Yes, you’ve read it well in the title: “The Ghost is going to China!”.
This is a big announcement for me: after lots of years desiring to go visiting China, this time finally I’ll be able to go there. From July, 10th to August, 2nd I’ll be inside the Red Dragon country. It will be a travel of pleasure, but I would also like to have a taste of the Chinese VR ecosystem.
I’ll visit a few cities:
- Qingdao, to drink beer and eat seafood;
- Shanghai, because it is like the Chinese New York;
- Chengdu, because of pandas. Come on, who doesn’t like pandas? They’re like the fluffiest animals of the world;
- Xi’an, to visit the terracotta army;
- Beijing to see the Great Wall and have a high-five with Xi Jinping.
The plan is to eat a lot of Chinese food, see interesting places and steal a panda cub to take it to my office in Italy. I think he will love my Vive Focus, all pandas love the Vive Focus.
Regarding VR, I would like to see how much it is widespread: Enea Le Fons told me that there is VR in every mall, and I want to spend some money to evaluate its quality and see if people enjoy using it.
I also wanted to go to Guizhou province, to visit the super-enormous 1 bazillion dollars VR park that has been opened there, but digging into Chinese websites, my future Chinese guide has told me that it has terrible reviews. She sent me screenshots of a Chinese website and even with my bad Chinese, I understood that visitors advised other people to avoid that park. The reason? It is unfinished. They opened the park but lots of attractions do not work yet, so it is almost useless going there for now.
I also hope to be able to get to know some interesting Vive-X companies in Beijing and maybe also in Shanghai and have a chat with them about their interesting products. Maybe I’ll meet the guys and gals of 7Invensun, I’d really love to test their eye tracking technology! And if you or your company are in China and want to meet me and have a chat with me, it would be a great pleasure for me. Just contact me and we’ll see if we’ll be able to schedule a meeting.
And of course, I really hope to meet…
As my friend Matias Nassi has said via e-mail, I’m going to see Mister President in his natural habitat. I hope to have an inspiring talk with him about virtual reality, China, and also to make some videos with the Vive Focus together.
Regarding my blog, this trip means that I don’t know how much I will be able to publish content on this platform and how many weekly newsletters I will be able to send. China is not famous to let people visit Western websites, so it will be hard to keep myself informed about VR. Furthermore, I’m there on vacation, so I won’t spend all my time working: my panda cub will need me to take care of him. Anyway, I’m trying to reserve some time every day to work and I’m buying some VPNs to be always connected even from there. I really want to keep you updated about my experience there and tell you about what I will learn there. Fingers crossed!
It will be an exciting journey. I’m very happy to go there. I’m not sure if I’ll really want to come back… my ideal job is there…