Final Day of GIE

Saturday was our last day of GIE. Everything we had learned and prepared for the whole semester was finished – we submitted our final papers and websites. We went to the classroom for most of the day but we didn’t have any outside speakers; it was mainly just a wrap-up day. In the morning we were separated by tracks so we just talked about our main takeaways and things we learned from the trip within the China group. I went to another sandwich place near the school for lunch then the afternoon was spent wrapping up the program in a larger group setting. Then to end out last session together we had a slideshow with pictures of both the trips and then a “commencement” ceremony. Both the teachers gave little speeches and called up our names one-by-one. They gave us tiny Jefferson cups instead of diplomas since we have to wait a bit for that. But now I have officially graduated with my Masters!

The evening that followed was definitely one of the greatest nights of the trip and it was a fantastic way to end. We took a bus to the pier and then all boarded a ferry that took us to Lamma Island. The boat ride over was great and I sat on the top deck with the wind blowing and incredible views of the city lights at night. From what we saw of the island, it barely looked inhabited and there was a row of outdoor restaurants right by a tiny pier where we docked our boat. We ate outside at smaller round tables and of course, we had the lazy susan! What kind of final dinner would it be without the lazy susan! A very welcome change this time was that we had a bunch of really delicious seafood! I think my favorite dish was scallops with an awesome garlic buttery spread on top (reminded me of the sauce on the rolls at Bob Chinns). We were all drinking and having a great time and then we went back on the same boat to Central Pier. From there we had the bus drop us off in the LKF district which is full of open air bars and people walking around. We went to a bar called Stormies for the night and had a great time drinking and dancing the night away. Everyone was so fun and in such good spirits that it made for a pretty awesome night. There would have been no better way to end GIE and I’m so happy that I had so much fun and learned so much!

Now it’s off to London to meet up with the family – can’t wait for adventures to continue!

Lantau Island, Disney, Ladies Market

Today we had a much needed free day with time to explore whatever we wanted in the city. I stuck with two friends the whole day and had a fantastic time! First, we took the subway to Lantau Island to see the Ngong Ping village and giant Buddha statue at the top. We discovered that Hong Kong Disneyland is also on Lantau Island, but I’ll get to that later. The train was really easy to navigate and once we got there we headed straight to the cable car terminal. After a little bit of a wait in line we got to go in a pretty cool cable car that took you up the mountain. It was a pretty long way up and had amazing views. There is also an option to hike up the mountain, but that takes like 3 hours and did not sound fun at all. Once we reached the top there is a little city and monastery. All of it is fairly new and clearly built to be a tourist attraction. We had some pizza for lunch before continuing to see the big Buddha. You could see the Buddha from the cable car and it looked out over the whole city but you had to climb up 250 steps to get up to the top and see the statue up close. It was pretty neat and gave some great views of the water and islands below. We explored the town and the monastery a little bit before taking the cable car back down to the subway station.

We decided that since we were out here we would go check out Hong Kong Disneyland. Disney has a special subway stop built and has a special Disney themed train that picks you up and takes you directly to the park entrance. We didn’t actually pay to go inside, but we walked around to see the entrance and the hotels. It isn’t a very big property so it wasn’t hard to walk around. My group project is about tourism and we focused on Disney as a case study so I got to take some good pictures for the project. It was definitely fun to see and it would have been nice to have time to actually go in and have fun in the park.

Then we took the subway back into the city to see the Mong Kok shopping area with a famous market called Ladies Market. It was another place with stalls of fake designer bags and such but also had more variety of trinkets and things too. The prices were much higher than the Silk Market in Beijing but the stuff was definitely of a little bit better quality. I bought a bunch of stuff again and I’m happy with all my purchases! We had dinner at the classy establishment of Pizza Hut (it’s a nice sit down restaurant in China, ha!) which was delicious and then we headed back to the hotel on the subway. I’m very proud that we navigated our way around the subway and stuff all day. Now I’m exhausted from being out in the sun all day and have some work to do before our last day tomorrow so I will have a busy night.

Lots of Classes in Hong Kong

Hong Kong has been extremely full of classroom sessions so we haven’t really gotten a chance to see much of the city yet. It will be good to get the day off tomorrow to finally get to go do some fun stuff and I also have most of the day Sunday to go exploring also.

Monday we went to the US Consulate early in the morning for a briefing on Hong Kong (and Macau). It was a lot of basics about the size, population, GDP, etc. but was also interesting to hear about how they try and help US businesses both here and in China. I never realized that this Special Administrative Region (SAR) agreement expires in 2047 so it will be cool to see how politics, etc. evolve leading up to then. After that we went to Ernst & Young for a long day of presentations. The office was ridiculously cool, located in the International Financial Center with floor to ceiling windows looking out on the waterfront. Most of the businesses and our hotel are on Hong Kong Island but the part of HK that is connected to the mainland of China is called the Kowloon side, so the view looks at Kowloon and the mountains behind it (China is just beyond the mountains, just a 20 minute train ride to Shenzen). We had lunch provided and got sandwiches (a welcome change from all those lazy susan meals!). We had several presentations and during all of the breaks we got delicious snacks so that was really nice. This went until about 6:30pm and then we went to a reception with the UVa Club of Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Club (a pretty swanky place). They had food to snack on and unlimited wine/beer so it was a pretty fun night even though we were all pretty tired. Then we got back to the hotel around 11pm and I went to bed before another marathon day.

Tuesday we went to the Hong Kong Club building again but went up to the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) satellite campus. We spent the day in a big classroom listening to lots of speakers – head of investment banking and M&A in Asia-Pacific for JP Morgan, director of a huge private equity firm, CFO of Asia banking for Citibank. It was cool to have such important people coming to speak with us even if it was a little over my head sometimes. We were free to have lunch around the area so we found a cute Italian café where I had a sandwich. I actually don’t think I have had any Chinese food since I’ve been here which is awesome.

Since we got done early a few of us decided to go to Macau which is supposed to be the equivalent of Las Vegas. It took about an hour to get there on the high speed ferry. It was still light out on the way over so we were able to see the scenery which was beautiful. When we got there they have free shuttles from the ferry station to all the casinos so we shuttled to the Wynn since it was the farthest away and we figured we could walk back. We ended up walking through the Wynn, MGM, Grand Lisboa, and Venetian. The Venetian is HUGE and brand new and the biggest casino in the world so that was pretty cool to walk through. I’ve never been to Vegas, but from what I understand this was not really as fun as Vegas because it was a lot harder to get around. There were little clusters of casinos but you had to take taxis to see things back and forth across the bridge. It was a fun night but I definitely spent a lot of money on transport and only gambled one time! We took the ferry back after exploring and I was exhausted so I went to bed.

But I have some sad news to report from this trip – I realized last night my camera has gone missing. I put my search feelers out and I’m trying to look for it but not having any luck yet. I retraced my steps and I know I had it on the ferry coming back so the hotel is trying to call the ferry company and I asked the hotel to look around for it so they said they would let me know. I don’t think I would be so sad because the camera is replaceable but I have only uploaded pictured from Beijing and Shanghai. We went to so many cool places in Xi’an and I won’t have any of those pictures so I’m pretty bummed. I wasn’t even drunk, just exhausted, which is why it is also a little frustrating. Who knows, maybe it will turn up someplace in my hotel room, but I don’t have very high hopes.

We had another early morning at the HKUST classroom on Wednesday with the CEO of Walmart Asia. It was pretty cool to have such a big wig there and he spent most of the time answering all of our questions. He had only been with Walmart for about a year (he was with Coca-Cola for 10 years before) so he had some interesting thoughts on Walmart too. We had lunch a lunch break and I went to the same sandwich place as Tuesday. Then our afternoon session was with a big wig consultant in Hong Kong who knows lots about China and publishes in all the big magazines and has tons of books, etc. Then we had a panel with some recent graduates living and working in Hong Kong to talk about their experiences and answer questions. After that we walked back to the hotel and I fell asleep so fast after being so exhausted from the late night in Macau – didn’t even eat dinner!

I was wide awake early this morning (mostly because I needed to get the ball rolling on my camera search) and we had a morning session at the main HKUST campus. This was an actual class session with an HKUST professor where we had a case to read beforehand (at least that was the first reading we’ve had to do the whole trip). It was at least a pretty engaging session where we talked about marketing and brand positioning in Asia (definitely more up my alley than all the finance stuff). We got the bus back to the hotel after the morning and went to a Thai restaurant for lunch. I had pad thai and it was so delicious! We have a little bit more of a break before we have an evening class session.

Tonight we will meet with Larry Franklin for class/dinner. He is also a professor at HKUST and gives money to the university for the Franklin scholarship that I received for the trip. Hopefully it will be another interesting session, and then I can’t wait to have the day off tomorrow to finally do some fun things!

Arrived in Hong Kong

I have made it to the final location on this journey across China. Well, technically I left China because now I am in Hong Kong! We took the train this morning from Guangzhou and as we got close to Hong Kong I felt like I was riding right into Jurassic Park. There are tons of mountains and it is all green with trees everywhere - it is quite the tropical climate, similar to Guangzhou. We got to our hotel (Island Pacific Hotel) and the rooms are significantly smaller than all the other hotels and the beds are very small twin size beds. It is most likely because everything is so expensive here and this hotel feels more like a nice European Hotel. We have just been so spoiled staying at all of the other hotels!

After we got all checked in we went walking around and found a Thai restaurant to eat at. I had some delicious non-spicy pad thai with chicken. It wasn't even that big of a plate but I got so full really fast so I took home a box and am happy to have another meal ready to go. Everything in Hong Kong is a little more expensive so I probably should have done more of my shopping in China, but oh well, it is still cheaper than the US so I will take advantage. We have the rest of the day off to relax and I am going to try and catch up on some work before starting the final stretch tomorrow.

Adventures in Guangzhou

I’m writing my update as I am on the train en route to Hong Kong. We arrived in Guangzhou (fyi: anything ending in ‘zhou’ is pronounced ‘jo’ so the city is called ‘Guang-jo’) on Wednesday after an early morning flight. We had a decent flight time originally but they cancelled it (the second time that has happened because all the airlines are run by the government so they cancel flights and switch your airlines and do whatever they want) so we got to Guangzhou around noon and checked into our hotel – The Westin. This hotel and the first hotel are rivals for the nicest hotel contest, even though all of them have been pretty baller. Wednesday afternoon we went to the US Consulate to have a briefing on the state of affairs in China. It was interesting to get the opinions of the government employees working here.

Thursday we started the morning going to P&G and learned about their operations in China and toured their plant. We saw the diaper making section and the hair care section. We got to dress up in these awesome outfits to go touring but no pictures allowed! Then P&G served us the best company lunch ever – McDonald’s! They had a bunch of McDonald’s delivered and even though it was cold it was ten times better than having those lazy susan dinners. In the evening we went to a presentation by Rob Daley (with an open bar the whole time!) who started a company in the US called 4Moms. His products are manufactured here in Guangzhou so we talked about why he came here and that they have much more factory expertise than anywhere he could find in the US. Then we had dinner with him and it was at the Marriott hotel buffet and was so delicious! I had make-your-own pasta and a large piece of beef. It was a whole day without Chinese food so I would say that was a winner.

The next morning we went to the Jetta factory where the 4Moms products are produced. We had a really long tour of the factory and say them making Christmas toys (I got to spray paint one of them), American Girl dolls, and lots of other stuff. The factory is the number one toy maker in China. We also went to the dorms to see how the factory workers live and it is pretty terrible conditions but all the workers consider is an honor to be there because otherwise they would be starving farmers. It was a long and hot day with the lack of AC in those factories – couldn’t imagine working in a job like that. Then we went to lunch with the Jetta executives and Rob Daley. It was Chinese food in the lazy susan (typical) but better than some of the other meals we have had. Then we went to a Sam’s Club for a store visit. It was just like a Sam’s Club in the US but had some additional weird food sold there like giant aquarium tanks with eel and stuff. We are going to be talking to Wal-Mart execs in Hong Kong so our teacher wanted us to walk around a store so we had some idea of what they were talking about. There were so many free samples that I didn’t even have to eat dinner!

We went out to a chill international bar to start off the night then went to this weird nightclub that was US military themed so all the people that worked there were walking around in US Army uniforms and it was very strange. We had a free day on Saturday so I went on the optional excursion to see a little bit more of the city (and because I was in search of more fake stuff to buy). We went to a giant market that had all kinds of sections from selling traditional herbs to pets and aquariums to chickens and stuff for food. We never did find a good market for shopping, so hopefully I will have more success in Hong Kong!

For our last night before we meet up with the Southeast Asia trip our teacher planned a nice dinner at a traditional Cantonese restaurant. I tried the eel fried rice and it actually tasted pretty good. Then we went on a cruise along the Pearl River which was beautiful. Guangzhou hosted the Asia Games last year and they put up all kinds of bright lights that change colors and stuff – almost looks as lit up as Vegas. It was really great to cruise up and down the city center with all the views at night. Then after the cruise we went out to a few nightclubs to celebrate our last night. The 2 places we went were way more normal than that military theme club from the night before. It was a great city to have some fun in and is definitely the most prominent place we’ve been for business growth, but not so big on the cultural sights compared to Xi’an and Beijing of course.

Greetings from Xi'an

We have been crazy busy here in China so I'll give you a brief update, but I'm too tired to write much. Our second to last day in Shanghai we visited 2 factories - Rockwell Automation and ABB. I wasn't really into either of the companies and lots of the stuff they talked about was way over my head but it was especially cool to see the robotics factory at ABB. Friday, our last day in Shanghai, we went to Coca-Cola in the morning which was great because we actually were able to relate to the company and things they were talking about a little more. Then we headed to the airport and got there about 1:30pm and there was a huge thunderstorm and we didn't end up getting to take off until 8:30pm. We didn't get into Xi'an until pretty late so everyone just went right to bed.

The first day in Xi'an we got to sleep in until 10am (woo hoo!) and then went out sightseeing. First we went to the terra-cotta warriors which was pretty cool. There are three different pits of warriors and statues and stuff plus a building that is like a museum of stuff related to them. We got lots of history and info from our tour guides. Then we went to the emperor's hot springs which were kind of boring after a long hot day but good to see another important place. The scenery was pretty cool because it was at the foot of the mountains. That night the student in our group who is from Xi'an reserved us a 30 person VIP room for KTV (Chinese karaoke). It was a very elaborate room with a giant screen for the karaoke and was really fun with the group.

On Sunday we had a day of optional sightseeing that I went to (a lot of people didn't make it after karaoke). It was definitely one of my favorite days that we have had because we only had about half of the group and everyone wanted to be there so there were no complainers! First, we went biking around the ancient city wall of Xi'an. It was really fun but very bumpy because of all the bricks. I was proud that I was able to do the whole 30 kilometer wall! (about 18 miles - especially since I haven't ridden a bike in a while) Thank goodness for doing some spin classes this past semester!

Then we went to walk around a street district to get some snacks for lunch but I didn't really eat anything except a delicious ice cream bar. After that we went to the giant expo going on in Xi'an and everyone had such a good time biking in the morning that we decided to get bikes again for the afternoon! Just to be clear, there is someone on our trip who was on his college cycling team so this was not very leisurely biking, definitely a workout! The expo was a giant horticulture festival and we only had a few hours to see it all so the bikes turned out to be pretty key. We saw a lot of buildings and it was a pretty amazing mini-city and world fair sort of thing that they built just near the city.

Today we went to three company visits - BYD (auto factory), Xi'an Software Park, and Butang Pharmaceutical company. The company visits are definitely all starting to blend together. Then we went to a very elaborate dinner with food that I didn't eat any of. We had some red wine for the first time at any dinner though and it was so yummy! I pretty much got tipsy off red wine while just eating rice (typical). Seems like I'm always ready for some more sleep though, so I'm heading to bed for the night. We have two more company visits scheduled for tomorrow as our last day here.

Lowe’s, Yangshan Deep Water Port, China Solutions

We had another early hotel departure time at 7:30am today. We had lots of visits to get in and rescheduling because of the Dragon Boat Festival so we have a few very full days after that one day off. Our first stop was to Lowe’s where we met with the head of product sourcing. He was another American guy in charge of this office and we just had a little question and answer session where he told some stories and stuff. Then from there we headed on our 2 hour drive out to the Yangshan deep water port. This is the busiest port in the world based on the weight of goods that pass through it (Singapore is the biggest in terms of number of ships that pass through). We went to the overlook and were able to take a few pictures and then we went on a tour to see the operating room with all the cameras looking at stuff going on in the actual wharf. It wasn’t really all that exciting because there was some translating difficulty so we weren’t able to learn all that much. It just seemed like we didn’t get to do all that much for driving two hours both ways.

After our long drive back we went straight to our dinner at the Peninsula seafood restaurant. We met with the CEO of China Solutions who consults with businesses to help them transition to China. He is a lawyer from UVa law school and specializes in doing Chinese contracts I think. He had his clients there who run a company called Bambu and they told the story of how they started their company and a little of hoe China Solutions helped them. The content was interesting but the dinner was probably the worst that we have had so far. First of all, it was seafood (and strange seafood, like I have no clue what anything was) so it smelled really bad the whole time. They also kept bringing dishes out; definitely the biggest dinner we have had so far (also the grossest though). They must have brought everything they had on their menu! Our whole table didn’t even touch at least 5 of the dishes brought towards the end. After dinner I just came back to the hotel after a very long day and I am excited for some more good sleep.

SMIC, Darwin Marketing, UVa Club Shanghai

Today we left the hotel bright and early at 8am to go visit SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation). We just had a brief talk from an American living here working with the company and another guy working at the company who is a 2007 UVa alum joined us for Q&A about life in Shanghai as an American. We went to see his house because he lives in the company living quarters. It was really interesting to see the company has built up a little town that looks just like any suburb right next to their huge factory. If you really wanted to you could live entirely in that town and never leave; it has a school, grocery stores, pharmacy, dentist, restaurants, etc. This guy has a 5 bedroom, 5 bathroom townhouse in the compound for his family of 4 and pays rent of $800 a month because he works for the company. We went to lunch at a restaurant in the company town that was like the typical restaurants we have been going to with lots of dishes to pick at and try everything. Then we took the bus back to the hotel and had a little break before our next visit of the day.

Our next visit was to Darwin Marketing where we met with the Founder/CEO. The company is an internet marketing company and does the paid search marketing things that RKG does plus more. It is definitely a little bigger than RKG but he works with the Chinese search engines and does even more internet marketing consulting beyond paid search. It was really cool to hear his opinions on everything since it is the field I am going into. He was an American who got his MBA from Darden and then just decided to move to China and start his own company so he had a really cool entrepreneurship story to go along with the marketing content.

After that visit we were dropped off by the bus at the restaurant for our evening reception but we were about 30 minutes early so we were free to walk around and get dinner. We stopped in a little café place and split some pizzas – it was definitely nice to have some non-Chinese food that wasn’t McDonald’s or BK. Our reception was with the UVa Club of Shanghai so there were a decent number of young-ish alums who are living in Shanghai so it was fun to hear all their stories, etc. A lot of them are in fields other than business so it was interesting to have a little variety. After the reception the bus took us back to the hotel and I went right to bed after such a long day. The sleep is much needed since there is another long day lined up for tomorrow.

Birthday Celebration and Free Day

Sunday night for my birthday we started out going to this bar in the middle of People’s Square called Barbarossa. It is a really trendy middle-eastern themed bar that our teacher really likes so he took us there and opened a tab for us (yes, our professor opened a tab for a bunch of college kids). We were out on the rooftop overlooking the beautiful scenery – People’s Square is sort of like the Central Park of Shanghai and we were at this place nestled in the middle that is hard to find if you don’t know about it, kind of like Tavern on the Green. We stayed there for a little bit and then moved to the French Concession bar district. Of course, we stopped at McDonald’s on the way because we never ended up eating dinner at Barbarossa.

The first place we went to was called O’Malleys and it was like a sports bar and had a giant screen set up outside that you could watch on 2 levels of outdoor seating that had the French Open playing. The bar was full of Europeans watching the match very intensely and I liked being able to watch as well. The screen was definitely the biggest thing I’ve ever seen at a bar for watching sports – no bad seats in the house. We had a few drinks at that bar and left after the second set of the match to move to a new bar called Zapatas. This was really fun and had an outdoor bar with chill seating areas and then the inside had another bar, was blasting music and had 3 levels of dance party. The music selection was great: ranging from Sweet Child of Mine to Shake Yo’ Tail Feathers (never thought I would hear that old school Nelly jam in China). It was a really fun birthday and I’m so glad I got to celebrate with everyone here in China.

Yesterday was the Dragon Boat Festival which is a national holiday so everyone had a 3-day weekend (another reason why my birthday was a great party night). We had the day off from activities because no companies have work or anything. From what I gather, the holiday is more like American Memorial Day where nothing that exciting really happens but everyone has the day off. Supposedly there are these dragon boat races on lakes and our teacher had planned for us to take a train out to a really cool lake to watch but it turned out that it rained constantly all day so we cancelled our excursion. Not sure if the races still went on but we didn’t make the trip. We just had the whole day free and so I slept in and then we went walking around and exploring a little bit but just relaxed for most of the day which was definitely a much needed break. I had some quality lunch at a new place I haven’t tried yet – Burger King! (It was delish)

Welcome to Shanghai

We had to leave the hotel bright and early at 6am this morning to catch our flight to Shanghai. We arrived at our hotel around noon. We are staying at the Radisson Shanghai New World and it is right in the center of the city on this amazing street. You should google a picture of the hotel to see how cool it is – we have a UFO thing on the top that is a rotating restaurant/bar. I have a room by myself for this portion of the trip which is awesome because our rooms are quite a bit smaller than last time. Shanghai is 1/3 the size of Beijing with the same amount of people so everything is just more compact here. I can already tell that I will like Shanghai much more than Beijing. It is much less “Chinese” and just seems more like New York or a big city you would find anywhere else in the world.

After we got settled in the hotel we went for lunch to our professor’s favorite dumpling place in all of China. It was really cool and it only makes dumplings and you can see the assembly line inside of them making them and then there is a lady frying them at the end out by the street so you can go pick them up after you order them. They were delicious and a great birthday lunch!

We returned to the hotel to meet our tour guide and we took a walk to the famous financial district skyline. We walked through this pedestrian mall with everything you could ever need. That is where I saw one of the huge posters for D.Rose. They had a big Nike store with a huge banner for the Chinese tennis player who just won the French Open so I think they are pretty excited about that here. Then we got to the river which has the financial district across and took some pictures. It has the third tallest building in the world – the one that looks like a bottle opener at the top. Perhaps we will be heading over there for some company visits in the near future.

We walked a little more to meet our bus and drove to the old city which had the Yu Gardens in the center. These are really pretty and used to be the Emperor’s gardens. The old city is just a giant bazaar selling touristy souvenirs but the architecture is just as you would think about the ancient Chinese. Then we went back to the hotel and I showered and we are getting ready to go to a group dinner at a restaurant in the middle of People’s Park. It is supposed to be really cool so I am excited to go and celebrate my birthday! I will fill you in later about how the celebration goes tonight.

Lama Temple, Hutong Tour

This morning we were lucky and got to sleep in until 10am! We just had sightseeing today and no class which was a great way to spend this final day in Beijing. First we went to the Lama Temple which is a compound for a certain branch of Buddhism. Half of it is open to the public and the other half is for the monks to train from the master Lama monks. We walked around the temple and there are several buildings you can walk into with different Buddha statues and they each mean a different thing. For example, you can pray for long life to a certain Buddha and another one helps cure sickness. There were tons of Chinese people around with sticks of incense to pray to all of the Buddhas. You can’t burn incense or take photos inside the buildings because they believe that the picture takes the Buddha spirit out of the temple. So outside all of the buildings there were kneeling places and cauldrons of fire to light incense and lots of Chinese people bowing and waving the incense. Then inside there were also kneeling places with people bowing but no incense. The highlight of this temple is that it has the world record for the largest sculpture carved from a single tree. They brought a tree from Tibet that is 8 meters in diameter and put it in the ground here. I think there is another 8 meters of the tree underground before they started carving. So the overall statue that is carved out is at 18 meters tall Buddha statue that is just HUGE. It is so hard to describe and it is enclosed in a tower so you can’t see it from far away you just have to stare up in order to see the head. All of the Buddhas are decorated with colorful clothes and have lots of fruit and things around that look like offerings. We were touring this place with a guide explaining everything all while these Chinese people are praying so it felt a little weird but I assume they are used to it.

After that we took the bus to lunch which was in a really nice pedestrian mall. We were having traditional hot pot cuisine, which basically means I went to the Chinese version of Melting Pot (aka: it was awesome). We had the usual round table but in the middle this time was a pot of boiling water – I think it had a few veggies in it already for flavor but I didn’t taste much. The tables already had plates of veggies and you could hold them in the hot pot so they cooked and became soft and delicious. My favorite was the sweet potato. Then they brought out the meat and it was plates and plates of thinly sliced meat (I think it was lamb?) that looked like cold cuts, but we clearly had to cook it. So then we could hold the slices into the hot pot and they cook really quickly – much faster than Melting Pot, but also you have to hold it in there with your chopsticks which was definitely challenging. (Yeah did I mention that I have to eat like every meal with chopsticks? I’m becoming an expert I think) Our table got sick of holding everything in the pot one by one though so we ended up putting almost all of the meat and veggies in there to cook and we would just take out stuff when we wanted. And then since we emptied the plates they kept bringing us more food to cook which was awesome. Everything was really tasty and a good change from having all the usual dishes with everything covered in oily sauces. After lunch we had a little free time to walk around the pedestrian mall which had several American brand stores and was definitely more upscale than any place we had been yet.

Our afternoon activity was touring an area of Beijing called a Hutong which is sort of an alley that you will find yourself in if you turn off a certain street. It is original housing from the 12^th century and the government requires it to stay exactly the same on the outside to preserve the history. Everything was just gray brick and there was a lot of construction around to redo the bricks. We walked from our bus to the starting point and then we had rickshaws that took us through the narrow alleys. We rode in the rickshaws for a little bit – everything was just really dusty from the construction and you couldn’t really see that much. At the end of the ride we ended in the Hou Hai district which is a bunch of bars lining a man-made river running through it. The bars weren’t really hoppin’ yet because it was like 2 in the afternoon but they were all open air and you could see in that the decorations were so strange! Everything was brightly colored or wildly printed couches and glittery walls…very strange. We did happen upon one bar that looked awesome because it was the Michael Jackson bar! It plays only MJ tunes and as you can see has some great décor as well.

After we walked around this area for 15 min we got back in our rickshaws and rode around a little more until the end of the ‘tour.’ At this point it was too early to go to dinner so we walked to the farmers market. It was huge and had tons of crazy fruits that you never see in normal US grocery stores. I obviously didn’t try anything but it was cool to see all of it. Then we walked back to our dinner spot which was a really great experience – we went into one of the Hutong homes and had a traditional home-cooked meal of Beijing food. First, the wife told us a little about the family and then let us look around the house. The house consisted of a room for the parents, room for the son, kitchen, and bathroom. All the rooms were separated by a tiny outdoor courtyard. It’s hard to explain but it was all very small. The kitchen definitely only had room for one person to stand in it. They were so proud of having this house and it was apparently a big deal for them even though it seemed so small to us so it was interesting to hear their story. Then we sat down for dinner and we were all packed into the parents’ room at round tables with tiny metal stools to sit on. We had tiny plates and tiny chopsticks and I felt like I was visiting a little person’s house! The food was really good though! We had sweet potato chips, rice, chicken, some sort of pork meatball dish, dumplings, broccoli, and a few other dishes. I really liked everything, probably because it was supposed to be “normal” food and not trying to be fancy or anything like that.

After our delicious dinner we headed back to the bus which brought us to the hotel. It was a great last day in Beijing and I really liked all the sightseeing that we got to do instead of having class (of course, haha). I can’t believe we are already leaving Beijing tomorrow and there are so many things I still didn’t get to see! I’m not sure if I will ever be back here but I have definitely been able to get more comfortable with the city over the past 7 days. This was our longest stop of the journey so I think the rest of this experience might just fly by. Time to pack and get to bed early for our departure flight in the morning.

Finally, Some Delicious Dumplings

This morning we had our usual meeting time of 8:25am to get to class by 9am. I ate a little more for breakfast – some toast, rice, and a little croissant. The class topic was supposed to be about marketing and the Chinese consumer (something I would have found interesting) but it turned out to be pretty difficult to understand our professor and he talked a lot about theory and QA which was not very exciting. At least today was our last day of class at Peking U and we got a certificate of completion and everything, haha. We had our usual cafeteria lunch and I kept to a small bowl of rice and lo mein. Maybe this will turn out to be the best diet ever?

After lunch we went back to class with the same professor and this session was slightly more interesting than the morning. I heard that our professor talked to him and asked for less theory and more specific content to China. We looked at some popular Chinese websites and talked about a lot of different aspects of growing internet usage in China. Paid search marketing came up for a little bit, of course. We had the rest of the evening free from Peking U planned activities so after class at 4:30pm we all headed back to the hotel.

We had a little while to relax at the hotel and then we all met at 6:15pm to take the subway to our professor’s favorite dumpling restaurant. Now this was by far the best meal in China so far!! I LOVE dumplings and they are my favorite thing to get for Chinese takeout and now that I’ve had the real thing I might not be able to go back! This place is all hand-made dumplings with any kinds of meat and herbs you could mix and match. Our professor just ordered a large variety for the group and I tried a little bit of everything. I’m not sure of all the combinations (we were just guessing) but there were some like pork with cilantro and beef with fennel. You could tell everything was just so fresh like the fillings and dumpling melted in your mouth. There was a sauce on the table that was really spicy that lots of people liked but I of course didn’t try that. I was content with my dumplings and used a little bit of sauce from the appetizer we got. I didn’t even mention the appetizer! It was an eggplant dish in some sauce that was just absolutely delicious. So dinner was pretty amazing and if we could have that for dinner every night I would be one happy student in China!

Now I am back in the hotel to get some good sleep before a long day of sightseeing on our last day in Beijing.

Pictures!!

Great Wall of China:

Peking University campus landmark:

Night market with bugs and weird things to eat:

Summer Palace:

Tiananmen Square:

View of Forbidden City gate From T-Square:

Inside Forbidden City:

Marathon Day of Class

Today I woke up feeling a little better so I got ready for class and managed to eat a piece of toast for breakfast. We left the hotel at 8:25am and had a morning class session about the Chinese economic environment. It was a really interesting lecture because most Chinese citizens will not be so candid about all the problems that China has but this professor was really upfront about all the issues going on and how China should be dealing with them. We had our usual lunch break in the cafeteria – I only ate a tiny bowl of rice as I slowly get back into the swing of eating things.

After lunch we had a guest lecture from a lady who is not a professor but runs some sort of executive education (I think?) and used to work at McKinsey in Beijing for a while. She gave a lecture on the labor crisis in China – despite the massive Chinese population businesses have trouble finding the right talent due to various issues. After that lecture we had another session on the Chinese macroeconomic environment with the same professor as the morning. It was very interesting again, just a very long day. Overall we ended up having class from 9:00am – 5:30pm except for our lunch break (a longer day than any of us Americans are ever used to!).

After class we took the bus back to the hotel but it took a while because it was rush hour. There is a reception tonight with the UVa Club of Beijing at a Mexican restaurant (I could really go for some guacamole right now, but not sure how good Chinese guac would actually be?). As good as it sounds, I probably wouldn’t be able to eat anything there and I am just starting to get better so I am taking one night off to not over-exert myself. There is still a lot of trip left so hopefully I’ll be better for the rest of it!

Sick Day

Wednesday I woke up and still felt really sick. I started taking my medicine when I got back on Tuesday night but I wasn't able to eat all of Wednesday either so I just stayed in bed at the hotel all day. It was a pretty good day to be sick because all I missed was the second class session on supply chain and manufacturing and a company visit to sina.com that apparently didn't go very well from what everyone said. I spent the day just sleeping on and off and managed to eat a few bites of a protein bar that I brought to try and get some nutrients.

Forbidden City

Tuesday we got to sleep in a little because we didn’t have class, so we didn’t have to be at the bus until 9:30am (which was definitely needed after the late night). Unfortunately I woke up with a really bad stomach ache and couldn’t eat anything for breakfast. I thought it might have just been from some drinking the night before but it lasted for the next two days so it must have been some sort of food poisoning. For most of the day Tuesday I felt fine, and just had a mild stomach ache so I still had a good time at all the activities.

At school in the morning we had a session to meet with Peking U students and just talked with them and asked questions back and forth about school life, etc. Let’s just say I’m glad I’m not a Chinese kid. Then we went on a tour of the campus. It was really beautiful and they have a cool lake in the middle with a path around it and a lot of greenery for being in the middle of such a smoggy industrial city. After the tour we ate lunch at the cafeteria again and I ate two bites of rice and then felt awful so I didn’t eat any more. After lunch we went back to the hotel for 10 min for people to change if they wanted to and all I did was throw up the rice that I had for lunch. I still felt fine at this point though so I left with the group to head to the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City is near the city center of Beijing and is such an interesting historical point in the middle of the city. First of all, it is HUGE. We were following our tour guide and keep walking in the same direction (from the North gate to the South gate) and it seemed to be never ending. First were all the living quarters for the females then the males and Emperor. Then we looked at more of the concubine living quarters and learned some interesting facts about how the emperor would have 3,000 13-17 year old girls running around as his sex toys! Then we moved on to the palaces for working and business and there were several pavilions and squares for official government business. After about 3 hours in the Forbidden City we made it to the South gate which is the main gate with the portrait of Mao facing Tiananmen Square.

After the Forbidden City we walked under the roadway and went to Tiananmen Square. It is bordered by giant impressive looking buildings – Chinese government building, Chinese modern history museum, Mao’s tomb/memorial, and the Forbidden City. It is definitely a cool sight to see and they have a giant Chinese flag in the middle with a guard who stands watch at all times. They have all kinds of special police around in the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square who are apparently trained in kung fu and are pretty scary. There isn’t really anything to do in the square but it is cool to see.

By then it was around 5:00pm and we headed to the restaurant famous for Peking duck for dinner. I really wanted to try it and everyone said it was really good, but I wasn’t feeling very well so I didn’t even try to eat. After the dinner we were headed to the Peking opera but after all the walking around I started to feel really sick. I think it was just from having such a full day and not being able to eat at all so I tried to push through but I ended up talking to our teacher and he took me back to the hotel in a cab where I immediately went to my room and just passed out at like 8:00pm.

First Day at Peking University

Sorry for the lack of posting, we were pretty busy the first few days here and then I got some nasty food poisoning or something so I was a little out of commission. Lots of updates to come all in a row now, here is Monday:

This morning we had to leave the hotel at 8:25am to go to our first day at Peking University. We are studying specifically at the Guanghua School of Management with a course called “Doing Business in China.” Everything was set up really nicely when we got there and we have some nice Peking U swag to take home. We got a bound book of all the notes and schedule and everything we will need for the whole week. We had a short introductory session first where they try to teach us a little Chinese (everything except Ni Hao still pretty much goes over my head though) and we also watched a promotional video about the school. There were a bunch of exchange students talking about the school and there was one group from Miami of Ohio!

We get lots of breaks at school during the day and it is pretty nice and a new building so there is a snack/tea area right outside our room and this lady just restocks it and cleans up after us all day which is pretty sweet. We had our first class after that which was about supply chain and manufacturing in China. Nothing too revolutionary, but interesting to hear things from a Chinese perspective. After class we went to lunch in the school cafeteria. Nobody really knows what anything is so it’s a big mystery. I had some sort of mild beef & broccoli looking dish and lots of steamed rice and lo mein.

After lunch we had our first company visit which was at a really nice hotel. It was a bunch of private equity executives (one of them is the father of the Chinese student on our trip) and it was also completely in Chinese. We all went into a meeting room and everyone had a little headset in front of them and channel 1 was for Chinese and 2 for English. There was a lady sitting in a booth in the back of the room who did live translation for everything. It was still a little hard to follow (especially since I wasn’t really familiar with the topic) and I think some questions from our class and their responses were lost in translation but I guess that’s how things go in China. We had 2 formal presentations followed by Q&A. All the presentations were shown on 2 screens, one for each language, so at least there was always stuff to look at.

After the presentations we went to the hotel restaurant downstairs for dinner with the executives. They brought out this rice liquor called Mautai that he said was like $200 (US$) and it came in a bottle that looked like lighter fluid and they kept making toasts and we were all supposed to take shots but it tasted so nasty I only had 2 of them. The whole group went through an entire case of the stuff; I think the Chinese executives took down a bunch of it. The meal was similar to the lunch we had the day before with all the cold dishes brought out first followed by hot ones and nobody knew what anything was. The round table with the lazy susan seems to be the common trend here for our group dinners. I ate a lot of rice, seems to be my favorite food here in China.

After dinner our bus took us back to the hotel and everyone got ready to go out for the night. We went to this university bar district since it is cheaper than a lot of other areas and went to this bar called Lush which was just chill and pretty much like a normal US bar. It wasn’t very crowded since it was a Monday night and apparently Peking U exams are coming up in 2 weeks. It was a fun night to hang out with everyone on the trip though and we got some late night McDonald’s (delicious!) and got back to the hotel around 2am so I headed right to bed.

Great Wall and Summer Palace

Well I made it to China! My flight was delayed a little bit because we were flying over the North Pole and we had to be re-routed a little more west because of the ash cloud. The airport was really easy to get around in because everything had English and pictures (our teacher told us this was all redone for the Olympics to make sure visitors had a good impression). At first none of the taxis would take me to my hotel but then someone (with authority I’m assuming?) yelled at one of the drivers and they said ‘ok’ so I finally got to the hotel and checked into my room at about 7:30pm (Saturday). The hotel (Crowne Plaza) is pretty much baller status and I am getting very spoiled by the Priority Club accommodations! I got up to my room and checked my email and found out that our group was meeting to leave at 7:00pm so I had just missed them. It turned out ok because I just got to settle in my room and took a much-needed shower and went to sleep.

In the morning I got up pretty refreshed. I woke up really early because of the time change and tried to go back to sleep but just tossed and turned a little. The hotel has breakfast included and it was a pretty impressive buffet of both American and Chinese options. I only had about 15 minutes to eat breakfast and tomorrow I plan on allowing more time so I can explore and fill up for the day! We met in the lobby at 8:20am and had a tour guide and bus to take us to our first stop of the day: The Great Wall. The tour guide is really hard to understand and you have to listen very closely to figure out what he is trying to say so that was difficult. A lot of people had gone out the night before so they really just wanted to sleep on the bus anyway. There was so much traffic on the way to the Great Wall that at one point it was completely stopped and everyone just got out of their cars/buses and were just chillin’ on the highway. We had to park our bus pretty far away because of the traffic which made the walk even farther. We went up the wall really close to the midpoint but that part was really crowded so we walked in the other direction. It was pretty surreal to be on the great wall and thinking about how difficult it would be to build the wall sort of makes the pyramids look like child’s play. It was definitely a workout with the steep stairs and inclined paths. Everything is so foggy (or smoggy) that you can barely make out the Great Wall going up behind me in pictures. The tour guide gave us an hour to hike the wall and then we met back and headed to the bus for lunch.

We at lunch at some place that was a jade workshop with a restaurant in the back. Our group got three round tables to sit at with lazy susans in the middle. Then we all had little tiny plates and they brought out a bunch of different food dishes that we didn’t even know what they were but it was all really good. I know I tried tongue and some eggplant dish (both yummy!). They also had some dishes you would find in Chinese places at home like sweet and sour pork, lo mein, hot and sour soup, and rice. Overall I liked everything I tried and I think there were only a few dishes that I passed on because they looked spicy.

After lunch we headed to the Summer Palace. This was just a huge compound that is the size of the city of Charlottesville with all kinds of buildings, temples, and special rocks. The group had 2 hours to walk around and do whatever we wanted so we walked around for a little while before splitting off. I went with a group of 6 and we rented a paddle boat to go around the giant lake in the middle of the palace property. It gave some really cool views of the larger palace buildings and towers. We also got to go up close to the island on the middle of the lake with some other special building on it. The paddling definitely gave out legs another workout as if the Great Wall hike wasn’t enough – I will definitely be feeling it tomorrow. After the Summer Palace it was about 4:00pm and we loaded up the bus to head back to the hotel.

We all showered and relaxed for a bit at the hotel before meeting in the lobby at 6:00pm to head out to the markets. This part was just led by our teacher and not a tour guide. We took the subway (pretty easy to get around also because it was all redone for the Olympics too) for a while to get to the Silk Market. But before we even went to the market we were all starving and were looking for someplace to eat. Everyone in the group was trying to look for a good Chinese place but the whole area was so touristy that we all ended up at McDonald’s anyway, oh well! Then we finally made it to the Silk Market – I could have spent all day in there just buying up a storm! The market was like a huge mall with 6 stories of people selling stuff similar to the Grand Bazaar in Turkey. All the floors and areas were organized by items so we went straight to the purses floor. You bargain for everything which is fun and I got three designer purses (fake, of course) for a total of $35 US. I probably could have paid even less too but I felt like I was getting a good deal at the time. It is very aggressive and people try to grab you and pull you into their shop but if you know what you are doing it was fun. I was walking around mainly with one other girl (it was too hard to navigate with a big group) and we got the hang of it after our first purchase. I only got the purses but I could have spent so much time exploring all the other floors such as clothing (so much fake Polo stuff) and lots of people got great looking designer shoes (not sure if they would actually have any to fit me though), but I’m sure there will be plenty more markets for me to spend all my money!

We all met outside the Silk Market after it closed at 9:00pm and took the subway three more stops to get to the area with a pedestrian street and nighttime food markets. Unfortunately, it was raining when we got off the subway but we toughed it out and walked through anyway. We went down one side street where they had all the weird food and some kids in our group tried the fried scorpions (they said it tasted like Pringles…?). We continued down the pedestrian street which was a nice wide walkway lined with really nice designer stores and was all lit up and reminded us of a shopping area you would see in Europe. When we finally got to the street market that supposedly had the good food (I was really looking forward to some dumplings!) it was closed because of the rain. I hope we will get a chance to go back there another night but it was kind of a hassle to get there and it was tucked away. I’m glad our teacher knows where everything is otherwise I don’t think I would ever find anything. We were all pretty tired from the long day so we just decided to take cabs back to the hotel. It was pretty difficult to find them in the rain but it is nice to finally be back in my nice bed after such a long day. Now it’s midnight and I’m headed to bed; can’t wait for my delicious breakfast and another day full of activities tomorrow!

Ready for a New Adventure

It’s my last day in the USA before I head overseas. I am so lucky to be able to have such an awesome experience like Global Immersion with McIntire. I will be spending about a month in China before meeting up with my family in Europe with stops in London, Belgium, and France. I will be traveling so much it’s almost like being on Semester at Sea again! My itinerary in China is listed below, and I will do my best to update as much as possible!

Beijing May 27 – June 5

Shanghai June 5 – June 10

Xi’an June 10 – June 15

Guangzhou June 15 – June 19

Hong Kong June 19 – June 26