China was everything I thought it was and more. If you're for one second slightly pondering a global travel seminar course, DO IT! Take the leap, spend the money and you'll be ever so glad you did.
I'm not going to lie- China was expensive. I had to pay for an entire tuition AND another $3K for the trip itself, but every single penny was worth it. Props to all involved at Suffolk for the planning- Michael Brown, Julia Frost and our Prof, Anders- because the planning was excellent.
We arrived in Beijing and were hosted by UIBE- a Chinese University. Our first dinner was excellent and introduced us to Chinese style eating around a table with a lazy susan in the middle. During our time in Beijing, we visited the Forbidden City (awesome!), the Temple of Heaven, Olympic Village (cool) and Ipsos Marketing Research Company. But the true highlight was visiting the Great Wall of China.
It was truly breathtaking. The weather was gorgeous and we got to TOBOGGAN down the wall. My only regret was that we only had 90 minutes at the wall... when I think all of us could have spent 4 or 5 hours there. We felt a bit rushed.
Xi'an was a fantastic city- we upgraded accomadations to a beautiful hotel right in the city across the street from the famous Bell Tower. We saw famous pagodas, a big temple and the highlight was definitely riding bikes (I rode a tandem one!) along the seven mile perimeter of a 600 year old City Wall. Again, perfect weather. Oh, we got to see the Terracotta Warriors as well- fascinating!
We couldn't have been luckily to have our professor leading the trip. He is married to a Chinese woman who grew up in the countryside in a village about two hours from Xi'an. We were fortunate enough to have her family host us for lunch one day, which provided us a rare opportunity to see how much of the Chinese population actually lives. We're talking poor- outhouses, no central heat, kitchens that are manually powered and no showers. The houses are so different from what we're used to- rooms are off of open courtyards and small. Beds are built like ovens that heat themselves in the winter to keep warm. This family made us all this spectacular noodle dish lunch- all by hand and it was defintely the best meal I had the entire 11 days I was there.
It's amazing that people live like that, but we were told that to them, times are good. There was a time when food wasn't always plentiful, but these days, they have food and some small conveinences and therefore life is good. It's very different to see such a village, but it was very apparent how much of a "community" they were. We were able to go into caves in which some people still live in and that was an unreal experience as well!
We were prepped to be able to roll with the punches and to expect things to change and to be flexible. We were tested a bit throughout the trip with our first "hotel", a Xi'an tour guide, a difficult business visit, but we were a bit rattled when on Monday, May 17th at 2:30 in the afternoon, an earthquake shook the ground beneath our feet.
Most of us were on a bus at the time waiting for the last few students to get on, when the bus started rocking back and forth. Many of us were confused at first and blamed the bus driver for yet again messing up (we hit another bus earlier in the day), but then quickly someone yelled earthquake and we evacuated the bus to stand in the open parking lot. It was very odd to feel the earth rock and roll and wave underneath your feet. It lasted about a minute and during that time, none of us really felt too much in danger. We were in an open area, didn't appear that any of the buildings were coming down... so we just sort of rode it out. Chinese people flooded out of every building and crowded into the street. We crowded back in the bus to make an apprehensive trip to the planned company visit we had. Due to the traffic and shock of the quake, a 10 minute trip turned into an hour. During that hour, we just sort of sat on the bus and talked about what happened and our anxieties about going into a 30 story skyscraper for a company visit. When we finally arrived to the skyscraper, we parked the bus right on the curb just outside the building.
That's when the scariest moment of the day happened. As we pulled up and were about to deboard the bus, people came streaming out of the building with looks on their faces I won't soon forget. Fear. Complete fear. Sitting there in the back of the bus, I feared that the building was coming down less than 30 yards from me. It took one quick peek up to the sky to realize the building was in fact, not coming down, but it didn't matter. People were running out of the building and I didn't want to sit in the back of the bus like a sitting duck. We quickly got off the bus and ran into the middle of the street. All seemed fine, but we would learn later that it was an aftershock.
We talk and joke about emotional intelligence and at this point, the entire group was spent. Completely utterly unable to work with anything else. We did sit through the business presentation back at our hotel, but luckily it was short and sweet. We wrote emails home to assure everyone we were okay and then craved some comforts of home. Unfortunately Pizza Hut was closed, but a handful of us took KFC back to the hotel to have dinner and a few beers to try and relax a bit.
Luckily, neither my roommate or I felt the aftershock that shook our hotel at 4 am that next morning.
Shanghai was an amazing city as well- loved the shopping and we enjoyed views from 350 meters up at the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. It seemed less historic, more Western than Xi'an and Beijing- most likely because it's only been in the recent decades that this once sleeping fishing town has become a major economic center for China.
So, from a business perspective (because that's what we were there for right!?) China is evolving to become a world player, but they have a long way to go. Business and marketing models/strategies are a decade behind the US and China will have to work long and hard to overcome the way the rest of the world looks at them. But the middle class is evolving, having more disposable income and thus are becoming a giant market for products beyond basic needs. While China was still really cheap for us (bottled water was .30 cents and you could easily eat for under $4 at a sit down restaurant) I think that those days will soon end over the years. They are growing so fast that I think someday the economy will catch up with ours and you won't find the cheap hidden jewels and perks of China that we did in our 11 days there. It was crazy to see how the urban people live, compared to the rural folks... and then realize that I took the equivilent of one middle class monthly salary out of the ATM for a week of spending.
Tip: if you ever go to China, bring toilet paper whereever you go, always have hand sanitizer and hand wipes- like Cottonelle. The bathroom situations over there are horrendous. You know it's bad when you go into a Chinese bathroom and PRAY that behind the door might be even the grossest gas station bathroom you have ever been in in the States. I've never been so glad to see nice, clean Western toilets!
Bottom line: Suffolk did an amazing job. I can't wait to hopefully go on another one before I graduate in the next two years!
