Hong Kong - BYU FBE - June '07

Hong Kong has ranked #1 on the Heritage Foundation's index of economic freedom. For that reason, it has also been high on my list of places to visit. We toured a toy factory just back accross the border inside China. It was an interesting view of the kind of work-shop you might imagine when you think of China's low-skill, low-cost labor. We also toured the Swire Coca Cola plant, the worlds tallest production facility - cost of land is high. Delivery trucks are lifted on a huge elevator to one of the top floors and unloaded there. As each stage of production is complete, product moves down to the next stage until finished goods are loaded onto delivery trucks at the ground level for distribution.

Hong Kong was a beautiful city. Our first night we rode a cable car to the top of Victoria Peak and took in the view from there as the city was lit by its nightly light/laser show. We were there on the 5th of June, our 9th anniversary, and took a little time to visit the Hong Kong temple with a few others from our tour. How can we top that for our 10th? It was steaming hot there all the time. A beautifil place I will look forward to seeing again some day.

Beijing, China, BYU FBE, May '07

We got to tour the Beijing-Benz (Mercedes) plant, a Uniliver ice-cream factory and a Terex regional office, and eat dinner with a deputy ambassador from the embassy. It was interesting to be in China where there is a real sense of emerging capitalism that you can just feel. They were building up for the 2008 Olympics and so the hotel we stayed in was very luxurious and opulant, and we had fun touring sites like the Great Wall, the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City.

Japan, BYU FBE, May '07

We started touring around Kyoto, sort of the cultural center of Japan. We visited the Nijing Castle - home of a Samurai Shogun. I enjoyed the sense of his being a mighty warrior on the one hand, and seeing the appreciation he had for nature, beauty and art on the other. I like the balance of ying and yang in Asia. We also saw Kiyomizu (Pure Water) temple. If you drink the water from the spring, it is said, you will be "younger, cleverer, and more beautiful". Sarah also immersed herslef in eating Asian food, including sea-food. I was really proud of her, since I knew that might one of the hardest parts of travelling in Asia for her. Another thing that made being in Japan fun was the fact that Sarah's great-grandfather was the first mission president assigned to Japan after serving there (in the North-Asia Mission) himself.

From Kyoto, we toured a Toyota plant and exhibition hall. It was amazing to see the Toyota Production System live. A highlight of that was the welding shop where various models of cars/trucks/vans were conveyed into a room full of robotic welders. The welding machines detected which vehicle they were about to work on and followed that specific welding plan -- highly automated and amazing to watch as the shop filled with sparks and smoke for a few minutes while the machines did their job and the next set of cars were rolled in and the process was repeated.

We rode a bullet train to Tokyo where we toured a couple of banks and spoke with Americans working there about the challenge/opportunity of doing business in Japan. We also got to visit the Tokyo temple. One of the faculty that came on trip, Dr. Money, served as a missionary about 20 years before and we happened to run into his mission president and his wife, whom he hadn't seen since he left the mission. That was fun to meet a Japanese "pioneer".