Well as far as I can tell from my experience of dealing with Lenovo, bad would be the word that comes to mind.

When I was traveling in Asia I was hitting the Internet Cafe’s fairly regularly to take care of work among other things, so when I got to Hong Kong I decided I’ll get myself a cheap laptop to save me the hassle of going to so many cafe’s and take advantage of the free wifi in my accommodation. I new before I bought the laptop that lenovo were at the bottom end of the ladder when it comes to quality but I thought it can’t be too bad IBM have a share in them and even give there employees Lenovo laptops.

I bought it in Hong Kong anyway and the sales guy that sold it to me was brilliant, told me that it had international warranty and that if anything happened you could easily get it fixed. Well anyway after traveling for a month I noticed a dead pixel on the screen, not to much of a big deal but it was still in warranty so I would get it fixed when I returned to Ireland. Further on in my travels the wireless card started droping, still doing it now and every now and again the trackpad starts going a bit mental.

So I had 3 problems with my PC and its only 3 months old, not to happy but you get on with it, but the wifi constantly dropping is a complete pain. So I called Lenovo on the number that was on the world wide warranty card. I reached IBM tech support and they tell me that they can’t log my call cause I don’t have a product type. It seems all Lenovo laptops from Asia don’t have this, only Lenovo laptops from EMEA. So I have to call back 3 times in total to get some movement on the issue.

Lenovo don’t have any process in place to deal with laptops from different parts of the world being returned in other parts of the world. So as it stands now there trying to figure out how to deal with me as IBM Europe don’t know what to do.

I can actually confirm my warranty on the Lenovo website, which is the main problem, cause they can’t log my call if my laptop is out of warranty, so there system doesn’t allow it.

Its highly ridiculous that a company as big as Lenovo/IBM can’t seem to provide a simple tech support service. Its making my life difficult and making them look bad.

Ah well, at least I have my trusty Mac to work on, rarely a problem there.

The great thing I find about blogs is that you can publish information that other people can find extremely useful. I say this because I struggled to find information about Zen retreats in China. It seems to be far easier to find this information for retreats in Japan, Korea and Western countries. In Japan and Korea for example there is a better setup for tourists to experience life in a temple due to the fact these countries experience a far greater volume of western tourism, where China is only experiencing the growth in tourism now.

I visited the Bailin Temple around 250 or so kilometers outside Beijing, I spent 4 nights there and had a great experience. The monks went out of there way to make me feel welcome and made my stay great. Not many of them spoke good English but one or two helped me communicate and understand how things worked. Many ordinary Chinese people stayed in the temple to work and study, these people were welcomed openly and would either pay to stay or agree to work in return for their food and board. Two Chinese students were asked by one of the monks to show me around and help me anyway they could, they considered it there duty.

In all I highly recommend visiting the Temple just to get away from the rat race or to practice your beliefs, its a calming place and you won’t regret the visit.

Now to help anybody else that would like to visit the temple here is some essential information.

Starting from Beijing you first need to get to Shi Jiazhung. You can get her via the bullet train that leaves Beijing West Station. This train is 86 RMB for second class or 400 RMB for 1st class. Second class is very comfortable. You can get the information on trains running from this site.

http://www.chinahighlights.com/china-trains/

The prices mentioned above are the bullet trains which take two hours and all there train numbers start with D, known as D Trains.

When you get to Shi Jaizhung you have to get to the city’s south bus station, you have two options for this bus or taxi. I highly recommend a taxi, the bus is only 1 RMB but not as comfortable as the taxi which will cost you no more than 20 RMB, maybe 1.50 euro.

It will take maybe 10 mins to get to the bus station, when here you get a bus ticket to ZhaoXian, this ticket cost 9 RMB and is a small bus which is basic but comfortable. This journey takes 1 hour and the last stop is the temple, you’ll see it on your left so you can just shout to the driver to get off.

Once there just go inside and you can use the numbers below to contact the office to let them know you are there. The price per night is 20 RMB which includes 3 meals a day and your accommodation is a same sex dorm room shared with usually locals with an onsuite.

Bailin Temple Office: 00 86 (0) 31184942447

I have numbers for individual monks who speak good english, I can provide them on request, just email me at paul@weeno.ie.

The schedule involves 2 classes and sitting meditation, I will warn you the first class is at 5am followed by breakfast with the monks. Lunch is at 11.15am, the second class of the day is at 4.30pm followed by dinner and then sitting meditation is from 7pm till 8pm. The rest of the time is yours to do what you please.

If you need anymore information please contact me.

Note: I will add the Chinese symbols for all important words above soon, I just have to source digital copies of them.

I am currently in Shanghai and have been traveling around China for the last month. I have been getting a first hand view of what censorship for this country is like. Just from my sources from home, I can compare the difference in information been provided to the people here. The censorship is seen in everything as well, from the recent Tibet issue to a film I watched again just this evening. Whole chunks of information are removed or changed to suit the powers that be.

The country is growing at ever increasing speed and more and more opportunities are becoming available but I feel that huge sacrifices have to be made to be involved in these opportunities. For me I don’t think I could sacrifice my free access to information.