Final Quesitons

Ethical Issues in my Profession

It’s no secret that many, many companies have outsourced production and manufacturing to China in recent years. With this outsourcing comes a whole new set of challenges and responsibilities on a global scale. Foxconn is one company that has been in the news in recent months due to, allegedly, appalling working conditions and low pay. A rash of suicides by those employed by Foxconn, which makes Apple products as drawn attention to the issue. In the U.S., we have a government-mandated minimum wage. Since there is no such rule in China, companies have realized that labor there is cheaper therefore profits will be greater. The point is that employee issues are much more of a problem in China than in the U.S. China has begun to crack down on its widespread pollution problem, but the standards for cleanliness are still nowhere near what they are here. China’s culture is not as diverse as that of the U.S. Consequently, people of different races and religions are not looked upon as kindly as they are here. Men are favored in Chinese society and therefore tend to make more money and receive better benefits than women. From a financial standpoint, these facts are advantageous for businesses. Lower wages mean higher profits and fewer regulations save money and time as well. The ethical side of the argument is also compelling. Rather than contributing to the problems of low wages and environmental damage, shouldn’t American companies try to bring the working conditions of the U.S. to China? Profits for American companies could certainly increase by outsourcing to China, but only by furthering the problems in that country.

 

Educational Breadth as Professional Development

I think one of the best ways to prepare students for a lucrative career is by educating them about other cultures, Chinese in particular. China is one of the fastest growing countries and markets in the world and its importance in business and engineering cannot be overstated. It’s critical for students ranging from middle school to college to understand the importance of China and the Far East. While the culture of China is not as different as I expected, there is certainly a lot to learn about how the Chinese operate in a business-and for that matter, social-setting. I think Mandarin should be offered in schools starting from about fifth or sixth grade and cultural classes should be taught as well. I’m planning on taking Mandarin next semester so, hopefully, I can pick up enough to get by and be a more attractive candidate for a job. I’d also like to take courses on culture and business practices of the Far East.

 

Lifelong Learning, Continuing Education as Professional Development

The trend I noticed while at company visits was that most of the people giving the presentations learned about their job while doing it. Most presenters said that they got the basics of their field while in undergraduate school, but learned the intricacies of their position while working with the company. Most learned English in school and applied it on the job. Given how quickly technology changes, the employees at the companies like Tsinghua Solar, Lenovo, and Capital Bio have to keep up-to-date on the requirements of their position with regards to the technology of their company. The distilling company, on the other hand, has been making alcohol the same way for years. Their employees’ jobs are less demanding when it comes to learning new things. For many of the employees we met, technology defined their jobs. Lenovo, Capital Bio, and Tsinghua Solar are all companies that make technology. In order to be successful in the world today, practicing life-long learning is critical. The world is always changing and there is always more to learn about it. There are always newcomers to the job market that have a jump on learning because they just finished doing it. The ability to engage in life-long learning is invaluable in order to stay competitive.

 

The Social Environment of Professional Life

I didn’t notice a huge connection between people’s social and professional lives in China. Most of the bars and social places we went to were mostly filled with people our age. I suppose other places had a more professional clientele, but we didn’t see it much. The main political issue at the time was about the activist Chen Guangcheng and his asylum in the U.S. I didn’t learn as much about the issue as I should’ve, but I knew it was a tense political matter. There was also a story about a British tourist who attempted to rape a Chinese woman in a crowded area. This resulted in a lowered opinion of Westerners that put us at risk. Current events can always affect the economy. In business it’s very important to be able to recognize how one seemingly irrelevant event can help or hurt the stock market and economy as a whole.

 

Functioning on Multi-Disciplinary Teams:

In the two times that I worked in a group setting with an engineering student, I had no trouble at all. 75% of our four-person group was business students, but there were no communication issues at all. This does not mean that communication problems don’t occur. An engineer talking to business people about the structural components of suspension bridges, for example, isn’t always a good idea. I think it’s important to recognize where people of different backgrounds will have strengths. For example, in developing our final project idea, the business students left the technological intricacies to the engineering student. At the same time, we focused on the best way to present the product, how we thought the market would handle the product, and how it could be funded. This is not to say that people of different educational backgrounds can’t work together on the same subject, but in the interest of time and efficiency, it makes more sense to divide and conquer our own areas of expertise. The point of the Plus3 program is to give business and engineering students opportunities to work together because it is common in the “real world”. The best way to work together, however, is left up to us. 

Saturday, May 19. 20:05

Well, this is the last blog. We’re on our way home. I’ll be sitting here for the next ten hours listening to the tag-team of toddlers crying behind us and, sort of, wishing the trip wasn’t over. I suppose every trip is like that, but this one especially. There aren’t words to describe how awesome it has been. I can honestly say that I had almost as much fun in the past two weeks as I did all of freshman year. And I had a great freshman year. Everyone on this trip made it fun in their own way. I made some really good friends that I hope to see a lot of next year and gained invaluable travel, cultural, and historical knowledge and experience. I’m so happy I was able to take advantage of the opportunity.

We woke up really late today because we were out late again last night. It was actually better that we slept longer because we had nothing to do until 1:30 when we had to meet. We spent most of the morning packing and hanging out in Joe and Brian’s room. Saying goodbye to Vivien and Ruby was sort of sad. Chances are we’ll never see them again, but hopefully one or both of them will make it to the U.S. soon.

On the way to the airport, we saw a horse and cart on the side of the road. The horse was either foaming at the mouth or throwing up, it was hard to tell, but it would immediately re-eat whatever came out of its mouth. Obviously it was in some discomfort, but we were joking about the possibility that it was really enjoying eating its own vomit. That was definitely one of the funniest moments of the trip. When we got closer to the airport we saw a plane land on the runway and Dan commented about the large quantity of wheels that it had. Brian sarcastically explained that they tried “unicycle planes” but they didn’t work. This was also very funny.

After we got checked in, we said goodbye to Vanessa and Dr. Gao-they’re staying longer than us-and went through customs and security. Pesce, Brian and I got some lunch at what must be the most luxurious Pizza Hut in the known world. It gave the Peking Duck place a run for its money. Unfortunately, their idea of a “large” pizza was more like our idea of a personal one. We went back to the gate and looked through Hilary’s pictures of our escapades at night. The Chinese are incredibly good at photobombing. It may just be because there are so many of them around all the time, but there was this one guy who showed up in at least four separate pictures.

There were too many funny moments in this trip to count. I’d also just like to say how lucky we were to have Vanessa and Dr. Gao as our chaperones. Both of them have a wealth of knowledge about the country and the culture. Dr. Gao, who is certainly one of the smartest people I’ve met, obviously has the most experience in China and is always very happy to share the knowledge of that experience with us. Vanessa has the advantage of being 100% American. She understands exactly how things work at home and can explain to us, in terms clear to us, how it is different in China. Additionally, they understand how we like to spend our nights and do a good job of giving us space without losing sight of the responsibility they have. They treated us like adults and were an invaluable resource on this trip. I can’t thank them enough. I could’ve spent at least another week in Beijing, but I guess you have to come back to reality sometime. It is the reality of summer though, so that’s not too bad.

Saturday, May 19. 18:54

We didn’t have whole lot to do yesterday. We got up fairly early because Pesce, Hilary, Dallago and I had to finish up our PowerPoint on NavaTech. This was slightly unpleasant because Hilary, Jasmine, Joe, Dan, and I didn’t get back until 3:30 the night before. We started at La Bamba as usual, and then tried Sensation. It was almost identical to Propaganda so we went there instead. We were planning on heading back to the hotel, but then met some people who said we should go to Wu with them. It was ladies night there so we did. The odd thing about Wu is that it looks like a dive when you walk in, but it’s huge. There are multiple floors with bars at each. It was pretty great. Regardless, we were out really late.

We had only really worked out the basic idea of the project the night before so we had to clean up the presentation and add some information. I did the section on the P.E.S.T. (political, economic, social, technological) factors. We finished up at 9:27 so we had to immediately leave for the conference room for the 9:30 class. The same lady as the day before taught the first hour and 20 minutes. This one was mostly on the family structure and habits of Chinese people. I spent most of the time reading through the PowerPoint to prepare for our presentation.

We were feeling confident so we decided to go first. Before we started, Vanessa announced that there was a possibility of us getting our passports checked in public to try to weed out illegal aliens. Apparently, some British guy tried to rape a Chinese woman in the middle of a crowded public area. Obviously this was not well received by anyone in China and has resulted in an understandably low opinion of westerners, as if it was ever high. A British chap was pretty much the worst type of person to try to do something like this because of England’s history with China. I’ve always kind of thought England was cool, but their colonization habits were pretty barbaric. It’s an interesting insight I got while there. Our own colonization happened so long ago that we have a different perspective on it. Anyway, we did toss around jokes about getting a big British flag to carry around or shirts or whatever, but the fact is it’s not a funny situation. It seems that people around the world have a low opinion of westerners for a reason. The problem is that it’s generalized to include anyone who looks, in this case, British.

The presentation was supposed to be about 10 minutes long, but we were up there for closer to 20, I think. I was really happy with how it went. I think we had one of the better ideas, and the way we presented it was really good. Dr. Gao said he liked ours the best. And that is high praise. The idea of presenting it to Google was jokingly tossed around. One of our jokes throughout the process of doing this project was about what would happen if someone went in front of everyone and pitched an invention that had already been done. Something like “okay, here’s what we came up with: we’re going to take a rock and smooth over all the sides to make it round. Then it will roll.”

Another joke we had was about what Brian’s group was actually going to do theirs on. One of the group members had had the frankly ridiculous and certainly impossible idea of “GPS shoes” that would walk you where you wanted to go. Obviously, that one was shot down. Their group went second and, until Brian started talking, we still had no idea what their product was. Right before they started, Pesce said “at the end” and then did the “blow your brains out the back of your head” gesture. I was actually crying it was so funny. Unfortunately, keeping quiet while laughing that hard is really difficult. Whenever either of us looked at each other or Brian, the laughing would begin again. It reached the point of being painful.

Their idea ended up being called “The Tree of Life” and it was essentially an industrial-sized air filter that would be fitted to all buildings in an attempt to clean the air in Beijing. Dr. Gao, who is a pretty literal guy, spent much of their project thinking that they were actually going to make a tree. At the end there was time for questions and the first one he asked was “So…what does it do?” Hilarious. All the presentations were finished around 12, and we had nothing to do for the rest of the day.

A bunch of us went and got food at the Rec Center. Some people took the subway or taxis to go see some more sites. We didn’t get back until about 3:30 the night before so I relaxed in the room and took a nap. It didn’t sound like I missed out on much. At 5:30, we met to walk to the farewell dinner. It was in the same area as the karaoke bar, so we had to take the annoyingly roundabout route to get there again. The restaurant was really nice and the food was good, but we did sit there for quite a while. After a bunch of pictures, we walked back to the hotel to get ready to go out.

We took advantage of my cards before leaving. Turned out that picking Brian as a “date” was a bad call. Oh well. We convinced Ruby and Vivien to come with us, so that was fun. We started by all getting an ICB at La Bamba before heading over to Propaganda for, surprisingly, Propagandas. We danced there for a while before heading over to Wu. Joe and I danced with a bunch of girls, but the most memorable was definitely the one from Latvia. Only person I’ve ever met from Latvia. For the second night in a row, we didn’t get back until about 3:30. 

Thursday, May 17. 17:57

We had our last company tour this morning. It took about a half hour to get to the corporate headquarters of Lenovo, but it was worth every minute. This tour was by far the best one yet. It was really head and shoulders above the others. I think there are two main reasons for this: the first is that the products they make are much more relevant to us than solar panels, bioengineered medical supplies, alcohol (okay maybe not that one), or seal coatings. The second is that the tour was simply better.

A young guy who spoke very good English and was really enthusiastic about the products led it. He took us through basically a hallway of walls with pictures and comments about the company and its beginnings. He also showed us the evolution of their computers since the founding in 1984. You can tell Lenovo spends a lot of money on marketing and, honestly, it works. They called this visit a “tour”, but it was more of a marketing scheme. If I were to ever purchase a Windows computer, it would certainly be a Lenovo. Pesce says he loves his and you can just tell that they’re built better than the other Windows options, particularly Dells.

He also showed us the wide range of tablets they make along with a large computer whose monitor is touch sensitive and can be used like a large tablet. They also make a large 3D TV that can be used for Wii-style games as well. All in all, I was extremely impressed. We then took the bus to one of the best Peking duck restaurants in Beijing for what, I thought, was the best meal of the trip. The duck was amazing. It’s really fatty, but delicious. It was served Lazy Susan-style with a bunch of other things like chicken, tofu, and rice. I made the mistake of eating one of the peppers that the chicken was cooked with. That resulted in about ten minutes of serious discomfort. That was when I learned that you aren’t supposed to eat the vegetables that things are cooked with.

This restaurant was right in the middle of the Tsinghua Campus, so we just walked back to the hotel. At 2 we had our fourth class, this one on Chinese politics. An older, female professor taught it from Tsinghua whose name I can’t remember. The lesson was interesting, as they’ve all been, but many of us were having a hard time staying awake. I actually resorted to drinking the tea, which helped. I prefer having the lessons in the morning. After the lesson, Pesce, Dallago, and I came back to our room to work on our final presentation. It has to be on some sort of business opportunity we’ve seen while here.

Pesce came up with the idea for a website/app that streamlines city travel in Beijing. The basic gist of it is that you input information about origin, destination, time of day, and budget and the program tells you which mode of transportation (car, bike, taxi, bus, train, scooter) would be quickest and cheapest. There’s more to it than just that, but the core idea is that it’s a refinement of normal GPS. I really like it. We worked up the PowerPoint pretty quickly so now it just needs to be edited. I think most people are going out tonight, so hopefully we’ll have just as much fun tonight as we did last night.

Wednesday, May 16. 19:28

We got a pretty early start today (around 7:50) because we had two companies to visit. After a surprisingly long drive, first up was the alcohol distillery, the name of which I can’t actually remember. What I do remember, however, was the smell. Sour mash. The whole place was basically open-air, but we saw each step of the distilling process and even got to drink small amounts of two different types of alcohol. The first one wasn’t too bad. But the second, which was about 50 years old, was pretty rough. I’d compare it to nail polish remover.

We then got back on the bus to drive to the next company, Jangho, which makes seal coatings among other things. This was a little more what I’d been expecting with these business visits: very clean, white lobby, someone explaining what the company does, and then a walk through the assembly area. Unfortunately, the interpreter for the guy giving the talk spoke too softly to be heard much of the time. So I missed a fair amount of information. After this tour, the distillery company treated us to lunch at a fairly traditional restaurant that is actually only used by business executives. Similarly to the first night, the food was served on a large Lazy Susan thing and we took what we wanted.

When we got back to the hotel, Uncle Tom was waiting. So we got changed around and left for the Fragrant Hills around 2:30. The ride wasn’t too long, not much more than the Summer Palace, but the walk was pretty serious. “Hills” in western culture usually mean small, rolling irregularities in otherwise flat areas. Not the Fragrant Hills. We climbed from the parking lot at the bottom all the way to the top of a mountain. It was worth it though because the view was unbelievable. It was really clear today because of all the wind yesterday, so we could easily see the Summer Palace and a good part of Beijing. It is enormous. It really is unfathomably big. Most large U.S. cities like L.A. or New York are made up of a smallish cluster of tall buildings surrounded by smaller ones. Not here. The entire city is high-rise after high-rise and it stretches for miles in all directions. I think Uncle Tom enjoyed himself and I was happy to see him, so that was good. We dropped him off near the train station before coming back to the hotel to prepare for the night’s festivities. Once again, La Bamba to Propaganda.

Tuesday, May 15

Today was pretty eventful. We got started at 9:30 by going over to take our tour of the Bird’s Nest. Since we’d already seen the Water Cube when we went to the waterpark, we skipped that tour. On the way to the Bird’s Nest the bus driver tried to take a detour in a road that ran parallel to the main one. He didn’t see the sign saying that there was only 1.8 meters of clearance. By the time he saw the low bridge we’d already driven through a bunch of low trees for about 200 yards and there were a bunch of taxis behind us. Watching him try to reverse this bus back up this narrow road, into an intersection, through low trees, was hilarious. Brian joked that he brought dishonor to his family.

Because of our detour we got to the Bird’s Nest about 10 minutes late. What an awesome bit of architecture. From my admittedly useless analysis, it seems like the metal “nesty” part on the outside of the structure is pretty superfluous. But then again I’m not an architect. When we got inside, we noticed people riding around on Segways down on the track. We paid 100 RMB to do it for 20 minutes. I’d never ridden one before and was under the impression that it was easy. I’m not saying it was hard, but there’s more to it than just leaning. It didn’t help that the ones they gave us had speed limiters on them. Or so I gathered. Whenever I hit any type of speed, the whole thing would lean back by itself therefore killing the speed. It was incredibly annoying. Still, a cool thing to say we did.

Afterward we stopped at KFC for lunch, which I didn’t partake in. We then changed into our business clothes to go see Capital Bio. After an excruciatingly long bus ride-about an hour-we got there. What a building. As like many buildings we’ve been in, it relied heavily on natural light and therefore was almost entirely glass. There was a beautiful garden and water scene in the lobby. Our guide gave us a basic rundown on the products made and what they do before taking us to a conference room for questions. A lot of the bioengineering jargon went over my head, but I could certainly grasp what an interesting company it is. That industry has tons of potential.

We were then taken to see some research labs before going outside to walk through the outdoor garden area. On the way back, the bus driver took us through some really unpleasant areas on the outskirts of Beijing. There was garbage everywhere and people living in cement shells. A bit of a reality check I suppose. We didn’t have much time to change before we needed to meet to go to the Kung Fu show. Unfortunately, we had to take the subway to the same station we were at on Sunday. Which meant three trains-during rush hour. Not a good time. When we finally got there we had to walk a bit to get to the theater.

The show was interesting, but maybe not all that exciting. The talent of these people, however, cannot be overlooked. There were kids literally doing flips and landing on their heads. Unfortunately, slow, spiritual speaking parts in very low light characterized most of the show. I slept at points. The show was about a Kung Fu master telling a kid a story about “Chung Lee”, a boy just like the kid. Most of the show involved Chung Lee ascending through the ranks of Kung Fu. The big twist of the show was when the original kid asked if the narrator was Chung Lee. It turned out that he was. No one saw that one coming. We then made the long trek back and Brian, Dan, Joe, and I had a drink and some food at La Bamba since we hadn’t had dinner. Observation: They are all about cucumbers here. People walk around eating them and there are cucumber-flavored things everywhere. I ate one cucumber-flavored potato chip and that was it. It was awful. I also unknowingly bought cucumber-flavored gum. Aside from that, it was another solid day in Beijing.

Tuesday, May 15

Yesterday (Monday) was another fairly uneventful day. We had our third class at 9:30. This one was taught by a guy called Andong-who had a very unique way of clearing his throat-and it was on Chinese economics. It was a little hard to follow at some points, but definitely interesting. Plus, the throat clearing was mimicked throughout the rest of the trip.

We then had about an hour and a half before going to Tsinghua Solar, during which time I tried to dry the laundry that had been soaking in our sink. Unsuccessful. We then got dressed up and drove over to Tsinghua Solar for our first company tour of the trip. When we were researching the company I didn’t quite grasp how small it really is. It’s one floor of a building and we saw two rooms of it. It began with a briefing on the basic functions of solar water heaters by a guy who worked in the technical support department. I felt a bit bad for him because he seemed really uncomfortable presenting this information to us. It was as if they just threw him in the position for the day. We were then allowed time for questions before going into another room to see the water heaters up close. It’s surprising how simple the devices work: cold water drops from the tank into all the glass cylinders, these capture sunlight to heat the water, the warm water rises back into the tank to be used. The technology used to streamline the process wasn’t simple, but the science behind it is.

After the fairly short visit we had the bus driver drop us off near the U-Center because most of the guys had decided we looked way too good to not go out for a quick drink. So we went over to La Bamba to get Manhattans. Mistake. Manhattans are not good. I suppose they could be if you like what’s in them, but I think Pesce was the only one who did. The problem was solved moments later when the bartender offered us all one free drink. Vodka Red Bull it was. Dallago’s theory was that it was because he told her we were from Tsinghua University.

We then went to the supermarket to get some water because we were out. I also picked up a pair of boxers because mine were all still wet. We had time then to just hang out at the hotel for a while before going out because the tour had been so short. Around 7:45 we went down to Brian and Joe’s room to get everyone together to go to La Bamba. Brian and I continued the tradition of sharing nachos. In keeping with our going practice, we then headed over to Propaganda. There is no exaggeration when I say that we had the most fun Monday night ever had. By anyone. Ever. The dance floor was dead when we got downstairs but, once again, by the time we left it was packed. 

Sunday, May 13

My feet hurt more than I can describe. I made the mistake of wearing topsiders instead of sneakers to the pearl market this morning, and I’m paying for it now. I fully expected to see 2 bloody stumps instead of feet when I finally took them off. Not the case. All of us took the subway to the pearl market this morning with only Ruby because Vivien had schoolwork to do. The ride took forever. It required 3 separate trains with a particularly long 11 stop run on one.

The market, however, was pretty cool. Mostly four floors of fake crap, but there were definitely good things to be found. I haggled for some jade earrings, iPhone cases, a tie, and the coolest propaganda poster ever. Afterward we ate at the KFC next to the market. The Chinese are really big on KFC and, I must say, it’s much better here than at home. By that I mean it doesn’t make you feel sick. We then crossed the street to walk through the Temple of Heaven. A bunch of people chose to go back to the hotel. The temple was amazing. Really cool and incredibly ornate architecture surrounded by meticulous landscaping. Observation: They don’t do diapers in China. They do cuts in the back of pants and little kids pee on the side of the sidewalk. It’s pretty weird.

Anyway, it took us a while to get back out to the subway station, but the walk was awesome. There are endless, arrow straight rows of trees for maybe half a mile in some places. The ride back was also endless, but I was lucky enough to get a seat on one of the trains. When we got back we had to get our stuff and immediately turn around to meet Vivien to go to the Water Cube. As usual, Vivien had done it right and had called cabs so we wouldn’t have to deal with more subway. The taxi ride wasn’t as scary as I thought it might be, which was a bit disappointing.

The Water Cube is located directly across the street from one of the only 7 star hotels in the world and the size of this thing begets belief. It’s made up of about three buildings with maybe 18 floors each. Plus, I saw my first Ferrari 458 sitting in front of it. Gorgeous. I mistakenly thought that the IBM Tower, which is right next to the hotel, was part of it as well, but that was incorrect.

After a lengthy process of ticketing and locker claiming, we were finally in the waterpark at the Water Cube. What an amazing building. I must say, however, that the real allure of it is the architecture on the outside. The inside is pretty similar to a normal natatorium. The waterpark was pretty fun, though. There were only really 3 great slides, but they were really great. The first (and best) one we did was a big four-person tube ride that dumped you off in a big funnel that sloshed back and forth. Brian, Dallago, Pesce, and I were all about it and therefore did it together at least 5 times. The other really legit slide was referred to only as “that crazy red one”. There was rarely a line for it because of its craziness. I actually think people were afraid of it. You began in a standing position leaning back against the bottom of the slide. The attendant would then close a glass door over you. After a countdown from 3, the floor would open and you’d free fall into the slide. The speed was unbelievable. It was actually a bit painful at points. The whole thing lasted less than 10 seconds anyway. We left the water cube with the intention of going out, but by the time we got back to the hotel that idea was gone. We got dinner, came back, and went to bed.

Sunday, May 13

There’s not a whole lot to say about yesterday (Saturday) other than that we spent it on the Great Wall of China, one of the most revered historical structures in the world. We got a pretty early start because the part of the wall that we went to was well over an hour away depending, of course, on traffic. I spent most of the ride talking to Vivien about things ranging from travel to Chinese characters, but we mostly discussed language differences across cultures. She’s a very interesting person to talk to. She’s very smart and quite informative about Chinese life. Plus, her bubbliness makes her really easy to talk to.

We had to drive through an area that, I think, aligns pretty well with the image that many westerners have of China. There were small villages and fields at the foot of large mountains. The drive ended on a crowded road leading up the mountain that was lined with shops and stands on either side. We walked up the road until we had to turn off of it to go through a cave. A lot of it was enhanced to encourage people to go through it, but this cave was still really awesome. Shallow pools of water everywhere and lots of stalagmites/tites.

When we came out of the cave we got onto a path that started climbing up the mountain towards the wall. The climb started easy, but gradually it became steeper. During the ascent, the weather cleared up and became noticeably warmer. Lucky us. We walked along this path through the woods and up the mountain for maybe 15 or 20 minutes. Like everything else, the cement path was meticulously adorned with shapes and carvings. After a final push up some stairs, we were finally on the wall. Calling it epic really doesn’t quite cover it. You can only see how far it stretches in either direction for maybe a quarter of a mile because it then drops down the sides of mountains. But then you look across this huge valley, definitely over a mile across, and see the watchtowers dotting the tops of the mountains on the other side. Incredible.

We turned left and walked along the wall for what may have been about 2 miles. It’s really hard to tell how far you’ve walked because the wall goes up and down along the mountains. I was under the impression that the walk UP to the wall was going to be the difficult part. Not the case. By the time we got up, the sun was out and there isn’t a bit of shade until you walk through a watchtower. We were all sweating a lot. The last push of the stretch we walked was a straight climb up what seemed like a thousand stairs, much of it vertical. We ended up on top of a watchtower with the most amazing view I’ve ever seen. Lots of pictures were taken. We then collected everyone for the walk back to where we started.

Except instead of going back to the stairs we came up, we went a little further to the mountain slide. Dr. Gao had told us about this so I had been very excited about it for a couple days. Unlike the one I did in Utah, this one was in a metal half-tube thing instead of rails. In true un-American style, this setup fully allowed for the possibility of flying off the mountain to my death. It was pretty great. The first person to go in our group was Joe, followed by Matt Dallago, Brian and then me. The first half of the slide went smoothly, but by the second half I had caught up to Brian who had caught up to Matt who had caught up to Joe. The rules said that we had to stay 35 meters apart. That didn’t happen. There were points when I was less than 5 feet behind Brian. The guy working at the bottom was not pleased. Even less so when Hilary got within inches of killing Jonathan.

We then did some shopping along the aforementioned street before getting on the bus to go to lunch. Dr. Gao took us to an American style buffet. In theory this could have been amazing, but in practice it wasn’t the case. The food just wasn’t very good. This American food was crappy in the way that I imagine Chinese food is crappy to Chinese people in the U.S. Afterward we came back to the hotel for a nap. Starting at about 9:30 or 10, one can read about our activities of Thursday night, subtract Pyro Pizza, add some extra people to Propaganda, and have a pretty good idea of how we spent Saturday night. The whole day was awesome. Certainly one of the best I’ve ever had. The Great Wall is beyond description, but suffice it to say that it is most certainly the most incredible place I’ve ever been.

Friday, May 11

Today was pretty long, but this entry is pretty short. We met at 8:50 to drive to the Summer Palace for our tour. The drive wasn’t very long, but for a lot of us it wasn’t the most pleasant morning we’d ever had. It was raining when we left so the visibility was pretty poor, but even so it was obvious that this place was incredible. It’s all set on a pretty big lake with different structures of the palace dotting the shoreline. Across the lake from the main living area is a bridge that takes you to an island with more buildings. We took a boat back to the beginning from there.

It may sound inconsiderate or whatever, but I find myself wishing that we were the only people touring these sights. Obviously this is unrealistic, but it’s really difficult to get a true sense of how the Emperors lived in these places if there are thousands of people walking around. After the boat ride, we walked down a hill to this canal area to do some shopping and take pictures. I got a great gift for Emma here. During this walk, something odd occurred to me. We spend a decent amount of time trying to take pictures with little Chinese kids because they almost always do something funny or, if nothing else, gawk at us in amazement. The thing that I’ve noticed, however, is that the kids are always boys. This isn’t just because boys tend to be funnier, it’s because there really aren’t a lot of little girls around. It’s pretty weird. I’m not really sure what to take from this, but it was just something I noticed.

We then took the bus to the U-Center for a late lunch. When we got back, we had every intention of napping then going out, but that didn’t really happen. I remember falling asleep around 5:30 with an alarm set to get up around 8, but for some reason it didn’t go off or I slept through it. Either way, I didn’t wake up until 10. We called around but it seemed like most people were in the same boat. It’s probably all the better though, because we have the Great Wall tomorrow. I think we’re all pretty pumped for that.