An Eventful Weekend in the Beautiful City of Dalian

It seems like it has been quite some time since the last blog.  Nearly four days have passed by.  A ton of great experiences have occurred between Friday and twilight on Monday night.  I have decided to do this entry a little bit different than the rest.  Because of all that has gone on in the last few days, I have decided to just post some pictures of some of the beautiful beaches that I have seen over the last couple of days.  Before I do that, I will give an extremely short summary of what has been going on.

                Last Friday was a big day for the Clemson crew.  We all headed out to the beach for our first real beach experience.  The idea to go to the beach, in the location that we did, was brought about by one of the Clemson teachers that teach the students Chinese.  I am not in this class, but I wish I was.  Anyway, we all headed out to the beach, with the professor, and had a great time.  After exploring and looking at the large rocks that are on the beach, we all sat down at this little beach-side bar.  In the time that we were at this little bar, he ordered us about 50 Lamb kabobs, 15 Pint size beers, boiled peanuts, trays and trays of squid, and some soybeans.  We all had a blast! This professor is determined to show us all a great time in Dalian.  He wants to take us all out for Korean Barbeque soon.



A sand that is very rocky is a sand with a lot of great skipping stones!



We found a bunch of "sea-glass" at the beach.  A beautiful "Shell" to match the nice, blue skies.

 

             Friday night was a night dedicated to the social scene.  Almost all fifteen of us students went out to the bars together, and split up as the night went on.  The first bar that we went to was this bar on the beach (much different than the one we went to with the professor).  This one is an actual bar where the main purpose of it is for people to drink.  There are options to get meat on a stick at this bar, but food is not the main purpose of it.  This bar is what helped us figure out what the plans for the rest of the night would be.

                While at the first bar, we met up with these girls from France, Scotland, and the UK, and decided that we would hang out with them for the rest of the night, since they have been students at Dalian University of Technology for about 8 months now.  We figured that they now what there is to do at night in the city, so we took a cab and went to the next place.  While arriving at this new bar/club, we met up with a bunch of other people from all over the world; Anywhere from Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, to Russia and Germany.  After being here for a while, the entire group went to this intense dance club.  I’ll end the night there.  We all got a cab back to the hotel at about 6:30 in the morning haha.  I don’t normally go out like this, but it is all part of experiencing a new culture and a very diverse group of people.  There is something so attractive about being able to hang out with people from every part of the world, and dance with all of them while listening to American music.  Haha, gotta love America.

                This might seem contrasting from the last couple of paragraphs, but on Sunday a couple of us went to Dalian International Christian Fellowship.  I’m pretty sure that is what it is called.  As the name implies, this Church is for internationals, and not for the Chinese.  If I had any choice the Chinese would be allowed to come to, but they are only able to worship as a group in the government approved Churches.  I’m not too sure how it all works, but I guess this Church is approved.  Who knows.

                Anyways, this Church is on the 30^th floor of some building!  When we arrived on the 30^th floor (the elevator only went to the 29^th), we walked into a room full of love.  We were met and greeted by people from all over the world.  The ones that were not able to greet us, were in groups of about 5-10 people praying and speaking in tongues.  We arrived a little early, so we must have caught the last half of some type of worship. 

                Once the service started, we worshiped for about 35 minutes and then listened to the pastor preach.  The service was on Ephesians chapter two.  She talked about how even though many races were represented in that room, we are all one in Chirst.  She emphasized how we are all brothers and sisters and all have one spirit.  It was a very great sermon for the occasion.  There were probably over fifty countries represented at this Church. 

                After Church ended, we all ate with the entire Church.  Before we ate, the pastor asked if there was anyone new in Church today, so I stood up and got a big applause from about 125 people.  So, after the service we ate at this table with some of the leaders in the Church.  After every service, a meal is prepared by one of the members of the Church.  We ate Taiwanese food, next week they will eat African food, and the next week some other type of food from a different country.  We all had such a wonderful time!



The first great beach-like area that we went to today (monday).



                This blog ended up being a lot longer than I expected!  My fingers just wouldn’t stop typing ha.  Today we went on a tour with some Chinese students and saw some beautiful places in Dalian.  I will post some of the pictures to give you an idea of how beautiful this place is.



The view from this bridge was pretty amazing.  The bus dropped all of us Clemson students and our Chinese partners off at the beggining of the bridge and picked us up on the other side.

This is the view from the bridge.  The picture doesn't do the scenery any justice, but this gives a general idea of how pretty the Dalian coastline is.  The drive is very similar to the drive on The Pacific Coast Highway out in California.





This is the final beach area that we went to today.  There were a decent amount of people on this beach.  To the right of this shot, there was a group of 10 chinese guys in speedos playing volleyball haha.  There are many islands in the oceans here like the one's in the picture.  There are also a lot of these little boats at the beaches.



A Successful First Week in Dalian

I could not ask for a more beautiful, Friday morning in Dalian.  The blue skies are out, I aced my first exam, and I have a great weekend ahead of me.  

Nothing better than a blue sky day in China!  Dalian has more than other places in China, but not near as many as South Carolina!

Before I get into the plans for the weekend, I want to talk a little about our experience yesterday teaching at the local high school.  The high school that we taught at has over 3,000 kids in attendance, and is called The Senior Middle School Attached to Dalian University of Technology.  What an experience.  We arrived at the school at around 3 o’clock and went and sat down in a classroom to wait for the kids to finish up doing whatever it was that they were doing.  We then proceeded to go outside and take pictures with the president of the school and some of the highly regarded students at the senior middle school.  After about ten pictures, Caitlin and I (my partner) got paired up with three students from the school who would be leading us to their class to teach.  I thought to myself, “If the class is going to be anything like these three students, we are in for a great time!”  

We arrived at the fourth floor of one of the buildings, took a right down the hallway, and then walked into a completely full classroom of fifty students!  All of the students applauded when we walked in the room.  We would be the teacher for the day.

At first, Caitlin and I were pretty nervous about talking in front of this many students, but the wimpy attitudes soon wore off after we began to talk.  For the first twenty or so minutes, we talked about what schooling is like in America.  We explained the basics of the school system, and then went deeper into what our high school experience consisted of.   We explained the length we went to school, how much we studied, what we did outside of school, and what we did on the weekends.  All pretty basic concepts, but WAY different from how these kids experience school.

The kids at this school, and most schools in China, have much competition in high school.  There is no time for anything other than studying.  From 7:00 in the morning to 7:00 at night, these kids are in school, studying and memorizing countless ideas.  When it is time to go home, there is also studying to be done.  So, any type of sport played, at least for this school, is probably done during the school day.  I’m not too sure how much free time they get during their 12 hour stay at school, but we did see many people outside playing basketball, volleyball, and soccer in this big concrete playground.  This is most likely when an organized sport is practiced.

During the class that consisted of about 50 minutes of talking, we tried our hardest to ask the students about what high school is like in China, and about what they wanted to know about life in America.  Our class was too cool for school.  Most people, I could tell, did not want to be in school any longer.  A class period with Americans coming to talk meant a class period to sit, relax, and do nothing.  Thankfully, the three students that brought us up to the classroom had many questions and were really interested in America.  I don’t know what we would have done without these three students.  Thankfully, I brought a PowerPoint slide of pictures to show them towards the end of the class when we started to run out of things to talk about.  From what I hear from my fellow study abroaders, we had a dud class.  Maybe it was our teaching style.  Maybe our class wasn’t as advanced in English.  Who knows…

After class, we headed outside to play some basketball! I’m not sure how this happened, but we ended up playing the girls high school team.  It was so much fun!  None of us were prepared, and none of us play basketball, so it wasn’t too bad of a match up. However, we definitely gave them a lot of practice.  My height against their height was a huge benefit ha.  I packed about 10 balls during the 30 minute game haha.  We all had a ton of fun and took lots of pictures with a bunch of random students afterwards.  They must think I’m the next Yao Ming!  

The entire high school experience was priceless.  A majority of the kids enjoyed having us there and genuinely appreciated us coming.  I can talk more about some of what I took away from this and what I learned about the Chinese school system, but I’ll save that for someone who is interested.  I know some people might not be as book-smart in the United States as these kids, but I have a lot more appreciation now for how we are taught in America.  The ability to pursue extracurricular activities and have free time to think on your own is invaluable. 

The test at the beginning of the day today was part verbal test, part written test.  The verbal part of the test was a bit stressful, as I have never had to take a verbal test.  We all had to be extremely prepared for this part of the test.  It would be terrible to be asked a question by the professor and not have a clue as to how to answer it.  We all did great.  The written test was a breeze.  I am much more a visual person than verbal, so seeing the words on the page and having time to think about the question was simple compared to hearing a question and having to answer it instantly.   

We will be heading out to the beach in a couple of minutes, so I need to end this blog here.  How nice it is to be on the weekend in a foreign country like China!  So much to explore!

Oh, School...

It’s Wednesday night in the beautiful city of Dalian, and Elbert is snoring away the night like usual.  It’s amazing how my perceptions about school change once the classes finally start.  So, on my last blog, I was really excited about classes starting.  When I look back on it, I don’t think that it was so much because of the fact that classes were starting as it was that I would be a part of a Chinese University.  I am still extremely excited to be enrolled here and able to be amongst all of these scholarly DUT students, but class, not so much excited.

Not the best looking pic, but this is the view from our hotel.  The campus is most of that area to the front, and also a lot more that cannot be seen.  Notice the mountains in the background.  Dalian has mountains like this surrounding the city.

Let me first off say that I enjoy my two classes, a lot.  For my first class, which goes from 9:00 to 11:40 each day, I have met three Chinese students that are majoring in Human Resource Management.  (We all went out to lunch together today at this delicious restaurant!)  HRM is the title of the class that we are all in, and the professor that is teaching the class is an extremely accomplished individual.  He is one of the better teachers that I have had in a long time, yet because he is such a great teacher, he expects a lot out of the students. 

It’s very interesting being in a class with only 5 students, one of which is me.  In a class that is somewhat discussion based, and with only two people that speak fluent English, being on top of our game in terms of what we are talking about in class is a must.  There is no hiding in the back of the room behind the students that spend all day studying.  It is just us two, directly in front of the teacher, with nothing holding him back from asking us questions about the material to get a feeling for how prepared we are for class.  Basically, we both have to put in a lot of time to get prepared for these classes.  It’s about 3 hours of work each day for this one class.  Bummer…

The next class that I am taking is a class about Chinese culture.  I enjoy this class greatly.  We meet up on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and go for about 3 hours.  For this week’s class, one of the activities that we have to do is go speak to a high school class and share some things about what life is like in America, and especially what it was like in high school for us.  We all have formed teams of two and will separate out to the different classrooms when we arrive tomorrow.  We are supposed to speak to them for an hour, so I’m hoping for a class with many questions!  It should be a lot of fun.  School in China is much different from school in the U.S., so I believe that when I explain what high school was like for me, the students will be very intrigued and dying to ask more questions.  I am very thankful for our school system and the amount of freedom that we receive.  The school system in America does I pretty good job of helping students develop creativity.

We all got partnered with a student from DUT today.  This is me with my friend, Grace (American name).  We went to two museums.  This one had a lot of paintings and old artifacts, while the second one had things of nature.  It was a very interesting experience. Her extracurricular activity is dancing, but mostly studying.

I’m pretty exhausted and need to sleep before my long day tomorrow, so I’ll post a few pictures of some things that we have done. On a quick side note, the price and quality of food here still amazes me.  I have to completely stuff myself to eat a meal over US 1.50.  I also must admit that I have grown extremely fond of rice.  Rice has become my bread.  I have big scoops of rice to go with 2/3rds of my meals.  I’m diggin’ it!  

The group that I am here with all went up to this restaurant on the 20-something floor of a hotel.  It was a buffet style restaurant with all kinds of different variety's of food, including seafood!  Also, unlimited beer.  To top it all off, the room spins so that you get a great view of all of Dalian.  The City is beautiful.

 

More of the city.  This view is from outside of the Natural Museum that we went to.  It was a bit smoggy today, but it was still quite pretty in person.  Right on the ocean

Dalian University of Technology

It’s Sunday night and I start two classes tomorrow at Dalian Institute for Technology.  I am extremely excited!  Since the last blog, not too much has happened, except for lots of recuperation from all of the activities that we did in Beijing, and of course, arrival at the university that I will be studying at for the next five weeks.  I feel well rested and refreshed for the first time in two weeks.  Time to brew some green tea!



The view from the train on the way to Dalian.



The first thing that I would like to mention about Dalian is my room situation here.  The room is relatively nice, considering it is only a 2-star hotel, and my roommate is quite unique.  I will talk about the room first.  We are on the fifth floor of this little hotel directly across from the University campus (no elevators), and amongst some housing for international students and Asian students.  The room has two single beds, a TV which I probably won’t turn on, and a bathroom that gives me the luxury of using the toilet and showering at the same time.  Not quite what I expected for a bathroom, but I actually enjoy it.  Yesterday I brushed my teeth, used the bathroom, and boiled up some rice all while showering. Haha I didn’t actually boil rice in there, but this bathroom is rather versatile.

The roommate that I decided to go with for the second part of the trip goes by the name of Elbert.  He is a 75 year old that is trying to finish up his undergrad degree that he was unable to finish back in the fifties.  Besides me having to look after him and make sure he stays alive (he got sick recently), he will be a good roommate to have.  I like my quiet time when I am in the bedroom, which I probably won’t be in too often, so he is most likely the best option for a roommate. I could not imagine experiencing China for the first time at 75 years old!  He is a trooper for sure.

Our entire group at The Great Wall.  There is Elbert up front holding the flag

Our location in Dalian is great.  There are plenty of convenience stores and local markets in close walking distance, and the university and dining hall is less than a minute walk away.  One of the great things about being in Dalian, which is a primarily made up of Chinese people and very little tourists, is that the prices are a lot cheaper, especially for food.  I have spent no more than 8 Yuan for a meal here thus far—only a little over a dollar.  The meals have been the best that I have had in China, and they are cheap and filling.  Today in the Dalian Dining hall I ate two large scoops of rice and some tasty sweet and sour chicken, all for the equivalency of 50 US cents.  To get satisfied for a meal that costs 50 cents in America is near impossible.  If anyone is aware of a fifty cent meal, other than roman noodles, I would love to hear about it!

I am excited about being here for the next five weeks.  Well, we are actually headed out to western China for part of one week, but I will talk about that when the time comes near.  Either way, it feels good to be able to get situated in one spot and get to know the area and people for a while.  I will most likely be partnered with a Chinese student while here and will have 3 Chinese students in my 5 person class.  Talk about a great student-to-teacher ratio.  I also will have a class made up of all of the students on this trip.  I will discuss more about these classes later.  I’m definitely looking forward to all that Dalian has to offer.  Time to get back into the books!

Beijing Fling

It’s Friday morning at the Capitol Hotel in Beijing, China.  I have not blogged for nearly an entire week, which is due to the little amount of time that the group I am with has had to relax. We have been non-stop busy for about a week it seems.  I have experienced days were I have had to put in such a large amount of effort to stay up; to  the point that my brain seemed to be shutting down on me and there was nothing to be done about it.  All of this exhaustion has been solely because the intense amount of activities that are available here.  It’s ridiculous. Beijing has been filled with many great stories and adventures, but some things really stuck out to me while I was here.  This blog will hopefully give you a little idea of what I took away from this fast-paced city.

                The first great experience was the overnight train ride to Beijing.  I’m not sure how many people get to go on train rides like this, but I would definitely recommend it.  The ride is obviously a lot slower than a plane ride, yet I feel like if I had an option between the two, I would go with the train.  The greatest thing about the train ride was our little room that we stayed in.  The room was made up of two bunk beds, a small little table between the two bunks, a large window, and a little area to store our book bags.  It was a tight little fit, to say the least; what an amazing time it was, though.  All of us felt so cozy in our little beds, inside the little room, with great night views of rural China.  I can’t really explain how comfortable and worry free we felt in this little room, so go on a train ride with some close friends or family to experience it.  The simplicity of it, I believe, is what made it so great. 

I’m not sure if I’ve had the chance to explain the bathroom situation over here in China, so I’ll lay it out for you here.  While on the train, or anywhere in China, if someone has to drop some buddies off at the pool, there will be a nice hole in the ground for them to use.  The hole looks to be stainless steel, but that is about the best of it.  You just squat over the hole and hope that it turns out okay ha.  Waking up at 3 in the morning on the train to a hole in the ground was not what I wanted to be doing.  I’ll forever be thankful for how wealthy and spoiled we are in America.

The next thing that stuck out in Beijing was our trip to the silk market, which could also be labeled as the six story mall full of bargaining and counterfeit items. Unbelievable is what this place is!  It is like nothing I would have expected it to be.  I can almost say that most highly valued brand items across the world (that can fit in a mall) where in this mall, except for fake.  Anything from a Rolex watch and Nike shoes, to counterfeit iPods and North Face jackets.  Don’t get me wrong, some of things were not counterfeit, like the artsy items, but most of the items in this store are just for looks. 





One of the many aisles.  Notice the fake, white crocs on the right.

 This is how the silk market works.  While walking to get sized for my suit, I will hear people talking/yelling in my ear on each side of me trying to get me to buy an item in their store.  Some of the people working the little stores would even grab me and pull me in there.  These people want to sell something, bad!  While I was at the suit shop and trying to bargain for the suit, the little girl that was helping me out was getting really upset and mad at me, but in a flirty kind of way.  After I had been talking to her for about 15 minutes, I told her that I would go check out some of the other suit shops (all of the suit places were beside each other).  She would then grab my arm and BEG me to stay there.  One time before I was about to leave (I attempted to leave many times), she pushed me against the wall into a manikin! Haha this is no joke.  I was laughing of course, and she wasn’t extremely serious, but this is how they run the stores in the silk market.  They want the sale so much that they will straight up harass you to get you to stay in the store.  For the people that I don’t really care for in the stores, it is easy to just walk to the next place of interest, but for some people, it is a little hard to leave.  They genuinely made us feel bad for not buying their items.  A lot more went on in the silk market that blew my mind, like how quickly the time passed in there, but I will save all of that for a later date.  I have a lot of stories about the silk market.  We went there 4 times…



At the beginning of the 2 mile loop



The next thing that blew my mind in Beijing was our trip to The Great Wall of China.  Before I experienced The Great Wall, I didn’t really think much of the name.  I didn’t think much about it being called great.  However, when we arrived at this unbelievably steep and long wall, my breath was taken away.  This place is absolutely unbelievable.  I have always known that the wall is long, but I never had a clue that it would be so steep.  The hike up this beast showed me, and the group that I was with, just how out of shape we are.  In some parts it felt like we were walking completely vertical, with little horizontal movement.  Some steps are really tall, some are really short; some steps are wide, some are narrow.  I really can’t describe it.  I think we did about a 3 mile loop on the wall, but I’d say it felt more like 10 miles.  The view from the top was amazing, despite how smoggy the day was.  I’m struggling to describe the wall, so I’ll just post some pictures.  It’s definitely one of the wonders of the world.



Getting closer to the end of the long ascent!



Striking a pose.  Looking forward to the walk down!

An intense walk down.  A fall would have been brutal.

The next thing that surprised me about this week in Beijing is/was the amount of smog in the air.  It is seriously hard to breathe some days.  On one particular day, we had to take an hour cab ride to meet with the company Caterpillar, and then take an hour long cab ride back.  This day was ridiculously smoggy.  Visibility was about 200 yards.  The air was thick and smelt like exhaust and other kinds of pollution.  (It is not uncommon to see the Chinese wearing those masks that filter the air). I didn’t realize that I was doing this until later in the night, but I did not take a deep breath the entire day.  My body knew how bad the air quality was and so I took really small, shallow breaths.  Like I said, I didn’t really have to think about doing this, I just did it.  Kind of like blinking.  The next day, many people in the group felt sick.  Our throats and lungs took a beating.  On a happier note, the next day was beautiful!  Some wind came through and blew most of the smog away.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about this, but we went out to the bar one night, which we later found out was the gay bar district, and the group that I was with met some girls from Iceland.  One thing that I have noticed while in China is that we run into many people from around the world. Anyways,   these girls from Iceland were EASILY the most interesting people that I have ever met in my 21 year long life.  I talked to this girl for two or three hours, and it seemed like only minutes.  I was completely drawn in.  The accent is a lot of which makes it so easy to be interested, but it is also the life that they live. Iceland is a unique place.  I am very interested in going to Iceland now.  I would love to talk about all of the things that I heard about the way Iceland does life, however,  I’d rather talk about it in person.  One interesting thing that Iceland does is the way last names are given.  For instance, if I were to have a daughter, her last name would be Benjaminsdotter—Dotter for daughter.  I found that pretty interesting.  She intrigued me in many more ways than this.  One of the best conversations I’ve ever had I think.  I must love accents.  Especially Icelandic ones. 

(These girls graduated high school, which I think they call elementary school, worked for 7 or so months, and have been traveling around for five months.  They go back to Iceland today.  I feel like our run in with them was meant to happen and was a little key to how my life could go. )

The last, but definitely not least, most impressionable thing that happened in China is the arrival of the new group and the departure of the old group.  Today has been somewhat of a sad day for me.  All of the people that I flew over to China with, experienced China for the first time with, and did many things together with, left about two hours ago.  We all had a great bond and experienced some amazing things together.  I will miss all of them greatly.  I could not have asked for a better group to experience China with, and now I will be able to experience it with an entirely new group of people.  I’m excited to get to know these people for the next five weeks!

All in all, Beijing has been quite the experience.  A lot has been left out of this blog, in terms of the things that we have experienced here, but some of the main things were highlighted. So many things happen here that it is hard to get it all down.  For example, I saw a baby poop on the cement, because they don’t use diapers here, but go to the bathroom through the slit in their pants.  I also ate a scorpion.  These just popped into my head.  So much is going on in China and so many new experiences for all of us here.  Every day is full of numerous, unique experiences.

Dropping a deuce like a Champ!



Soda Drinking Bears and an Irish Pub for Dinner

Yesterday was our free day in Nanjing.  It was another eventful day in China to say the least.  The first thing that we did was head out to the zoo that is in Nanjing.  We walked to the subway, bought our ticket which was only 3 Yuan, and rode the Subway for about 20 minutes to the Zoo (my first subway ride!).  After riding for 20 minutes, we got out and walked for about 10 minutes to get to the zoo.  It's weird, even though I have felt like I have been on Mars this entire trip, I felt even more lost once we landed in this city that the zoo was in.  I don’t think many people there have seen Americans.  I really don’t.  Barely any Americans go to Nanjing, and even less go to the zoo 20 minutes outside of Nanjing.  It’s a good thing we had a group of ten people.

Some dirty Pandas at this zoo.  I would love to realease them.

The zoo was strange.  The people I went with said that it was the worst zoo that they had ever been to and probably the worst they will ever go to.  I didn’t mind it too much, but I must admit, the animals there, and the zoo in general, seemed a bit abandoned. There were not many people in the Zoo at all, and it was so huge that it took about a ten minute walk to go from one animal to the next.  The zoo also had random theme parks in it and things that you would find at the fair.  My friend Hampton went into this little ride that had a bunch of manikins in there killing each other.  He seemed a little scarred after attending this ride that cost him 10 Yuan.  However weird this zoo might have been, I enjoyed all of the animals that were there.  They seemed extremely friendly.  It’s almost mind blowing how friendly they were.

The most intense part of the zoo trip was this encounter we had with the Asian bears (they actually looked Asian). After walking for about ten minutes from seeing the Tigers, Panthers, and Cheetahs, we  arrived to see this Bear and his Bear friend drinking sodas.  They weren’t just drinking the soda, they were grabbing the soda from the people outside of the cage, taking the top off, and chugging like they were human.  Standing on the back legs and everything.  We were viewing from the second story at this time, so we walked down to get a closer view.  I have a bunch of great videos of this that I plan to upload to Youtube at some time.  I think it has the potential to go viral. 

I even got to feed this Bear.  I bought these spicy peanuts on the market earlier in the day that I didn’t really like, so I let the Bears try them.  I would put the peanuts in my hand, stretch through the bars while the Bears stretched through their bars, and let the Bear take the peanuts right out of my hand.  This will most likely be the only time I will ever touch a Bear’s hand again, and this is probably a good thing.  After a few times of feeding him, he grasped my hand like he wanted to take it along with the peanuts.  I had to strain to get my hand out of his strong grip.  I quit feeding him peanuts out of my hand after this ha.  These Bears absolutely loved it.  We were all feeding them, because they might not have eaten for a couple of weeks.  There were no employees to be found at this place.

More cool things happened at the zoo, one of which we watched for a long time.  The most playful monkeys were at this zoo.  They were just like little humans.  I don’t believe in evolution, but after watching these monkeys play and have fun like little kids, I started to feel like I was watching humans play inside of a cage.  Crazy.  We watched these monkeys for about 25 minutes.

At night time we ate at an Irish Pub.  I don’t think anyone on this trip enjoys how the Chinese eat.  I’m not even sure how they have a life expectancy of more than 20 years old.  The food that they eat seems extremely unhealthy and very nutrient lacking.  Some people say that the Chinese are so short because they lack nutrients.  I would have to agree.  So, the Irish Pub was a good choice.  Most of us got burgers, and they were really good.  It was strange being in this Pub.  There was no one in there except us, the Scottish owner, an Irish lady, and a guy that has been in China for a year but is from America.  I figure on a Friday night there would be more people in here, but that obviously was not the case.  I don’t think the Chinese do weekends like we do.  I’ll have to confirm that with someone that knows more about when Chinese relax. Before we left the Pub, about 10 Europeans walked in to the Pub.  Such a weird thing to be around so many Europeans in China.

Bargain Central

Today we head out to Beijing on a Train.  I think we leave around ten tonight and get to Beijing at six in the morning.  We will be discussing some of the companies that we have visited and what commonalties all of these companies have that enter into China.  It should be fun.  We are all excited for Beijing.  My teacher has been talking up this place called the silk market for a while.  She has told a lot of people to wait to do their shopping until the silk market.  It is basically a six story mall that you can bargain at.  I know I’m pumped.  Bargaining is extremely fun and requires skill, all of which we are acquiring.  I will most likely not be back for another week, but I will be journaling a little so that I can post what I have been doing when I get a connection.  Be back soon.     

5 Star Hotel in Nanjing = Employees that know a little English

It is Friday Morning in the city of Nanjing.  On Wednesday morning, we headed out of Shanghai at around 7:45 and headed toward the town of Suzhou for a company visit.  The town of Suzhou is a beautiful town made up of many different corporate buildings, all of which are only two to three stories tall.  A couple of people from the area say that this town was designed in the same way that Singapore was designed, which was very noticeable to me when we drove through the streets.  This place has a lot of nice trees and flowers all along the road.  It has this really tropical feel to it, with lots of company buildings hidden behind trees. 

The company that we visited here is called Kemet.  What this company does is produce capacitors for electronic devices. I had no clue what a capacitor was when arriving at the job site, and still am a little foggy about what exactly a capacitor does, but I will try and explain.  A capacitor is this small chip that is needed in products that use batteries.  It is like a mediator for the electricity in the outlet and the battery inside the phone or other electronic device.  The capacitor basically regulates how much energy is let out inside of the device.  This explanation is terrible, but it’s early, and I am still a little unclear about it all.  I am pretty useless when it comes to knowing about what all goes into electronic devices to make them run.  Either way, the company visit was very interesting.  We were able to go into the factory where they mass produce the capacitors.  This was very interesting.  One client that they sell capacitors to is Apple.

After the company visit, we headed out to Nanjing.  The ride to Nanjing was a smoggy/cloudy one, but we were still able to see some great views from our bus.  For the two-three hour ride to Nanjing, we were able to see our first Chinese mountains, and our first view of grass fields.  It was really nice to see that there are not buildings everywhere in China.  Don’t get me wrong, there still were a lot of houses on this drive, but not too many.  I thought about the idea of overpopulation in China for a while on this ride.

Yesterday was our first full day in Nanjing.  It was a day full of history and sightseeing. Nanjing is a much more beautiful place to me than Shanghai, but it still has its rough areas.  The first place that we headed to yesterday was the place were the “father of China” was buried. It was very pretty in this area and had a lot of great views.  I will post a picture of it because I’m not sure how to explain it.  A lot of stair climbing to get to the top, but a great view from the top of the mountains and city.

The view from the top was beautiful!

After this, we headed to another historical site which gave me this unbelievable sadness for the people of China.  Back in 1937 when the Japanese were trying to take over the world, they came through Nanjing (Capitol of People’s Republic of China at the time) and murdered many of the people.  300,000 of them in six weeks.  People were tortured, raped, and murdered.  The museum that we walked through had a great amount of pictures and stories from this event that the Chinese will never forget.  One picture had a Chinese guys’ head on top of a street sign with a cigarette in his mouth.  That is about how much respect the Japanese had for the Chinese during this.  Many people were raped and tortured.  The Chinese that were in the museum were clearly upset when walking through this museum.  Mothers and daughters held hands and groups of people cried.  I wanted to hug them all and really felt for them.  I lost a lot of respect for the Japanese during this.  It is hard for me to grasp how they could do the things that they did.

Many of these statues were at the beginning of the museum.  They showed a lot.  There were really sad poems at the bottom of them.

This was at the end of the Museum.  I did not feel at peace after walking out of there, and I doubt if the Chinese were either.

On a happier note, I ate at McDonald’s last night! Yes!  Easily the best meal of the trip for me.  I had a Big Mac combo and a McFlurry.  I nearly got two Big Mac combos, but I decided to practice a little self-control so that the Chinese don’t get the wrong idea of me and America (and to save a little Yuan for the street vendors). Over the last few days, I have had little insight as to what I have eaten.  For the last couple of meals, I would say that I have been able to identify about 20% of the food items.  It’s a mystery nearly all dinner/lunch long ha.  Breakfast is my one meal of the day that I am aware of all that I put in my mouth.  I like breakfast very much. I’m excited for breakfast right now. 

I have a lot of interesting things to say about China, such as all of the different smells that pass through my nostrils while walking in the street, but I will save all of these interesting topics for a later date.  I am finally feeling a little less Jet-lagged, but I still am jet-lagged.  Around 4:00 PM I get real tired and must make myself last through the day.  One other cool thing before I head out for our free day in Nanjing, we bought some Baijo at the store last night.  It is this Chinese liquor that tastes similar to gasoline.  We didn’t finish the little bottle that we bought.  Thankfully, it was only six yuan haha.  Less than a dollar for some liquor.  Bad taste or not, this stuff would be a hit on a college campus back in the states.  Gotta love China.

The Yangtze River.  As you can see, a very large amount of ships were in this river.  The biggest river I have ever seen by a long shot.

We will leave on Saturday and head by train to Beijing.  I will have no internet connection during this time, so I will be cut off from America and the rest of the world once again.  I will do a little blogging, but will have to post them at a later date.  We meet up with the 6-week group in Beijing, which I am really excited about.  I am sure that Beijing will be great fun for everyone, and will probably pass by pretty quickly.  I am extremely excited for Beijing and all that we will be doing there.  We will meet more companies in Beijing, as well.  I will be back in around a week if I don’t blog later on in the day.