Beijing

This week I was in Beijing working on a PR campaign to build awareness of the Ubiquiti Networks brand in China.  Beijing’s development pace has been astounding and the quality standards of their airport, shopping districts, hotels, and business centers now rival those of Dubai or even Tokyo.  The city is very alive and I can feel the people carry a collective motivation, pride, and sense of urgency to continue in its advancement.  The other thing I noticed is the proliferation of Apple devices has skyrocketed overnight.  There were countless people using MacBooks, ipads, and iPhones, where as during my first visit to Beijing a couple years ago, I would only see them on rare occasions.

Also, in some areas of the city, there is also a lot of international diversity; much more than I expected.  I would not be surprised if in 30 years the demographic diversity in Beijing starts to approach those of major cities in the United States and Europe.

One of the more interesting buildings I noticed in downtown Beijing was the China Central Television (CCTV) Headquarters.  Below is a photo of the building I took on the way to the Airport.   The building is a unique design that has a radical pretzel-like shape.  Apparently, it was a very sophisticated development process as a requirement of the design is seismic resistance to a Richter scale 8 earthquake.  The total project cost was said to be upwards of $1billion USD!  Although Dubai’s Burj Khalifa is the most impressive building I have seen to date, the CCTV building might take second place.