July 4th in China, media tours!

I got up at around 7 again to get ready for a busy day of touring Media/News Companies in Beijing. We all loaded up on the buses and headed to our first stop which was an internet company called People.com. We were guided on a tour of the companies offices and got to meet a few of the employees. After our tour we were then led to a conference room where the companies Vice President gave a small presentation on his company. We were also given gifts from People.com, we got a small notebook with their logo on it and also a pen that you could pull a calendar out of. The chinese calendar for the next 2 years wound up into to the pen. After a few questions were asked we left People.com and headed to lunch.

We ended up spending 100 yuan (around 15-17 American dollars) on lunch. It was a fancy restaurant that was a buffet. Someone said it was a five star place but I don't know. It was good though, and there was A LOT of food. There was even pizza! :) I ate quite a bit and just admired the beautiful restaurant with glass floors and cool lights and flowers everywhere.
After filling up on all that good food we headed to our next stop on the tour.

We toured Beijing Youth Daily next. It is a newspaper and magazine company. The tour was fun and there was some neat things to take pictures of inside the BYD building such as weird soccer guy statues and an olympic ring sculpture. We were guided around the offices again and then led to another conference room. We were also greeted with gifts and bottled water. We received a mouse back-pack and several copies of the magazine. From the conference room on the 12th floor I was also able to get some GREAT photos that I hopefully will have up soon.

After our second visit we loaded up back on the buses to drive back across town to our hotel. While on the way back my friends Whitney, Allie and I decided we were going to try to go see the Chinese acrobats perform that night. When we got back we changed and got ready and headed out of the hotel. We were going to the corner where the cabs wait and didn't even make it half way and we got stuck in a down pour!! It was awful we were soaked in seconds. So we decided to try and run back to the hotel to get changed and then have the front desk call us a cab. Unfortunately by the time we got back the clerks at the front told us that we most likely did not have enough time to get to the show. Oh well, we are still planning on doing that another time.

So I went back to my room, washed all the smog rain off of me and then sat down and read a bit. I felt a bit tired around 8 pm and thought I would take a small nap but actually ended up sleeping right through to the next morning!!