Beijing 2009 Marathon - running in China

I am still trying to recover from last year when I ran the 2008 Beijing Marathon hence I have decided not to run the 2009 event myself. Many of you will be in Beijing though for the 2009 Beijing International Marathon and it should be a great event as always.

18th October 2009 is the date for this years event and if you are in the city and not yourself running, it is great a site and a good atmosphere and why not get out and cheer the runners on. A little like the London Marathon, you will see a number of theme runners i.e. people who are dressed in funny costumes and styles and its also a great photo opportunity in Beijing.

The race starts from 8am and you can learn direct from the official Beijing Marathon website online.

Good travel books on China

There are a number of excellent books out there about travelng China. All of the big travel guides have an edition out for Beijing and for China, including the likes of Lonely Planet, Fodors, Let's Go and Eyewitness Guides.

Having looked at several of them the two gudie books for Chian I would recommend are:

1. China (DK Eyewitness Guide) - an excellent book and with up-to-date information.

2. Top 10 Beijing (DK Eyewitness) - I absolutely love the Top 10 books from DK and buy them for any city I am visiting. Easy to carry and information packed.

Sending Freight to China B2B

Despite the economic problems in 2009, many of you are still needing to send freight to China or to import freight to the UK from China and many of you have emailed in to ask about the best way to find a freight forwarder.

I often help clients (many b2b) send and bring large shipments to and from China and I use RSJ Freight International and they have always done a great job so I stick with them. Why change what works.

What you need to conside rvery carefully is that you need to also consider:

• Freight documentation
• Collection
• Storage
• Customs and fees
• and a number of other things.

The easiest way in my opinion is just to use someone such as RSJ who have a Freight Logistics service. They in other words, manage the whole process and this makes everything far less streesful.

Finding somewhere to stay in Beijing

Deciding where to stay in Beijing if you are over for a few days on business or for pleasure is never an easy decision to make, so below some ideas for you with some sites I have used and found to be good, in the past.

Expedia.co.uk or expedia.com often offer their own expedia special rates for hotel rooms and also flights so their prices are usually very competitive.

Rather than a hotel, apartment rentals in Beijing can be a good option and this option gives you the chance to enjoy self-catering accommodation and enjoy space. Holiday Velvet are one of the good options in this area.

Laterooms.com are worth checking for late bookings and now and again they offer good prices.

Tickets for the Olympics - China 2008

General tickets go on sale in 2 days time for tickets for events in the Chna 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The 25th July 2008 is the date when almost one million tickets become available through the main box office in Beijing. You can find lots more information on Beijing 2008 Ticket Sales online.

Only 16 days now remin until the start of the Bejing Olympics and what an event is should be. One of the best sites for keeping up-tp-date on all events and schedules for the Olympics is the BBC Sports such at news.bbc.co.uk/sport. Also lots of information on the China Travel portal.

Marketing to China and South Korea

We very briefly mentioned how to target the Chinese market for selling products in China in a previous blog, but let us look in more detail how you can use PPC set-ups such as Google Adwords for marketing opportunities in China.

It is actually quite easy to target people in China and this can be achieved in the following languages in Adwords Pay Per Click:

• Traditional Chinese
• Simplified Chinese, or
• English

Adwords is great because you can specifically set the ads to run in specific countries and even set specific areas or cities within a country. For a country of China's size, these settings might be even more useful than they would be for other countries. The choice of language really depends on your staff. There is little point in advertising in traditional Chinese if you are unable to check replies in this language.

You might also be interested in Trade and Business in South Korea, a country which is one of the biggest traders now in Asia, and where there are many opportunities and also more of an English speaking business area. Learn more about Adwords and China

Marketing your business to China

To give more information about hot to market your business in China from an EMarketing point of view, you can build up your own website and work on optimsing the site and creating content which will act as link bait (draw viewers in with genuinly good and useful content) and you can also get immediate results by using Google's Pay Per Click advertising, Adwords.

On Adwords you can target specific areas by geography hence you can get immediate traffic from people in China, interested in your business. You might well be faced of course if havign to think carefully about what language you use, i.e. whether you use English, Madarin etc. You will need to be able to understand all requsts so that language used needs at least to relfect the languages you can read and respond to and do business in.

You can read more about marketing your business in China.