Day 13, Sept 17 (Beijing)

Today, we had an early wake-up call.  We needed to leave at 6:30am to go to Langfang for a company’s visit.  Langfang was an economic and technology development zone.  It was far away from Beijing.  Therefore, tour guide advised to change the itinerary at the last minute to go to the Temple of Heaven in the afternoon instead of Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.  This arrangement really screwed up my schedule.  I originally planned to take early flight back to Los Angeles (LAX) on 19 Sept.  Now I needed to try afternoon flight to Chicago (ORD) and flew the way back to LAX, making a big circle plus this was a small plane – 777.  The loading was full in solid.  I had a high risk not to get on the flight and being stuck in Beijing.  However, if we could make the trip back to Beijing before 3pm after the company’s visit, we still had enough time to go to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.  Therefore, I still wished that we could make it today and I kept my fingers crossed.     

Everyone was so exhausted after 17 days' trip.

Today’s weather was bad. It was heavy rain.  When we were on the way to Langfang, our tour bus’s windshield wiper was broken that the driver was impossible to see clearly the road condition.  The driver tried to fix it but in vein.  He then arranged another bus to pick us up.  At that time, it was already 8:45am.  Many of my classmates looked so tired and slept in the bus and some of them were sick for a few days already.  I did take care of 2 classmates who kept vomiting and throwing up because they could not stand for the smell of the restrooms and they also suffered from the stomach ache.      

Hebei Jiya Electronics Co Ltd

We finally arrived at Hebei Jiya Electronics Co Ltd in Langfang at around 10am.  Jiya was the first LCD supplier in china.  It was established in 1993.  Its production equipment and technology brought in from Japan.  The mission of Jiya was win-win situation with customers, growing together with employees and developing with society.  Jiya mainly produced auto electronics, 3D shutter, meters and instrument, smart electricity meters, domestic electrical appliance, fuel dispenser, medical and health equipment, office equipment, general electric equipment.  Jiya is also a joint venture company with Motorola, Lenovo, National Panasonic etc.  Its annual production capacity is 1.5 million. 

Production Line

Jiya made sure their products up to certain international verification standard such as quality system certification, verification of product declaration, and all the employees were under occupational health for employees’ certification.  This quality assurance gave its customer fully confidence on its products.

Workers wore the protection uniforms

After the introduction of the company’s background, we had a chance to visit the production line.  The workers needed to wear the protection uniform and made sure they were not contaminated during the production process.

Temple of Heaven

Due to the incident in the morning, we only needed to go for one company’s visit instead of two. However, we still could not make the way back to Beijing before 3pm.  Therefore, we went to the Temple of Heaven instead.

Local people enjoyed playing poker,
dancing, singing and playing music instrument.

The Temple of Heaven used to be a place where emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties went to worship heaven and offered sacrifices to pray for harvests and rain.  Along the corridor to the Temple of Heaven, we saw a lot of local people playing poker, dancing, singing, and playing music instrument for leisure. 

Nine Dragon Juniper

Miranda – our tour guide also brought us to see a Nine Dragon Juniper.  This juniper was over 500 years old.  The trunk was covered all over with spiral grooves which twisted up vertically along as if nine coiling dragons were wreathing up into the sky; and hence the name of “the Nine Dragon Juniper”.

Heavenly Centre Stone

Heavenly centre stone was another interesting thing I experienced here.  As the surface of the uppermost terrace of the circular mound was paved with nine concentric rings of stone slabs, the round stone slab in the centre was called the Heavenly Centre Stone.  If one spoke standing on the Heavenly Centre Stone, their voice will be particularly resonant and sonorous.  It was really cool.  I could clearly hear the echo of my voice when I stood there. 

As this morning I really woke up early and felt exhausted after the whole day activities.  My roommate and I went back to the hotel for rest and did not join the rest to the bar district in Shalitun.