Sunday evening I went to a restaurant on the East Bank of the Qianhai lake in Beijing, close to the trendy Hao Hai area. I had a great dinner but learned an important lesson in eating Chinese cuisine . . . when eating really spicy food with you hands, you must wash your hands FIRST before using the facilities and then again after . . . whoops, lesson learned.
Today we had a morning meeting with Jun Lu, the entrepreneur behind Tongcard, a card-based loyalty kind of program for stores here in China. At noon we had lunch with a female entrepreneur named Echo who started "Build-a-Bear" and got acquired. She's the first successful woman entrepreneur we met. In the afternoon we met with the founder of a real estate and consulting firm BA Consulting who was particularly insightful about business venturing in China. Tomorrow we meet with a couple of investors in Beijing.