When you are happy, you will know it...

Day 6 * 20th May 2016 – Company visit at JD.com & city tour at the Temple of Haven 

Instead of having our usual morning session at the university listening to lecture talks, we had a rather different morning planned out for us that day. Tsinghua's summer programme has arranged for us to attend for a morning company visit to JD.com's (京东) HQ around the city centre. I'm not sure whether have you guys heard of this company before, but it's like one of the biggest companies in China after Alibaba (Well, I would also say it's another major competitor of Alibaba in China). Therefore, our main purpose of visiting their company was to gain a better understanding regarding how their business model and management level works etc. If I may put it this way, JD.com business model is somehow like Amazon, but it offers more than just that. They also have their in-house technologies developed for household appliances, which is something rather interesting. 

So, after listening to the company's presentation and having the chance to tour around the entire company, we had a chance to play around at the company's relaxing/chill area the was specially designed for the staffs at JD.com. I can't really describe the entire experience with you in words entirely.. Hopefully, the pictures below will somehow assist that process for you, my dear readers :) Basically, we spent our whole morning at the company and up until lunch time, where the company and Tsinghua has arranged for us to dine at their cafeteria area. It really is amazing to realise how "posh" and "lavish" the cafeteria or dining area of a company can be.. I can't believe that JD.com has almost everything in their HQ.. Because as far as I know, they even have gym, saloon, and day care places for children all prepared for their staffs. The whole idea of having these facilities at the HQ itself was because the company understands that the staffs may spent a very long working hours at the company everyday, and it is their culture to ensure that the staffs treat the company as though they are at home. More importantly, having these facilities in their company reminds me a lot about Google's working culture. 

I personally believe that JD.com tried to incorporate and promote some American working culture among the staffs.. Eg. from Google's HQ, they have almost everything for the staffs on "campus" due to the long and strenuous working hours spent at the office itself among their staffs. Also, after touring around the company and having to had the opportunity to understand the working culture of Chinese in Beijing for the past few days, I realised that majority of the working spirit among the Chinese are really different compared to those in the UK. Their working hours are really long.. For example, they can start as early as 8am and end as late as 11pm or even later than that depends on individuals. It sounds really crazy I know, but I'm in total admiration of their working spirit in Beijing so far. To me, Beijing is like a city that never sleeps, because the people are constantly striving to achieve more by burning the midnight oil at their respective work places. 

When our company visit and lunch have finished at JD.com, we then proceeded to our next schedule of the day, which was a visit to the Temple of Haven. As usual, the same tour guide, Mr Kong was in charge of our tour again. He gave us explanations to each sites and spots around, then gave us time to mingle around, for us to take as many pictures as we wanted. I'll stop here and let the pictures do most of the talking now. 

Enjoy!

JD.com's mascot. It's a cute dog..:D

Hehe, hello guys. Just sitting casually at one of the large alphabets :p

This is the actual colour for the mascot of JD.com... They do sell this mascot as plush toys here in Beijing that look really cute!

Wee, this "bird cage" looking sofa was located at their relaxing/chilling area that I mentioned previously in my post. Isn't it something different?

Take 2. :p

Look. I can't even believe that they have such HUGE plush toys here in their relaxing lounge. This place was really full of surprises! 

WAIT for the next picture. Haha

Hi there.. A very childish and lame picture of the three of us. Leslie certainly made the whole picture looked extra lively.. Haha. Spending our time at the relaxing area of JD.com definitely gave us the chance to relive our "childhood" times and it really felt great going around in exploring different interesting sections at the relaxing area of the company. I would certainly say it was an eye-opener for most of us (in a good way) ;)

Picture credits to Chanont :) This was taken at one section of the Temple of Haven.

Poser... ahaha. I'm sorry.

I really do admire his photography skills. Sometimes, I secretly do wish that I have a boyfriend who can take such awesome pictures of the girlfriend like that. *dream-on Krystal

My signature pink "bag" shot. Haha.

Definitely a candid. 

This wasn't taken by Chanont's camera, but by my iPhone6 itself.. Therefore, it explains the difference in quality, heh.

Forgive me, my face was really chubby then...

Cindy(From Taiwan), Me and Vania(UCL's course mate!)

A group shot of us. It wasn't exactly all of us from the programme, but most UCL students were in the picture except for a few :)

Another group shot.. Except that it's quite a blurry one. Apologies for that.

- - -

After our city tour, it was free and easy again. We didn't have anything else arranged for us by the school after that. Therefore, I went to dinner with some friends to try out this place that serves authentic Beijing cuisines. & to my surprise, the food served at the place was certainly up to our standards and expectations. We definitely were impressed by even the simplest dishes that we've chosen. If you're ever interested to try something more authentic yet tasty and delicious at the same time if you're around Beijing the next time, please don't hesitate to give this place a try: 小吊梨汤. If I'm not wrong, they have a few branches in located in Beijing itself. For a foodie like me if you don't already know (although my body size doesn't speaks that way), I would certainly recommend this place to friends who are around Beijing! 

Do you realise something? There's live fishes swimming behind the signage of the restaurant (the one above the red wordings on the black board).. That explains the two red thingy behind of the fourth Chinese word.

Some meat dishes, and vegetables. Food that really looked so much like simple home cooked food.. But trust me, they are really tasty. Hehe. I was disappointed that they ran out of my the pork liver dish that I wanted to try so badly. Another thing to know, I'm really one who favours pork intestines and livers. Hard to believe that right? But yeah, that's the truth. :p

Well, the famous and special thing from this restaurant is that they serve you warm Pear soup (黎汤) in a tiny cup (as you can see from the picture above) that is really comforting for your stomach and nice to drink too.. Thus, that explains the name of the restaurant too, which consists of the word "黎" in it. A rather unique concept that I have not heard of nor even come across ever around Malaysia/HK/Macau so far. 

Okie dokes. I guess that really is all for now. Thanks for checking in! Will work on my next blog post soon, and definitely check back in the next time;)

Till then,

✗