A week or so back in Shenzhen included time with the family and the arrival of 91 items from Beijing – it’s taking a long time to sort it all out and find a home for it all. Then it was back on a plane to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress (MWC), noticeable for Huawei announcing its first smart watch (which was unanimously loved by critics for its good looks), though my purpose was related to the Mobile for Development seminars and building relationships with those attendees and some internal meetings.
MWC is enormous with almost 100,000 people there, loads of events and thousands of exhibition stands. It is a major business deal-fest. Everyone is there, so it is convenient to meet potential partners, customers, suppliers and others beside. The Huawei booth is one of the biggest and is chock-a-block with people from our global offices showing people around. I had nice weather there and a few good networking dinners/drinks as well as the excellent seminars themselves. A lot of very relevant people were there so it was well worth the 4 day trip.
Then I was back in Shenzhen for 2 weeks or so (of which that included a weekend in Beijing) organizing a workshop in London which I would then fly off for. Obviously nice to see my other family there again, and the event was a success, though the weather was not a touch on Barcelona or Shenzhen. The Beijing weekend was a bit strange – feeling like a stranger in my previous home as things had changed and I certainly did not feel I belonged there any more (nowhere to stay being one aspect of this).
In Shenzhen this weekend we went to a fun fair and the Da Fen art village; legendary for making the best replicas of any art anywhere, as well as good originals too. No more travel plans for at least 3 weeks as things stand, though Andrea will be off around China a fair bit. Maybe a chance to get into a real routine amongst the four of us? Before I went to London we started this - me dropping Hannah off at kindergarten on the way to work, we put Hannah to bed before we eat so she gets to bed early and we have some time to ourselves and so on. At least this should be ok until it gets too hot and sticky for me to cycle to work!
Hannah is a delight as always, with amazing language skills and even more incredible insights that she uses them for, i.e. actual intelligence. She’s often a step ahead of us (there is no parking here) though seems to have slowed with the excessive “whys” recently. Her teacher came over to see us recently (kind of a reverse parents’ day) and all seems good. Though she refuses to speak English in her English lesson, mostly only hangs out with only 2 other kids and is a real teachers’ pet. We’re not worried and nice that Hannah’s not been affected by the move.
Leah’s able to sit on her own for a while before falling over and is still a champion thumb-sucker. She’s still big and healthy, and in that “always watching and observing everything” phase right now. Hannah takes care of her well, as does our new nanny, who came on board a couple of weeks ago, since our Beijing nanny wouldn’t move down with us. This nanny does not speak any English but otherwise seems pretty good. The kids all love her so far anyway.
I’m paying somewhat less attention to China for work reasons (mostly focused outside China) but personally what is happening, or not happening, is still fascinating. The not happening seems to be any meaningful reform or improvements in anything and an uncertainty over the general future growth of the country. But it does have strong leadership so hopefully they’ll manage to get some things changing – and hopefully for the better. Right now they are still in this stage of fear or anything different—which is not doing them (or the people they are harassing) any favors.
