Welcome!

China's history is almost incomprehensibly rich, long and detailed, especially when you approach it from a North American perspective (land of "history in two minutes"). Much as modern China has cities of nearly ten million people that you likely haven't heard of, it's easy to get lost in the shuffle of China's history. Perhaps that's why Qi Jiguang (戚继光, Qī Jìguāng) isn't as well-known internationally as some of his fellow Chinese war heroes and pioneers like Zheng He (郑和, Zhèng Hé), but he was a notable, interesting, and courageous man nonetheless. During the Ming Dynasty he defeated Japanese pirates and helped build the Great Wall, so we're going to take a closer look at the life, times, and death of 戚继光, born 424 years ago!

Gentlemen,

One of the guys who did a lot of the heavy lifting to get Guy-Tai's up and running will be back in Shanghai. There are many stories during Ola's leadership - one that I always found emblematic of him occured during the Swedish royal family visit to Shanghai during the 2010 Expo. Ola and his wife found a way to meet the newly married prince and princess of Sweden. During this meeting he humorously acknowledged his praise and respect for the former gym owner and personal trainer that married into royalty, and made the prince an honorary Guy-Tai. The prince and the crowd had a great laugh and I think that all of you will as well if you can come by and have a drink with Ola.

Ola Falck will be in town the week after Easter. For all the members who joined Guy-Tai's after Christmas in 2010, Ola was the leader of GT's in the beginning. Ola and his family moved back to Sweden and he left not only Shanghai, but also Guy-Tai's by jumping back into HR leadership at IKEA. As many of you have seen IKEA is growing by leaps and bounds here in China and I suspect that is why he is back in town.

A bunch of us will be meeting at the Kerry "Brew Pub" on April 10 at noon. Ola is a legendary story teller and good guy so if you are looking for a good time and to drink some tasty icy cold beer come on down to the Brew.  Give me a heads up if you plan to come by so I can give the Brew a heads up for how many lunches they may need to cue up.

Best Regards,
Chris

For one of our most successful events, 30 Guy Tai members headed out into the Pudong suburbs for a special guided tour of the Coca Cola bottling plant in Shanghai. The tour included seeing a short video of Coke in China (started up in China in the mid 20’s) a visit to the Coke museum and then what everyone was waiting for, a tour of the actual bottling plant which was quite amazing to take in. We watched as machines filled, sealed and packed 1,600 cans of coke EVERY minute. The engineering and machinery was amazing to watch. We also got to see bottles by the thousands being filled with Sprite and watched as plastic tops whizzed down from the floor above to somehow make it right side up and screwed onto the plastic bottles at a dizzying speed. And all of this supervised by no more than 10 to 15 people on the production floor.

Not sure what it's like back where you live, but here in Shanghai winter is still with us so it's the perfect time of year to ignore the outdoors entirely and kick back with your flat-screen! Before, we touched on the often-bizarre world of Chinese television, but today we're talking about the big screen. Here in China foreign movies are widely available and very popular (both in legal and illegal formats), but there's a long and rich tradition of homegrown Mainland cinema, so we'll take a quick look at the fascinating realm of Chinese movies.