My second 1997 journey to Asia started with a flight on United Airlines to San Francisco on Saturday morning, February 22. During my stop in San Francisco I checked in for my first ever flight with Air China. It was my second trip to China but the first with Air China. It was quite an experience! The first leg of the trip, from San Francisco to Beijing, was uneventful but unfortunately the plane for the second leg to Shanghai encountered mechanical problems. The flight crew was very nice but the change of planes made for a very long day. My previous record for a “one” day trip was a 27 hour return home from Singapore the prior month.
You can see pictures of this and other trips in my Photo Gallery. Monday started out with an early breakfast to meet the local IBM team and review plans for the week. We have 1,200 IBMers in China now and they are mostly new to the company. It is refreshing to see their enthusiasm for our business and for their customers. We visited with a group of executives and senior staff at Shanghai Post & Telecommunications to talk about the future of the Internet and possible ways in which we could collaborate. In the afternoon we met with Director Xia and his team who are planning an exciting project called InfoPort. InfoPort will be like the NII for the people of Shanghai.
I was accompanied on my trip through China by my colleague, Yu-ping Sun. We departed Shanghai with China Eastern Airlines and arrived in Beijing late Monday night. Tuesday was an action filled day starting with a review of IBM Network Computing plans in China. Then I met Professor Ling and learned about the 24-hour a day JavaBeans effort. In the afternoon I visited the Advanced Systems Development Co. Ltd. and the China Research Laboratory.