventuresome and know Chinese, you could try finding a place in Shanghai! That was the main event - after that, I returned to Suzhou and went to a "Opera" with one of the other foreign teachers. I say "Opera" because it wasn't a live opera - it was an auditorium sort of movie theater in which we watched a movie of Madame Butterfly - in Italian with English and Chinese subtitles. At the beginning, we sat in the theater and watched the movie beginning - showing the inside of a theater and a stage on which the opera was about to take place. I really wanted to take a picture and caption it something that started with "Yo dawg, I heard you liked theaters," but I wasn't sure how to turn on my camera without also turning on the LED screen. After the "opera", we found some Italian pizza! In Suzhou! .. well, as Italian as you can get while being subject to the quality of cheese in China. Then I rode on the Suzhou metro for the first time! It was first installed shortly before I left in the spring. Then I put my head down for a week of school in which I failed to surface long enough to make an update... The following weekend was a Shanghai weekend. I went as a member of the public to an open TechYiZu meeting at a neat little place called People Squared. TechYiZu is dedicated to building Shanghai's Tech community, and often has events and workshops for startups. People Squared seems to function as a startup workspace. It looks like a coffeeshop with a back and a view of the second floor, but I don't know if I can order anything to drink... I had a good time talking with two of the TechYiZu members over a CaliBurger lunch down the road. One of them is the founder of startup iTalki (http://www.italki.com/) - a language-learning social network that seems to have picked up on the people/social aspect where Livemocha ( http://livemocha.com/) went corporate. A website that's a combination of tech, people, language, and education? If I'm not careful, I could 'accidentally' get involved in something like that! Later, it was on to the 2012 Kerry Beer Fest! I'm not so into beers, but two of the 4 foreign teachers at my school are very enthusiastic about them, and I was planning to meet someone from Silicon Dragon there. There were some good ones - I had a good Belgian beer, followed by perhaps the only thing better than a Belgian beer: another Belgian beer. Besides imported beers, there were some local microbrews - China has some developing beer scenes, thanks largely to the dedicated work of expats at Boxing Cat in Shanghai and Great Leap brewery in Beijing. I was particularly excited about Great Leap's experiments with sichuan peppercorns in beer. There were orange-topped tents everywhere serving beers, sandwiches, and ice cream waffles. Interestingly, Rogue Dead Guy (go Portland!) seems to be pretty popular here! The next day, I eventually found my DAFF - the Design Art & Fashion Fair. It had been cancelled the previous day due to rain, and I eventually found it at Cool Docks II. There were white tents everywhere - almost like a Saturday Market of various goods and services. One of them was a New Zealand Cheesemaker who'd set up shop in Shanghai! The trick seems to be to get the milk straight from the cows and rush it to the cheese factory without trusting the task to any middleman. He had samples. That was some delicious Havarti. On the far end of the fair was the fashion show. We were there in time to see the Quicksilver fashion show. One by one, the models walked their walk - posing only momentarily in front of the Shanghai skyline. All in all, this is probably the most foreigner-intensive 2 weeks I've had in a long time, and probably also the locations that put me in greatest proximity with extreme affluence, both of which are thoughts I'll have to expand upon sometime in the future. 'Til next time!&;
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