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April 13th Mumbai airport artworks - lively and very colorful

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Arriving at destination: first Calicut and then Kannur

April 14th afternoon

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So, after all these years, a new chapter is starting - exciting - and there will be pictures here from time to time

The snow has long melted - spring has arrived, but I like this brightness

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Wuhu Xian one year ago

So we had a terrific experience back in Wuhu County last year - I stopped my blog somewere in the middle, as life overtook me, but here are the blogs of my colleagues. Plenty of stories and pictures which will give you an idea of what it is like to be on a volunteering assignment.

annabsolutelylive.tumblr.com

kelsilenemoreirainchina.blogspot.co.br

walkinchina.wordpress.com

mattiasmohlin.tumblr.com

letslifestudent.tumblr.com

www.tumblr.com/blog/chinaadventuresofsusan

meusandchina.tumblr.com

This year, I facilitated a further deployment to China together with Tami: this is the Team 36 which is deploying end of April to Fuhzou. They have started a group blog:

cscchina36blog.wordpress.com/

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Chunfen today, that is spring equinox. More pictures here

But also, here in Wuhu Xian, spring is coming:

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Tuesday, we spent the day analyzing what our beneficiary had explained to us, as well as understanding e-commerce strategies more in depth. 

Susan, Mattias, Madhavi and Xiao. Our team: Susan from the US, Madhavi from India, Mattias from Sweden and myself from France/Austria. All of us come from different backgrounds - which for sure enrichens and gives depth to our discussions.

And then, we also have our translator: Xiao, who is from Ma'anshan, a little town north of Wuhu city, which was the home to one of the greatest Chinese poets Li Bai  and less romantic, also home to extensive steel production.

Li Bai, also known as Li Bo, lived from 701 to 762 and wrote more than thousands poems.

As it is the spring equinox today - celebrated as Chunfen in China - here is a spring poem, courtesy of Wikipedia.

From Wikipedia:

One of Li Bai's most famous poems is Waking From Drunkenness on a Spring Day (春日醉起言志). Arthur Waley[39] translated it as follows:

Waking From Drunkenness on a Spring Day (春日醉起言志) 處世若大夢,   Life in the world is but a big dream; 胡爲勞其生.   I will not spoil it by any labour or care. 所以終日醉,   so saying, I was drunk all the day, 頹然臥前楹.   lying helpless at the porch in front of my door. 覺來盼庭前,   when I awoke, I blinked at the garden-lawn; 一鳥花間鳴.   a lonely bird was singing amid the flowers. 借問此何時,   I asked myself, had the day been wet or fine? 春風語流鶯.   the Spring wind was telling the mango-bird. 感之欲嘆息,   moved by its song I soon began to sigh, 對酒還自傾.   and, as wine was there, I filled my own cup. 浩歌待明月,   wildly singing I waited for the moon to rise; 曲盡已忘情.   when my song was over, all my senses had gone.

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Launch of CSC31 in Wuhu Xian - Team picture on Monday, after the introductory session.

Very quickly, we met in teams with our beneficiaries

Our beneficiary, TangWang is an e-commerce company affiliated to yuan.cn, a government promoted e-commerce platform. It has an internet presence, as well as a O2O Offline2Online Showroom. O2O is very popular in China.

The products offered are products of the Anhui province, where Wuhu Xian is located: a mix of agricultural products and industrial products, the latter been not on display.

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Sunday morning last week - second day after arrival.

Recovering from the travel, lunch, and finally bus ride from Nanjing to Wuhu Xian, this is Wuhu Country, 40 km south of Wuhu City. Our team of 10 is an IBM Corporate Service Corps team, short CSC - and is assigned for the next 4 weeks. The IBM CSC program is a corporate responsibility program and its goal is to team up with local beneficiaries and exchange business experiences, both enhancing the beneficiaries and the IBMers.

The picture above, Sunday evening, is a preparation meeting with our IBM Chinese colleague in charge of CSC in China, Winnie, and with ABV who are facilitating the assignment with a project leader, a local manager and 3 interpreters and further staff.

As you may notice, this is a very official meeting room - well, it happens that for this assignment, we are in a luxury accommodation, which is quite unusual for CSC. Here our 4, maybe 5, potentially 6 star hotel .... Only drawback in the first days... the cold, in the meeting rooms, it was a chilly 15 degrees Celsius, if not a bit less, which means jackets, hats, coats were worn inside.

If you are interested in learning more about the IBM CSC Business Volunteering program, just go to http://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/corporateservicecorps/index.html

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One thing we learned very quickly, is that China wouldn’t be China without food - mostly shared in a group. We didn’t visit the restaurant of our hotel, even though the name was intriguing, and just went to the cafe across the road, where we had our first meals. You’ll see plenty of food pictures in this blog for the simple reason, that the food is really delicious.

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Half of the group didn’t make it into the presidential palace and garden (that was my case), but instead admired these young girls enjoying a snack - or looking up the highrises where people live - or realized that car advertising doesn’t differ that much as well as how best attract tourist to a simple dessert bar.

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As we had to make a choice of what to see, we decided to follow the advice of our Chinese hosts and to go Fuzimiao, which is now a historical reconstruction of a former teaching complex. Quite a popular place.

The dog looked very interested in the piles of chickens!

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Nanjing is a historical capital of China - but lots of it got destroyed and then rebuild “in historic style” later. We had one (1) day to do a bit of sightseeing and getting to grips with this very new environment.

Here a visit to the supermarket - some fruit - delicious mini-mangoes which happen to be on offer today. As well as some wafers from Südtirol, just in case, to cure an overdose of foreign tastes (the price tag is quite a punishment though).

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so … after flying from Innsbruck to Frankfurt and then from Frankfurt overnight directly to Nanjing, the  first thing which happened is that the power supply of my Thinkpad broke … it took me some time to repair, so now I am catching up with the blog.

These are views of Nanjing countryside when flying in:rivers, lakes, water, more water, and again water.Quite nice, but at this time of the year also has the disadvantage, that through the temperature difference between day and nigh, fog builds up easily.

The pictures above: that was quite a clear day - explanations to follow.

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Forget preparing for leave, forget packing. Enjoying a bit of ski mountaineering and as Tami wrote, 3 more times to sleep before departure. Monday March 7th

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End of last business trip before the assignment: all airports are similar, de-icing tells about temperature and the nice green bird says this must be Russia. Thursday March 3rd

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Spring is coming fast and I am doing last preparations. Trip to China starts on March 10th and I am travelling to Bulgaria, Russia and Switzerland before that.

Saturday February 27th