Saturday May 19, 2012

Vivien and me

And so it’s time to leave. We didn’t have to be at the airport until early afternoon, so we had all morning to do nothing and pack up. I was mostly packed up last night, so I didn’t really have much to do. For our last meal in Beijing, I went to KFC (for the 678983456^thtime [I’m really tired of KFC]) because I am really low on cash. Then we said our farewells to Vivien who did not come with us to the airport. When we got to the airport, Ruby went back with the bus, so we had to say goodbye to her too. Then it was just a matter of getting through security and waiting for our plane. While we were waiting at the terminal, a Chinese game show came on where people in arrow-looking costumes had to line up with each other on a grid-like floor while a bull tried to knock them over. I thought it was pretty funny to watch. Anyway, we eventually got on our plane and went back over the top of the world to get back to the Western hemisphere. When we landed in Pittsburgh, everyone said their goodbyes and we all parted ways after coming together these past two weeks in our excursion to Beijing, China. Two weeks ago, I hardly knew anybody in our group. Now I know everyone, and we’ve all become friends. Overall, it was truly an amazing experience, and something that I’ll never forget. Xie xie, Beijing.

Friday May 18, 2012

a picture from the park at the old Summer Palace

Today is our last full day in China and I’m not ready to leave. We had class in the morning that was a little more interesting than yesterday’s class because it was all about family life in China, both ancient customs and modern customs. After the lecture, we presented our business plan for China. My group designed a product called the T-bottle. It is a bottle that both filters and boils your water for you (because the tap water here isn’t safe to drink) so you can drink it. It also has a removable filter that you can put tea leaves in to make hot tea. I know, the logistics of it are a little iffy, but all we had to do was make something Chinese people could use and market it to the Chinese. We didn’t actually have to design a real product. After the presentations were over, we went to the old Summer Palace that had been burnt down by the British in the 1800’s. There used to be two until the British burnt this one down. The Chinese still don’t really care for the British because of that. All I wanted to see were the ruins of the palace, but most of it has been turned into a park, and the part of it that did have ruins cost extra to go see. I am running low on Yuan so I didn’t go in. I did get one picture from outside the gate. Getting a taxi back to the hotel was a little harder than we thought it would be. Nobody would pick us up. When we finally did get back, it was time to go to our farewell dinner. At dinner, we had another one of those lazy susan style dinners, just like we had the first night. It was a lot more fun than the first night probably because we all knew each other a lot better, or because we were a lot more comfortable with Chinese culture, or maybe even both. We were all sad that this would be the last meal we eat together, but it was very good. This meal rivaled the Peking duck. After the dinner, we went back to the hotel and just hung out. I don’t want to leave tomorrow, but we had a good run here in Beijing. I have had a lot of fun and I hope to revisit China in the future.

Thursday May 17, 2012

Today was our company visit to Lenovo in the morning. Initially I was almost more excited about this one than CapitalBio. When we got there, I was thoroughly satisfied by what I saw. The way Vanessa put it before we went, “you’ll leave Lenovo wanting to buy something.” Well, she was definitely right. We started off the tour when our guide asked a volunteer to throw a paper airplane through a hole in the wall. I didn’t really get this until the guide told us that the significance of the airplane was that one of their early tv commercials featured a kid throwing a paper airplane that slowly grew into a spaceship. In the beginning of our tour, we learned the history of the company. It was a company started by 10 guys in a house. We also learned the reason behind the name Lenovo. At first, the company was called Legend, but after awhile they decide to change it to Lenovo, keeping the “Le” of Legend and adding “novo,” which means “new” in Latin. They are a company founded on innovation, and that is their fundamental idea. After learning the history, they took us to see some of their products and designs. Probably the coolest thing there was the Olympic torch for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Lenovo was commissioned to design a hand held torch to light the big torch. The guide let us take it out of its case and hold it. This specific torch, he said, was only used for one of the legs of the torch lighting ceremony. Either way, it was really cool to hold one of the torches featured in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Then we got to their newest line of computers and tablets. They had a lot of really cool stuff and I kind of wanted to buy everything there. We also got to see some of their original products to see the progress that they’ve made to get to what they are marketing now. Lenovo is the leading supplier of electronic goods in China, and it is easy to see why. I haven’t seen too big of a market for them in the States, possibly because the US competitors such as Dell, HP, and Apple have such control of the computer hardware market. I really liked that company visit because it was the most entertaining (probably because they let us play with their stuff) and the most informative about the actual company. After we left, we went to a really nice restaurant not too far away from our hotel that was apparently famous for its Peking duck. From our table, you could see the chefs carving up the ducks, and each duck you bought came with a certificate of authenticity from the restaurant. The duck was fantastic. That has definitely been my favorite meal so far. No matter what else they brought out for us, the duck went great with it. The only thing that I thought was strange was that they also brought the head of our duck out sliced in two, so you could eat the brains inside. One person from our group ate the duck brain. I figure I have had enough weird stuff to eat for one trip. After that really good lunch, we had to go to class where we learned a little bit about Chinese politics. I thought it was a pretty boring lecture, but the lady had a lot of Chinese characters on her slides, so I tried to learn a few of them and that entertained me. I wrote down all the characters for the dynasties of Chinese history.  If I had more time to spend here, I would probably make a real attempt at learning some of the language. After lecture was over, a small group of us wanted to go to the Silk Market. We rode on the subway to get there, but we made the mistake of going during rush hour. We got to one of the busiest subway lines and had to go one stop on it. We attempted to push our way on the train, but we sort of bounced off the huge crowd of people. I had learned at the Forbidden City that the Chinese don’t have a concept of personal space like Americans do, but that was crazy. We finally got there and went around looking for stuff and bargaining the price down. One guy said he wanted to kill us because we were Americans. I left that area pretty quick. After making a less crowded trip home, those of us who had gone to the Silk Market still had to work on our business presentations which are the last graded things we have to do. Because we were all so tired, we just decided to have McDonald McDelivered. I ordered (or tried to order. the person didn’t speak very good English) a big mac combo and three cheeseburger combos. We ended up getting three cheeseburgers and three big macs and no combos at all. It’s times like those that I really hate the language barrier. Anyway, I’m tired, so I’m going to bed.

Wednesday May 16, 2012

This morning we were ready to go pretty early for two company visits. The first one we went to was a distillery of very popular Chinese liquor called Nulanshan. As soon as we stepped off the bus, we were hit with a wave of alcohol smell. The tour guide we had told us that this brewery had been around for hundreds of years making the same product. At first, she took us around the historical wells and distilling equipment to show us how they used to make their liquor. Before we left the historical area, they gave us a sample of one of their weaker liquors. It didn’t taste that great, but Vivien said it was supposed to go with meals instead of by itself, sort of like wine. Then we went to a room where workers were shoveling the grain into a machine. It was interesting to see how the Chinese workers actually processed the grain to make this liquor. The tour guide took us to an area where workers were packaging the bottles. She said these workers make about 3000 Yuan per month. That’s only about $500. These workers are not paid very much at all, and some of them looked absolutely miserable doing the same thing over and over again. Before we left the distillery, they gave us each a sample of one of their stronger liquors which tasted even worse than the first. Our leader, Vanessa, told us it isn’t supposed to taste good because it was for getting drunk more than going with meals. We then left the distillery and went to another company called Jangho that was all about making insulating wall material to save energy for buildings. We got to see the assembly area for these walls and the workers making them. When we walked in, a lot of them stopped what they were doing momentarily to look at us. It was a little strange. I guess they don’t usually have a lot of people touring that area. That tour didn’t take us very long. After that, we went to eat lunch at a restaurant owned by the local government. It was pretty good. There was a fish that they brought out at one point in the meal that looked fresh. Vanessa assured us that it was probably alive only a few hours before. Even so, I thought it tasted really good. Maybe that’s why it was really good. After we got back to the hotel, we changed into regular clothes and left for the Fragrant Hills. “Hills” is definitely an understatement. It should be Fragrant Mountains. Hiking up was not easy, but it was so worth it. Every ten minutes or so, we would turn around to get a view of Beijing. As we went up, the view got better and better. At one point, I climbed a little ways up a tree to get a better view. When we finally got to the top of the mountain where there was a pagoda, we looked down on the city and it stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction: from left to right and back. Beijing is a huge city and it was really cool to try and take it all in. What was interesting was that we looked down the other side of the mountain from the city side and there was only forest covering the mountainside with the occasional pagoda built in old Chinese architectural style. There was a little gazebo looking thing not too far from where we were on the mountaintop, so I went there just to see it. Even though it wasn’t far away from the pagoda, it was really peaceful and quiet there. It overlooked the side of the mountain with the forests. After we got back down the mountain, we went back to the hotel and a group of us decided to sample Chinese Papa Johns. It surprised me to find that Papa Johns in China is a sit down restaurant and has a lot of good food rather than the fast food takeout Papa Johns that we have in America. We had breadsticks, cheesesticks, and pizzas. I wish we had Papa Johns like that in the States. We ended up getting ice cream from KFC and just going back to the hotel after that.

Tuesday May 15, 2012

I had to do it

Because we didn’t do much last night, I finally caught up on a little bit of sleep, but I felt a little sick when I woke up. I am not going to let a cold stop me from doing things here in China that I might never be able to do again. We left for the Bird’s Nest at 9:30 and got stuck in a tree on the way there. The bus was a little too big for the road we tried to go down, and the bus caught a little bit of the treetop. That was a fun little adventure, because we had to back up on a one way road to get out of the tree. We finally got to the Bird’s Nest and it was much bigger up close than any of us had realized. The architecture of it was really cool. There were steel beams in every direction to give it the shape of an actual bird’s nest. The stadium itself was a little smaller than I had anticipated, but they were in the middle of doing something to the turf, so that might have been why. They had pictures of the athletes lining columns around the stadium, so naturally I had to get a picture of the Usain Bolt picture. We went down to the bottom of the stadium to find that they had segways that you could rent to go around the track. I thought the idea was all too cool, so I tad to try it. Vivien got us a ready good deal on group tickets just by bargaining with them. So most of us segwayed around the track of the Bird’s Nest. After that, we went outside to get a group picture with the Bird’s Nest in the background and one with the Watercube in the background. We were a little rushed again today, so we had to grab a quick lunch and get ready to go to our company visit at CapitalBio which is a company that specializes in designing and selling microarray imaging machines. These machines run many different tests on cell samples to get information on DNA, mRNA protein expression, cell structure, etc. Initially, I thought CapitalBio would have a market in all areas of bioengineering, but it turned out to be smaller than I expected. The building was very nice, and it had a garden in the back that was really quiet and peaceful. They also had thousands of stem cell samples from bone marrow donors to collect and analyze data from so they could easily match samples to patients in need. I asked a lot of questions to satisfy my curiosity of what exactly CapitalBio did in the field of bioengineering. After that, we went back to the hotel and changed to get ready to go to a kungfu show. The show had a pretty cliché story, but I didn’t go for the story. The kungfu was really cool. They had all the different animal styles like leopard, scorpion, mantis, monkey, and snake (it reminded me a lot of kungfu panda). Frankly, I wish I could do any of that. After the kungfu show, we rode the subway home, and everyone was exhausted, so we all pretty much just crashed in our rooms.

Monday May 14, 2012

my chicken sandwich from Grandma’s Kitchen. It looks American.

After being exhausted after our really busy free day, we were allowed to sleep in a little bit today because the first thing we had was lecture at 9:30. The lecture was on the Chinese economy, and it was much more boring than the other history lectures. After the lecture was over, we went to a little Japanese/Korean restaurant in the hotel that none of us knew was there. It was surprisingly good, despite most of the meal being served cold when we all thought it was supposed to be hot. We had chicken stuffed with cheese (delicious). After lunch, we had to get changed pretty quick to go to our company visit at Tsinghua Solar. Tsinghua Solar is a surprisingly small solar energy company that designs and sells equipment to harness solar radiation. They invented a machine made out of a series of tubes that captured heat from the sun to heat water in your house. We were given a presentation on how their machine worked, and then taken to a room with the machines and all of their parts to really get an idea of how they work. Tsinghua Solar takes up only one floor of the business building they are in, but they have invented a machine that is being implemented all over China. After we left Tsinghua Solar, we went back and were on our own for the rest of the night. A few of us decided we were going to try out a restaurant called Grandma’s Kitchen to see what Chinese American food is like. We were really there to see if Chinese American food is as different from real American food as American Chinese food is from real Chinese food. I got a chicken sandwich and onion rings, and it turned out to be really good and not much different from actual American food. After that, we just decided to hang out for the rest of the night. I know, not too exciting.

Sunday May 13, 2012

the Watercube at night

Today was our free day where we were entirely on our own. All of last week we were planning on what to do for our free day. We left around 9:30 to get on the subway to go to the Pearl Market. At the Pearl Market they sell….you guessed it…. pearls. It’s 3 or 4 floors high and the second and third floors are mostly dominated by pearls. There is a mixture of souvenir stuff and other jewelry on these floors, but it was the first floor that was the most interesting. The first floor had everything from rugs to leather wallets and from watches to digital cameras. We spent a lot of time bargaining for things on the first floor. Some people there asked for a ridiculous amount for something like a fake Rolex. I ended up getting a really nice Chinese watch instead of a fake Rolex (although I bargained that fake Rolex down to about $6). After the pearl market, we all went to KFC (which is the second time I’ve had it in two days) for lunch and then went to the very near Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven is an ancient Buddhist temple that is crafted from the same architecture that I mentioned I really liked before. The temple covers a lot of area and is made up of three different parts, none of which I know the purpose for. After we left the temple we were planning to go to the Happy Magic Watercube waterpark at the Watercube where Michael Phelps won his record 8 gold medals at the 2008 Olympics. We got to the waterpark at 5 and it was a lot smaller than I thought, even though I shouldn’t have expected much for an indoor waterpark. They had a wave pool that had a huge screen above it where music videos were playing. The only thing that turned out to be a bummer was that they had 3 or 4 slides that were closed. Other than that, most of their slides were really fun. They had a slide where you got in a chamber and then the floor dropped out from underneath you. Then you went down an almost vertical drop and the slide curved back upwards. That was a really fun slide. Afterwards however, I saw a girl go down it and not quite make it over the upwards part. I had no idea how she was supposed to get out until I saw a lifeguard go down and open a hatch in the slide. Apparently they expected people to get stuck on this slide. The best slide was a tube slide that spit you out into a toilet-like swirl and ended up in the lazy river. The watercube was all lit up after the sun went down and it looked really cool in there. We left there at 9 when it closed and caught taxis back to our hotel. Me and a few others were so exhausted and hungry when we got back that we called McDonalds and had it delivered to my room. McDelivery is very convenient, but it truly is the epitome of laziness.

Saturday May 12, 2012

Today was an early start. We left the hotel at 8 AM to go to the wall. It was about a 2 hour drive there, but when we were getting close, all of a sudden the landscape turned to mountains. We got to a parking spot for our bus, but still had to walk up a hill lined with open shops with souvenir stuff. After bargaining our way through the shops, we finally caught a glimpse of the wall. It took a long uphill climb just to get to the wall itself, but when we got up there, I was pretty much blown away. Not only the thought of being on the Great Wall of China, but also the view from up there were just too much. I went a little crazy taking pictures from on top of the wall. We started walking down the wall and the view only got more impressive from there. From different viewpoints along the wall, you could see how the wall went on for miles and miles in both directions until it either ran out of sight or over a mountain. We all made sure to get plenty of pictures from atop the wall while walking along it. The weather was really clear when we got on top of the wall, so that made for great views the whole time we were up there. There was one section of the wall that was about a 200 foot climb of straight stairs, and the stairs themselves were really old, so some of them were cracked and broken. We all felt like champions when we got to the top of the stairs to the next turret of the wall. The view from up there was easily the best view we got all day, and probably one of the most impressive I have seen my entire life. We spent some time up there getting group pictures and taking in the view. The way back down was not much easier because the steps weren’t uniform, meaning some were steep while others were long. When we got back to the point where we had started, there was a slide going all the way back down to the bottom. You had to get on a little car and operate the brake with a lever. The car would go down the slide as fast as you would let it, going around twists and turns and some drops. It was so much fun. One of the students who is going around with us, Vivien, said she had been on the slide 5 times, and it was still just as fun as the first time. So, now that we were back at the bottom of the mountain where all the shops were, I made sure to get a rice farmer’s hat (a stereotypical souvenir) and we left to go back to Beijing. We ate at a restaurant that was like a Chinese CiCi’s. The Chinese like to put a bunch of different strange combinations on their pizza, so eating there was pretty much just as strange as eating anywhere else. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel where we relaxed for a little bit until later that night when we were deciding what to do. Some of us got hungry again, so we decided to go see how different the KFC was in China. It turns out that the meals are much smaller here than in America. They also have a bunch of different stuff on their menu like seafood. We went to the grocery store to get ice cream after that and Chinese ice cream is much sweeter than ice cream in the States. It’s almost too sweet. That was the end of our adventures for the day. I have to say, I think today has probably been my favorite day so far.

Friday May 11, 2012

me with Vivien and Ruby at the Summer Palace

Today breakfast was pretty much the same as any other day. We got going to the Emperor’s Summer Palace around 9 AM. When we arrived, we were surrounded by ancient Chinese architecture. I am really impressed with the ancient architecture of the Chinese. It is very ornate and intricate in design and detail. The roof design is something I’m particularly intrigued by. A little fact about the Summer Palace: the original was burnt down by Anglo-French allied forces when the Chinese refused to open their ports to trade. It was rebuilt as close to the original design as possible, but the new palace compound is an estimated one fifth the size of the original compound. We walked down the street leading to the actual palace and all the buildings were shops selling souvenir stuff. The palace compound is built on the banks of a lake. Now, the interesting thing about this lake is that it was entirely hand dug. All of the workers digging this lake piled all the dirt into a mountain, on which stands the palace itself. The lake is huge and I was blown away to find out that people actually dug it. It was made to make the shape of a peach, which in ancient Chinese culture (I think it was during the Qing dynasty, but I can’t remember for sure) means long life, and this was to bless the emperor’s reign. In a cove of the lake was a big stone ship. This was built by Empress Dowager Cixi because she said it would last longer than a Chinese navy. Well, she was right. The English and French at the time were dominating the Chinese. To get to the palace entrance, we walked down what is called the Long Corridor, which is an open hallway with a roof over it built in the ancient architectural style, and all hand painted. Again, I’ll say how impressed I was to really try and get my point across. After the Long Corridor, we ascended the steps of the palace that was built on the artificial mountainside. The top of the palace had a really nice view overlooking the lake, and we could see ships ferrying people between the palace and an island in the middle of the lake where I am guessing the emperor would go to vacate from his vacation house. The view from the top of the palace would have been better, but it had been raining earlier and was still a little overcast, so visibility wasn’t as great as it could have been. Even so, I will still have that view in my memory for a long time to come. After we got down, we went around the lake to the only bridge that connected the mainland from the aforementioned island. The bridge became famous because it was very technologically advanced for the time it was built. It is built with 17 arches supporting it. The island itself was pretty small, but I’m sure it would be a perfect place to go to enjoy gardens or something. We ended up taking the ferry back to the mainland because it docked next to the stone ship where we entered the Summer Palace compound. We wandered around for a while in between all the buildings at the base of the mountain. There was a collection of art and pottery from various dynasties throughout China’s history. After leaving, we went to another hot pot style restaurant where you are given a pot of hot liquid (in this case it was water) and we cooked meat, vegetables, and seafood in the hot pot. The strange thing I ate today was duck blood. It was tofu with added duck blood. What did it taste like you ask? Well, kind of like blood. Just the same as if you licked blood off a cut on your arm. Anyway, we didn’t do anything after that except just hang out at the hotel. We have to be up early tomorrow to go to the Great Wall.

Thursday May 10, 2012

this is us getting ready for karaoke

Sleeping in until 7:30 was pretty decent. I definitely could have slept a little longer though. I finally had an American style breakfast today: eggs, bacon, hashbrowns, toast, fruit, and juice. The only non-American things I had were drinkable yogurt, and fried rice. All of the American stuff is there, just in different places, so it has taken me a few days to compile it all. After breakfast, we had lecture in which we learned about modern Chinese history (modern being around 1800-1980). It was pretty interesting to learn the Chinese perspective of European colonization and wars related to foreign imperialism (such as the opium wars and the sino-japanese war). We learned about the Boxer rebellion and the civil war between the Nationalist and Communist parties. We spent quite a bit of time talking about Mao Zedong and the era of Maoism. We stopped around the time of Mao’s death and his impact on Chinese society. They treated him like a god while he was ruling China, even though he was responsible for much persecution and the Cultural Revolution that killed 5-10 million people. Some older people in China still treat him as a god, even though he has been dead almost 40 years. After class it was lunch time, and we all decided we wanted to see the Chinese take on McDonald’s. We got to McDonald’s to find it packed with people. The meal itself was pretty much exactly the same as it is in the States, but cheaper. For some reason though, it tasted really good. I think it was because we have all had Chinese food for almost every meal and it was a good break to get American food. Our guide Vanessa said that, as Americans, we’re so used to getting different meals everyday (like Italian for lunch and Mexican for dinner) that eating Chinese food every meal seems repetitive, whereas the Chinese who don’t have all those options like we do, are perfectly content eating the same thing for every meal. Anyway, the meal there wasn’t any different than a regular American McDonald’s. After lunch we had a little break time before we went to karaoke. Apparently, karaoke is a huge entertainment business in China. There are so many rooms in any given karaoke building and there is a pretty good number of karaoke buildings. According to the Chinese students we are here with, Ruby and Vivien, karaoke is one of the biggest weekend activities for students. We had a ton of fun singing 90’s songs together, and even our guides sang a few songs in Chinese. One of the students who is with us, Ruby, was a really good singer. She kind of blew us all out of the water. Later that night, we went to a different part of Beijing to get dinner. We went to a Vietnamese/Mexican restaurant in China, listening to American music play over the speakers. It was definitely a strange, yet unforgettable dinner in Beijing. Tomorrow is the summer palace, but there is a forecast for rain. Let’s hope it holds off until after we get back.