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.