Business Travel

I visited and worked from our Beijing office yesterday; holding and setting up meetings for the project. After many years of working together over the phone and via e mail I was finally able to meet my colleague Summer, who has been such an enormous help to us in the UK office, managing and running our UK campaigns in China and negotiating the minefield of Chinese media. Travelling an enormous distance by plane for any reason is of course an environmental nightmare - don't do it kids. But there is still no substitute for the goodwill of meeting face to face and saying thank you.

Speaking of environmental nightmares, flying in over Beijing gives you the opportunity to see the odd river or lake that looks a litle unhealthy, and even the censored press here covers pollution stories and exposes officials who have been punished for turning a blind eye to companies taking a corporate dump in the water. The hotels have those little cards that say "think about our laundry bills" .... no wait a minute, that's not right, what I meant to say is "think about the environment". But there are other things which make you worry. For example, when it rained in Shanghai, every store and every restaurant made a big show of giving you a plastic bag to put your slightly damp umbrella in. In both Shanghai and Beijing, the hotels provide you with disposable plastic toothbrushes. There are a lot of people in Shanghai (again, see how this blog creatively combines information and first-class entertainment) and most of them seemed to be in the shops that I was in with neatly wrapped umbrellas. And they all seemed to have clean teeth. Be afraid.