Last Day in China

Greetings from Shanghai for the last time.

After Mark and I spent Friday closing out all of our projects, giving a final presentation about our impressions of China and the Internship, we said our heartfelt goodbyes to a company that had become family in matter of two weeks. We found out that our bosses were all quite pleased with the work that we had produced, even though Mark and I clearly were in a fog for at least part of this internship.

That night, Mark and I had dinner with one of the employees, Peter Lu. Friday was also Peter's last day with the company. When Tekelec sold this asset to Genband, Peter decided to stay with Tekelec. Later this week, he and his family will be moving back to Dallas, TX. Peter and his wife are originally from China. However, based on job opportunities, they moved to the United States, where their two kids were born. Everyone in the family is excited to move back "home."

For dinner, we went to a hot pot restaurant. Since I prefer not to eat red meat, this was somewhat of a challenge for me, since the only meat that you can cook in a hot pot well is red meat. I did, however, love the vegetables we added to the pot. It was overall a great dinner; it was Mr. Easley's (Mark's dad's) favorite while in China. At the end of the meal, we all said goodbye in our hotel lobby, and promised to meet up somewhere in the good ol' US of A.

On Saturday, Mark and I slept in...for the first time while in China. Needless to say, it was amazing. For breakfast, we went to a boulangerie. You can really tell that globalization is at work when we fly all the way to China, and are still able to eat in a French bakery. Later, we tested out the MagLev train. In the US, we really don't like to take trains anywhere. In China, they are the most popular form of travel over long distances. This type of train, built in Germany, uses electromagnetic forces to propel the train forward at very high speeds. Our top speed was 431 km/h or 270 mph. It took a distance that probably would take about an hour to drive down to an 8 minute journey. If you come to Shanghai, you need to ride this train.

In the afternoon, Mark and I, along with his parents, went to the Jin Mao Tower. The Jin Mao Tower is currently the tallest building in Shanghai. However, there is already a taller one under construction right next door to the Jin Mao. After taking a ~30sec elevator ride up 340m to the observation deck (making this elevator faster than the Tower of Terror), we were able to see the best panoramic views of Shanghai possible. It was really cool to watch the Shanghai World Financial Center being bult next door. Progress is slow, but I'm glad the workers are taking their time; if they rushed, steel beams and huge panes of glass could fall on people below. You could also look inside the building, down 30 floors to the lobby of the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The faint of heart should not do this.

Toward the end of the afternoon, we went to the Shanghai Science Museum. This modern facility gave a taste of every branch of science from Astronomy to Zoology. Our favorite part was the IMAX film that had been dubbed over. The film we saw was suppose to have been narrated by Judy Dench...however, that lady was NOT Dame Dench. Furthermore, Dench probably can't speak Chinese that well. Oh well. The film was about insect life in the rainforest. I am still pissed at the film makers for showing a butterfly getting killed by a praying mantis. That is just not cool. Butterflies don't die. Other insects...ok, but the butterfly was just over the line.

For dinner, we had a quick meal at a Japanese restaurant. It was pretty decent, especially for what we paid. Afterward, we took the subway into to Puxi (the other side of the river) to see the Shanghai Acrobatic Circus. When our class was in Shanghai, our tourguide Lisa was pressing us to go see this show. While it was probably good for us to just rest and recover from jetlag then, the show still would fun to watch in that state.
The show was amazing and words are failing me; I have no idea how to describe it. It was like Cirque du Soleil but better and more interesting, and with more impressive acrobatic acts. Come see it if you come to Shanghai!

After returning to the Hotel, Mark and I packed, watched some rugby and retired for the evening. We are sad to be leaving China, but we also feel that we are leaving China without regrets.

Best Wishes and Safe Travels,
- John

PS: I personally am stoked to meet up with Ben in Julie in O'Hare. After having limited contact with any of our friends back home, it will be good to see some familar faces.

End Credits

Well, it’s Friday, June 29th, and today is my last day as an intern at NCR. Really unbelievable how fast time has flown by for me. It doesn’t seem so long ago I was at the Jade Palace Hotel packing up my things, saying goodbye to everyone, and getting ready to go to my host family’s apartment for the first time. Just crazy.
In any event for our last day here Julie and I finished up our second Kaizen project. This time we created a .asx website that would automatically display the status of all the ATMs on the factory floor, giving it in a real time, easy to use display that would track how far the different teams are on their machines. Apparently, hard as it is to believe, the supervisors and team leaders really like both of our projects. When we gave them instructions on using it they all shook their heads thoughtfully and said (in Chinese) it would be very useful. It feels good to contribute something in this second week. Julie has been taking a bunch of pictures of people and things at NCR - I will have to mooch off those photos. Not much else to say about events for today.
Since this will be my last blog post, I had hoped to summarize my epic foreign language trip experience. And it has been an epic one. Looking back I cannot believe how much I have done. In two and a half weeks I went to Shanghai, Xian, Zhengzhou, Chengde, and Beijing. I climbed Mt. Huasheng, scaled the Great Wall, saw the Terracotta Soldiers, watched Chinese opera, and did too many other things to put in a blog post I have five minutes left of my coffee break to write. Then I got the amazing opportunity to spend an additional two and a half weeks with a family in Beijing, living and working with them. Coleman and Janet have been wonderful; I am extremely happy I could stay with them. I will wrap it up here, simply by saying that China has been great, and after five weeks I am looking forward to returning to Carolina. That’s about it, -Ben Goldhaber

Tekelec 6/28/2007

Hello again from Shanghai!!

Well not too much excitement has happened over the past two days. Just business as usual. I moved into my new apartment which is on the otherside of town like John's house. It is a change to commute for an hour twice everyday. He has his own car but he also has a subway station right outside his apartment complex. They both take about the same time, surprisingly, and I rode both, although the subway was really convenient and cheap. Riding the subway during rush hour is an experience, but it actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The apartment was quaint, a 19th floorer, and I got my own room and bathroom, complete with PC access, TV and air conditioning. The couple was nice, they lived in england to get their graduate degrees from Lancaster University, but they had no children.

The new boss of the company just flew in from Texas, Genband just bought this branch of Tekelec and he is making sure the transition runs smoothly. He took everybody out for brazillian steak house. It was almost like home except a little less high class, I was very surprised they had one. Gee, Shanghai has everything. Right now it looks as if Genband wants to incorporate this office to fuel its products and will keep a similar layout, but adding a sales department. It is Genband's intention to go IPO, which I think some of the workers here are excited about.

EMS dept. is pretty easy, I am just playing around with some code but no real serious projects. Only 1 more day to go. John and I are presenting a powerpoint tomorrow about our experiences and our company impressions. I'm not sure what we're going to do on the weekend but we might check out the famous underground market that apparently has a bunch of cheap stuff (last minute gifts w00t!).

It's finally started raining here, not much of a rainy season this year.
Mark

Work!

Yesterday was certainly a busy day! Believe it or not, Ben and I worked...all day! Upon arriving at NCR, we were introduced to several engineers in the TSE department (testing system engineers). They explained several Kaizen projects that they had been involved with in the past, so we could get an idea of what we would be doing. The project that we were assigned was to find a more efficient way for factory workers testing ATM machines to communicate malfunctions to the testing engineers. The current system that was in place involved all of the employees using a shared computer to page the four testing engineers; however, the only english phrase they knew how to type was "test fail." This wasn't very helpful to the engineers, because they never really knew what the problem was. Thus, they were forced to waste time and energy going down to the factory to try and understand what the issue was. Ben and I brainstormed for a while with our "mentor engineer," and eventually came up with a solution. We decided that a numerical system listing the most common problems involved in the testing stages would simplify things for the factory workers. They would just have to associate a number with a problem, and click it on their computer screen at their workstation. The engineers would then get a pager message telling them which station had the problem, and what the problem was. There were a lot of kinks to work out, forcing us to go down to the factory about five times, but it eventually worked. We were excited to see that our plan was actually implemented! In the afternoon, we were introduced to another TSE engineer, who showed us NCR's newest ATM model, which was going through shipping tests (basically the ATM is exposed to weird temperatures and dropped a bunch of times). It was very interesting to see how thoroughly the machine was inspected after the test was completed. This morning, we worked on doing the write-up for our completed Kaizen project. While working on the write-up, Grant, the head engineer at NCR, pulled us aside to give us a little lecture about business. After playing some interesting games, including one that involved drawing a pig multiple times to demonstrate how to follow "standard procedure," he lectured us on time management. The explanations were definately entertaining, if not completely helpful. This afternoon, we will be teaching the factory workers how to use the program we've set up. They don't speak English, so it will definately be a challenge. Wish us luck!

Nothing out of the ordinary has happened with my host family, but something interesting happend last night that deserves mentioning. Upon arriving home from work yesterday, I noticed that the power was out (yes, including the air conditioning). I asked Gexin about it, and she told me that they hadn't paid enough to keep their electricity going. Apparently in China you have to put money on a card that then gives you electricity, and my family hadn't anticipated their electricity usage very well. My family went to go get money for their "electricity card," leaving me alone in the house. Soon it was 8:00, and very dark. The only light I had was a tiny portable reading light...it was a pretty funny sight. Thankfully the electricity came back on and my host family returned.

After today, Ben and I only have two work days left. Hopefully we can learn more about what the testing engineers do, and be able to contribute. We are really enjoying our new work, but we are also very excited to get back home on Sunday.

-Julie

The Beginning of the End...

The beginning of my last week here at GenBand/Tekelec/SomeRandomChineseName has been interesting. Unlike Mark, I stayed with my original department, Hardware design. This week, I'm mainly working on running simulations using the VHDL programming language. Unless you are into CS, this isn't going to be the job for you. On Monday, the day started of as any other of my days in China had: Get up, drop off Audrey (Host's daughter) at school, commute an hour, and begin the day. However, right after taking Peter (Mark's boss in IT) to our favorite sandwich shop (you heard me, sandwich), I was told to go with Caojie to the airport. Now, a trip to the airport is always to pick someone up, never to drop someone off. So...my curious nature led me to ask Caojie who we were going to pick up. Apparently, the president of GenBand was flying to see first hand how this new branch of his company worked, and what needed to be done in order to make the aquisition smooth. So, after waiting about an hour for him to get through customs, I finally got to meet Jack Brickey. Jack is a really nice, down-to-earth guy with a fairly recognizable southern accent. As the "English Liaison," I basically served as a translator, and a mini-guide to the city of Shanghai. Somehow, four weeks in China suddenly makes me an expert...go figure. Anyway, while driving back to the company, I learned that Jack is a Charlotte-native, NCSU grad, who had plans to send his son to Cary Academy, until his move to Texas caused this plan to fall through. Furthermore, he currently lives in Austin, TX, which is where I used to live before coming to NC. Needless to say, we had a lot to talk about. Once back at Tekelec/GenBand/SomeRandomChineseName, I let Ping, the Vice-President, take over the tourguide duty. Once back up stairs, I finished the day as normal, went back home, ate more Chinese food, and slept.

Today, I came into work rather late...1.5 hours to be exact. Helen, my host, required my presence to help her manage her two kids while we took the baby for a six month check-up/immunization. After seeing the Chinese health care system up close, I must say it is quite different from how we operate in the US. Instead of having many private physicians to take care of these routine checkups, parents must bring their children to the local hospital. Most private doctors handle very special cases in very specialized fields. Also, there are three tiers to the hospital system. Every district has a tier one hospital that is only equipped to handle basic health care needs, sort of like Rex Urgent Care down of Cary Parkway. Tier two hospitals have more facilities, while tier three are on par with US hosptials like WakeMed, Rex, or Duke University Medical Center. I also discovered that you do not see one doctor for all your needs at this hospital, you go to different offices where each doctor or nurse performs a specific functions in the overall operations. So, Helen took all of us to the immunization office first, where we had to wait about forty minutes before we could see the doctor. Then we had to go to a different floor to see the Early Childhood doctor, and wait some more. Some things never change between the US and China. Once everything was done, we dropped Audrey off at her grandparents house （no school today) and drove to work. Even at 9:45, traffic is still bad, but not quite as bad as the normal rush hour.

Once at work, I worked on more simulations, went out to lunch with Mark's EMS department, and continued to work on simulations through out the afternoon. For lunch, Mark's bosses took us to the local subway station, which actually had a plethora of restaurants waiting to take our cash. We eventually went to Circle Line, a restaurant Helen took us to before, but since it was raining when first went here, we had a hard time seeing the full size of the complex. Today, we had Northern styled food, which we already sampled while we were in Beijing. However, the food was still good. My favorite was the egg custard.

Tonight, I will again, have dinner with the grandparents, go home, hang out, and enjoy a typical Chinese evening at home. With only three more days left of work (I'm not couting, I swear...), Mark and I look forward to making the most of our last days here, learning as much as we can, and hopefully, give a good presentation about our stay here on Friday.

**One quick additional note: For those of you that read the N&O daily, you may have noticed an article a while back mentioning that Tekelec sold off some of it's assets in China. As fortune would have it, this company was included in that sell off. So, for the first 1.5 weeks here, Mark and I thought we were working for Tekelec, while we were actually working for GenBand, a telecom company based in Plano, TX. Don't worry, our internships are exactly the same as they would have been with Tekelec, and we are NOT becoming Chinese hobos. They still don't pay us, which is unfortunate, but whatever, I take whatever I can get to have this kind of internship in China.**

Peace,
- John

The rest of the day

Alright, so me and Julie just finished up with our meeting and our new assignments for the rest of the week. The meeting was in powerpoint format, where an engineer led us through the Lean manufacturing process and the Kaizen improvement process. It was all actually very interesting.
We learned how the goal of NCR was to streamline the manufacturing so it all revolves around the continuous output of goods to meet a consumers request (pull) as opposed to the previous batch manufacturing that created a large amount of goods and then had them be sold off (push). We also learned about the Kaizen productivity model. Its a Japanese word that means Continuous Improvement, and they use it in combination with Six Sigma to address the common sense kind of fixes that step by step increase efficiency. For someone who has always been a big fan of Dilbert books and comics it was pretty funny to actually hear this kind of stuff and see it in action. That being said it makes sense, and for the last few days we are hear we will be assigned to small groups of engineers to work on Kaizen projects.
So I am very excited about this, though unfortunantely I am going to have to put my quest for solitare dominance on hold. Ah well, tradeoffs. I will blog again on Friday to share how this last week at NCR and in China went and to conclude the epic adventure that has been this foreign language trip.
-Ben Goldhaber

The following takes place between 8:34 AM and 1:22 P.M.

Well, I am writing a little bit earlier in the day because it looks like I might be busy at the end of it! Whoo! At the start of my final week here at NCR Michael Low, the general manager, called both me and Julie in to tell us that we would be moving to an engineering related project. The project, so far as I have been able to ascertain from the brief overview, is one of many that are aimed at improving efficiency on the factory floor. I am pretty excited about this for a number of reasons. First because I have always been interested in engineering and this seems like a good opportunity to see some of the practical applications of it. Second is because trolling Harry Potter internet forums is starting to get old.

That’s the only real thing to happen today, though I would like to add to Julie’s comments and just say that this weekend was great – I am really glad her host family invited me to go. We got to climb another mountain, which from my experience is apparently the thing to do in China. Oh and yes, it’s true; I did Karaoke. After a lot of peer pressure (apparently I’m not Above the Influence) I sang to the hit song What’s Love Got to Do With It, and I can honestly say I rocked the hotel patio. I have no idea why Karaoke is still so popular here – I had always assumed it was just a fad. Ha another thing is that after the 'hotel' this weekend, I must say I am jealous of Mark and John for staying in what was probably a hotel that does not require sarcastic air quotations. Seriously we squeezed six guys into a hotel room complete with six single beds packed so tightly together there was no room to move, and had a gym locker quality bathroom with no hot water/no towels/lots of bugs. To top it all off is that one or more of the persons in the room snored like a dying water buffalo. When I first heard it I thought to myself 'Oh my god I think a wild boar is in the room'. So yah, I was happy to get back to the host families Beijing loft, though I know I will be many times happier to return to my own American bed that does not have wood for a matress. lol.

Not much else to report on, though I will try to blog again after a 3:00 meeting if I get anymore details about the project I am assigned to.
-Ben G.

P.S. Mark's calculation of an 8-12 yuan wage were hilarious, though I have to note if we are going by lunches I am losing cash at about 30 yuan a day. Darn you Subway!

Tekelec 6/25/07

Cong Shanghai, Zao Shang Hao!

Shanghai R00lz!

John and I are starting to like working at Tekelec (we still abhor work in general, but if we must, we're glad it's at Tekelec). After the first few days of crying, we have pulled ourselves together and now have mild competency in our work. Even though we don't get paid, our coworkers often take us out for very good lunches (basically, we can calculate our paycheck by what we ate that day. Sometimes we make only 8-12 yuan a day, other times 50-60 yuan). If you factor in rent money we might be making 200-300 yuan a day (total guess). $30-45 USD per day which is actually not bad at all when you look at it relatively.

Funny thing I learned the other day. My first host had a house keeper lady that came in 5 days a week every week. She cleaned the house and everyday would buy the food and vegetables for the day. She makes 700 yuan......PER MONTH! My family hires a maid service to clean our house ONCE a month, and they cost US$120 to clean the whole house. They make more money on one 4 hour job then that lady makes after 20 days of work. Granted the house is a little smaller than ours and she is only one person compared to the team of maids we hire but it still shows we're still living in a third world cheap labor country even in Shanghai, the most modern city in the nation.

Another thing I learned is that all land in the entire country is still state owned. All the new skyscrapers around town must lease the land for 50-100 years from the government and then give it back. Also apparently there is an extremely unstable economic situation brewing in China right now. They are entering a huge bubble which is very soon going to burst. The stock market is skyrocketing up and more and more chinese people are investing their cash savings and putting it into the slot machine that never loses. Very similar to the dotcom bubble and of the course the events leading up to the great depression. China's economy hasn't experienced a large downturn yet, but all economies do eventually, especially at the phenomonal rate China is growing. Eventually you build too many skyscrapers or too many factories. When China's economy does crash a lot of people will lose their money for the first time in this Country's history in this fashion. It will be interesting to see what events will transpire as a result of it.

Alright enough cultural insight let me tell you about my weekend

Oh yeah, my parents are vacationing in Shanghai right now (What a coincidence!). They are acting as me and John's indirect chaperones over here. We're going to stay at their hotel the last 4 nights because it is easier for the people at Tekelec and especially us. I went to this old town called Qi Bao (seven treasures) and it was pretty cool. They had a lot of shops on these narrow old streets. The best part was the food vendors because they sold duck heads, heart, liver, pig snout, baby chicken on a stick, and all kinds of other crazy stuff. I had a coconut drink where they take the coconut and make a hole with a screw driver in the top and put a straw in it. I also visited the Shanghai museum which was extremely interesting. The parents took me and John on a bus tour of a famous town called Hang Zhou where they have a cool lake and a lot of trees and natural scenery. We went to a temple (what a surprise!), a tea plantation (it was pretty cool, the tea plants are just like bushes and you just pick some leaves off and cook them to make tea leaves), and the lake where we took a boat ride. The only downside was it took forevever to get there and come back, but it was a good trip.

Today I'm working in a new department, the EMS (Element Management System) team. They make the basic sofware that comes with the telecom routing servers. Pretty complex stuff. I think they are just going to let me self study some of the stuff they are doing, and not really give me any projects, since I'm only here 5 days, which is nice. I also move in with my new host guy for 3 nights.

So anyway Shanghai rocks. Me and John are looking for a way to close out the trip with a unique Shanghai experience on Saturday and we're ready to head home on Sunday. Only a few more days left on the otherside of the world.

Mark

Adventures Outside Beijing

What an exciting weekend! Yesterday Ben and I returned from a work retreat with George's company. We accompanied about 20 employees and their families to a recreational national park called "yi bai xian," or, the hundren km gorge. The drive, which took about 2 hours, was pretty uneventful. We were offered some interesting snacks, including packaged duck stomach. The offer was tempting, but we opted for more generic snack options. Upon arriving at the park, we checked into our hotel. The hotel was a little...rustic, but it was fun to spend time with all of George's friends. After grabbing a quick lunch at the hotel, we departed for the gorge. Like the park we visited in Zhengzhou, this park had many man-made waterfalls and rock formations, but everything was still very beautiful. To reach the gorge, we took carts pulled by donkeys. There were about five carts carrying our entire party. The ride quickly turned into a race between the carts; although I felt bad for the donkeys, my competitive side got the better of me. Needless to say me and Ben's cart came in first place. The gorge was very cool; in some parts we had to walk single file through it! The most impressive thing we saw was a giant rock formation jutting out of a nearby mountain. This natural rock formation looked like the female Buddha. I tried to take a picture for Li Laoshi, but the glare was really bad! After exploring the gorge for the entire afternoon, we hobbled back to the hotel. We ate dinner out on the back porch. I was very proud to see that my chopstick skills have greatly improved since I've come to China; I was even able to pick up individual kernals of corn! After dinner, we learned very quickly that Chinese people LOVE to party. After witnessing several amusing drinking games, I headed to bed. The party didn't end however, as a karaoke machine was wheeled out. I've come to the conclusion that karaoke is definately China's national passtime! Fireworks erupted from every direction, oftentimes out of the windows of surrounding buildings. Although I did not witness it, apparently Ben sang some karaoke. I had heard Ben sing in Zhengzhou, so I was sad that I missed out. Eventually everyone headed to bed. The next morning, we woke up around 8:00. We spent the morning exploring the pond behind the hotel. Ben and I tried our hand at bamboo rafting (see picture above). It was alot harder than it looked! We not only had to balance ourselves on the raft, but also avoid getting tipped over by passing rafts that seemed to have a vendetta against us! We amused ourselves by singing pirate songs and sabatoging other rafts. After we had proven that we were indeed the fiercest raft on the pond, we boarded the bus to head back to Beijing. On the way, we stopped to get some lunch. Several members of our party fished in a pond outside the restaurant; they caught five fish that we then ate for lunch. After eating a great meal, we started our long journey back to Beijing. It was a little bittersweet to realize that this was our last bus ride in China! The rest of my night was uneventful; I was extremely tired, so I headed to bed early. Tommorow we start our last week of work at NCR.

-Julie

Hey more awesome thoughts from Ben!

(Update)
Hey there's some stuff I forgot to mention in my original post, that I figured I should mention.
I forgot that Julie took offense at the Kung Fu show due to the prominent theme of Woman as Temptress. I didnt mind so much, but it just goes to show 'Different strokes, Different folks'.

"I definately believe that our Shanghai group has been more engrossed in work than our Beijing counterparts. - John"

Wow John that hurt both me and Julie a lot, so I figured I should refute some of those claims. First and foremost Julie works at least two hours a day filling out forms/making copies, so maybe you should check your sources, OK?
Second I didnt mention it, but this morning I entered myself in the Doritos: Unlock your Xbox competion, an extremely competitive online competition that I would say rivals any ordinary, service work done in the place you call Shanghai. I have been busy researching the history of the Doritos corporation to develop a snack themed video game - if that doesnt count as exhaustive work Im not sure what does.

Thats about it for now - Julie and I will be gone this weekend on a company retreat to reward productive workers, so any blogging for us over the weekend will go up on monday. Thanks -Ben

TGIF!

First off, I'm not dead yet. It's Day 9 of the Internship, our seventh day working, and Mark and I are pretty satisfied by our time in Shanghai. Thus far, we've worked 53 hours at Tekelec (Offical at the end of the day) and we are preparing for our 2nd week and last week at the company. For next week, Mark will be switching into the EMS department, while I will stay in Hardware Design. Mark and I have asked about ten different employees here at Tekelec what EMS stands for, and no one knows. Go figure. I guess it's some sort of secret society that works in the basement. When Mark and I first arrive, we both saw that acronym and instantly thought "Emergency Medical Services." Some how, we didn't think that would pan out. I'm not sure it's safe for Mark to even try to drive an ambulance through Shanghai. Drivers are really...um...aggressive? I guess that word works. There is no real way to describe the drivers in Shanghai; you will just have to visit to find out. However, my host Helen continually tells me that "Shanghai drivers are very skilled, especially the taxi drivers." If some has to continue tell me they are good driver, I'm eventually not going to trust them about it.

At work, things are interesting. I definately believe that our Shanghai group has been more engrossed in work than our Beijing counterparts. In hardware design, I've gone from assisting with testing prototype boards to learning the programming language used to program the boards to running simulations with the programmed code. Basically, I always have something to do. And, if I ever felt bored, I have been told to talk to either Jo, the head of Human Resources, or Helen, my host and the Buisness Operations Manager; both have many tasks that could keep us occupied for days. Mark is finishing up some testing for a new operating system that the company might switch to for programming. He'll tell you more about it when he blogs.

In case no one has mentioned it yet, Tuesday, June 19th was Duanwujie, or the Dragon Boat Festival. This is a very popular holiday at the office, but no one is give time off and no one takes time off from work. Occuring on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, Duanwujie is a holiday that commemates the death of Chu Yuan, a poet/patriot that commited suicide after his country was invade and destroyed by another country. Typically, dragon boats used for racing down rivers. Even though Shanghai has many rivers, I did not see a dragon boat. Also, it is tradition for people to eat zong zi on this day. This item was thrown into the river after Chu Yuan drowned himself, in order to keep the fish and spirits away from his body. Today, zong zi is made from sticky-rice wrapped inside bamboo leaves. Typcially, zong zi has a filling that can either be meat like pork or something sweet like a date. I had sweet zong zi while in Zhengzhou, but on this day, I only had ones that had pork inside. These zong zi were fine, but I still prefer the sweet ones. I had two at breakfast and two while at the office. Helen even saved some of the extra ones for breakfast the next day.

Overall, the week has been filled with work, and not much else. One big note: I am finally over my cold. Two days after arriving in Shanghai, I began to fall victim to many of the same symptoms that our classmate Colin had earlier in the trip. This weekend, I will go with my host family to Wuxi on Saturday while Mark goes to Qi Bao. On Sunday, Mark and I both will go to Hangzhou. Mark will give you an update of how the weekend went when he blogs on Sunday.

Until next time,
- John.

Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting

I wonder if chickens will ever evolve the ability to fly.

I also wonder what happened to the Drew Carrey show.
Finally I wonder if there really is such a thing as a TPS report.

As you might have surmised from the above, I have had a lot time to … think. I have been at this office for about 45 hours now and I have yet to receive an assignment. To be honest it is pretty hilarious. I’ve just been doing some extreme web surfing. I am pretty sure I have read every article on MSNBC.com, all of the recent publications from the Brookings institute, and clicked on all the links from the blog Clicked. Luckily I was promised at the beginning of the week some work either today or tomorrow, so here’s to holding out for tomorrow! Oh yah I also made a haiku –

Cute bear sticker there,
Who put you on the laptop,
Not work related.

Just try and puzzle out the hidden meaning in that one (hint. There is a sticker on my laptop that says cute bear). Haikus are fun.
So after that productive day in the office I was ready to enjoy the cultural experience that is Beijing. I was not to be disappointed as Coleman had booked tickets to go see Chun Yi: The Legend of Kungfu. It was being performed at the Red Theatre, and Coleman, Julie, and I headed into ‘downtown’ Beijing to see it. It was a 7:30 showing, so we had time to go eat dinner at a classy restaurant: Pizza Hut. That probably sounded like sarcasm for all, those people reading back in America, but here in China the Pizza Hut chain actually has a very Ruby Tuesday’s air to it. That’s right, it was Ruby Tuesdays good. Anyways the food was delicious. It makes me miss American food. After the delicious dinner we found our seats and also found out that the audience was mostly foreigners. This was good because it meant the dialogue was in English as well as Chinese. Right after we sat down the lights went down and the show began.
It was awesome. They had multi-colored lights, a fog machine, complicated sets, and oh yah, like twenty-five kung fu actors! It was a great performance. It revolved around the story of a warrior monk named Chun Yi, following his progression from novice child to full fledged master. The play itself was a frame story, as an elder monk was telling the story to a new inductee. Throughout the play we got to see examples of different styles of kung fu, like mantis kung fu and leopard kung fu, as well as kung fu ‘tricks’. One such trick was Chun Yi laying atop three swords with a bed of nails pushing down on him while another monk layed on top of the nails. And then the really impressive part happened, when a third monk placed a huge slab of stone on the second monk, waited a few seconds, and then used a sledgehammer to break the stone. Chun Yi did not have a scratch on him. Ridiculous. To sum up then, the Kung Fu performance was great.
That’s about all that happened on Thursday, though I do want to mention one thing from Wednesday. Coleman and Janet are rather religious, and on Wednesday night they brought me along to their bible study group. It was quite an experience, attending for the first time a bible study and to have it all be in Chinese. Apparently being Jewish is quite exotic here, and so that was pretty funny. Suffice to say I did not exactly follow all that was said, but it was great being able to meet some of the other people in their congregation and seeing the apartment where their church was located. That’s about it – I am having a great time here in China and I look forward to writing again soon - Ben Goldhaber

Tekelec 6-20-07

Salutations,

Oh man Shanghai is one crazy place! The more I stay in this city, the more I love it. This really is the economic and neo-cultural trendsetting center of China. I liken it to NYC, it's the "big apple" of this part of the world. Everything is pretty new and modern and the city is growing at an astounding pace. It's nothing like the other cities in China. Everyone plays with their expensive cell phones while wearing their fashionable clothes as they pass fashion advertisements showing scantily clad western women. This is not the China I expected before I came here. There are more construction cranes here then I have ever seen in my whole life, I read somewhere that Shanghai supports a significantly large percentage of the world's heavy duty construction cranes. It's getting to the level of any western city or major modern Asian cities (Tokyo, Hong kong, etc.). Give it 10 or 20 more years and this place will definetly be a powerhouse in Asia.

Well I guess you'd like to know about my job. I'm working in the IT Department (Information Technology). My first project was to improve the efficiency of the IT website in finding the correct ethernet cable switches in the building and matching it with the correct slot on their router. Basically I took a map of the floor plans they had of the building and made a website that allowed them to click the seat of the ethernet port that they were looking at and give the slot and port information in a very handy way. I finished that 3 day project in 1 and a half and now I am playing with the Sun Solaris 10 operating system. I'm just doing preliminary testing seeing the advantages and disadvantages of the OS. It is a popular OS with a lot of programmers because it is open source and a free download, so it's a good way to stick it to Bill Gates and not use Windows. Its also more programmer oriented (uses Unix) as opposed to the more idiot proof but sometimes less functional (i guess) Windows. Windows is also attacked by hackers more often then Solaris because it is the most popular OS so the most damage occurs and also young hackers like to try to defeat Bill Gates, so Solaris is a bit safer. Solaris 10 is supposedly the most advanced operating system on the planet (which i sort of agree with because it is a b#$% to install and figure out, but I'm getting there slowly). Next week I switch to another dept., I'm not sure what I'll be doing there yet, but I'll keep you posted.

As far as my accomodations, I stayed the first week with the family of one of the senior managers here at Tekelec. They live in a three story house not too far from work (a fifteen minute taxi ride without traffic is considered pretty close, John has to commute an hour or more per day). They have two kids (a ten year old son, and a 4 year old daughter who is the cutest little girl I have ever seen). Luckily, my host family used to live in Texas so they all could speak fluent english except for the little girl. On the weekend, they brought John and I to SuZhou, a weekend vacation spot for the Shanghaiese that is famous for its traditional private gardens. They took us out for our first Pizza Hut in China, and let me tell you that after 3+ weeks without pizza, it was the best pizza me and John ever had. It tasted just like home. Plus, Pizza Hut was extremely clean and nice, just like a nice sit down resturant, and not like the more fast food versions we have back home. I love America. John keeps counting down the days until we get back. Being a world traveler is exciting and intense but there really is no place like home. We had a lot of fun in SuZhou, and on Sunday John's host family took us to a traditional Chinese banquet in celebration of John's host dad's boss's daughter's first birthday (well that's a mouthful). The boss lived in a country club outside of town, that was very similar to prestonwood except the houses were smaller and started at 3 million dollars each. The food at the party was very good. My host family took me to see some local stuff around Shanghai but mostly hung out at home and enjoyed the family life. I really love staying with them. I take a private taxi to work everyday. Next week I move to another engineer's residence, who is married with no kids. He lives on the other side of town (near where John lives) and I'll get to commute by subway, which will be an experience during rush hour.

Well that's about it for now,
Mark

Office Space!

Today Ben and I start our fourth day of work at NCR. So far, Beijing has proved to be a very interesting and very busy place. Our work day starts at 8:30 and ends at 5:00. Most employees work overtime too! My host mom explained that the boss buys everyone dinner if they have to work overtime, so it's a pretty good deal. The last few days I've taken the company shuttle bus to work. There are roughly ten shuttles that drive employees to and from work every day for free. Although I have to walk 20 minutes to get to the bus stop (through crazy China traffic!), it is very convenient. As Ben mentioned in his last post, it is the end of the quarter here, so everyone is extremely busy and caught up in projects. As such, they don't have alot of "intern-friendly" jobs for us to do. So far I have mostly been working in the finance department; my job is to fill out tax invoice forms, a job that is about as exciting as it sounds. Although the work is tedious, it's interesting to see how financing works (at least to some degree). My "mentor" employee, Eric, also gave me an interesting assignment the other day. I checked summaries he had written in English for a comprehensive list of various company expenditures. It was really interesting to see where the company spent it's money with regard to it's employees. Eric has informed me that I will mostly be recieving data input jobs for the remainder of my internship; hopefully I will be able to learn more about how the finance team operates.

My host family has been extremely kind to me; they have done their best to give me Western food on a regular basis (don't worry, I'm still eating a ton of Chinese food!). They do not speak a great deal of english, so I have had to practice my Chinese in order to communicate. I really believe that being completely immersed has improved my chinese. I am starting to understand more of what people say, and can usually respond (even if it is in chin-glish). Last night my host mom's old college friend stopped by to visit on her way back from a vacation in Singapore. She had an adorable eight year old daughter, who was very stunned to hear a strange American girl speak Chinese to her. We all went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, and had a great time! I was a little apprehensive when my host mom used the Disney movie "The Little Mermaid" to explain one of the dishes on the table (Ursala- to describe octopus tentacles), but the meal was pretty good. Another interesting thing I've noticed about my host family is their apparent fixation with Chairman Mao. Two nights ago, they proudly served me Hong Shao Rou, Chairman Mao's favorite food. Yesterday, my host mom gave me a lengthy explanation as to why Chairman Mao was reffered to as the "son of China" (he brought 'warmth' to China). I was aware that Chairman Mao was still reverred in China, but I had no idea it was to such a large degree.

Hopefully Ben and I will continue to learn more about how the company operates, as well as enjoy our time with our host families.

I am assigned to do the blog on Saturday, but Ben and I will be out of town with my host parents for the weekend and we probably won't have computer access. I may have to update the blog on Friday or Monday. Thank you for your patience! Wish us luck

-Julie

Greetings from Tekelec Shanghai

Hey Everyone -

After a couple of days at our new jobs in Shanghai, Mark and I are settling in well. Tekelec, a Morrisville, NC-based corporation, operates a research and development location in Shanghai. I'm just going introduce you to where Mark and I are calling home for the next two weeks. Shanghai is the largest city in China, with a population of 18 million people. Thats about 10 million more people than in the entire state of North Carolina. Tekelec is located in Pudong district. Since Pudong is the most undeveloped of all of Shanghai's 18 districts, it reminds me most of North Carolina. You can actually see trees and grass not located in a park, in addition to the numerous new buildings in the Area. Mark's host lives in the Pudong district as well. I, on the other hand, live in Puxi, on the other side of Shanghai, specifically in the Jing'an district. My area is a nice, very urbanized. The train station is only five minutes from the apartment. However, living on the other side of Shanghai means my commute everyday is about an hour long.

Upon first arriving at Tekelec, Mark and I were immediately assigned our jobs. Mark is currently working in the IT department, while I am in Hardware Design. I'll let Mark tell y'all about his job when he blogs. For the first 6 hours at the company, I really didn't have a specific job assignment. I mainly just assisted with server rack modifications. However, now I am learning a new programming language and am charged with programming one of the boards Tekelec uses in it's multimedia solutions. Needless to say, it's a bit overwhelming. I'm having a fun time though, and am learning a lot.

While in China, Mark and I have been shown a lot of interesting sides of the country by our host families. We went with one family on a typical Saturday outting to SuZhou. SuZhou features three amazingly beautiful gardens, as well as a series of canals that lend a more Venisian feel to the city. On Sunday, my host took us to a corporate party for her husband's company. Mark and I got a quick look at life in a Chinese version of Preston, except the starting price for homes is 3 million USD. Not cool. There was also a good-ol'-boy presence at the soiree, where if you were on the boss' good side, you sat at one set of tables and you hung out with a certain crowd, while if you weren't on the boss' good side, you sat in the back of the room, with minimal interaction with other people. Corporate politics, it seems, is universal.

Since there are about two weeks left to go before the end of the quarter, my department is currently having a meeting to organize tasks that need to be complete ASAP. Unfortunately, the meeting is entirely in Chinese, and basically, I won't understand what their saying. First, because they are speaking Shanghai-ese, a dialect of Chinese that sounds like Mandarin, but with a Japanese pronuciation. Second, because they are using highly specialized terms that I haven't learned yet. So as for now, I'm continuing to chug along with my projects. We'll have to waiting see how the projects change and if the pressure increase as Mark and I get closer to the conclusion of our internship.

Best Wishes!
-John

Still Chillin' in China

(ed. This was supposed to come out on Sunday, but due to lack of a computer was posted late)
So its been a couple of days since the last post, right before our awesome exchange group split up, and I can only hope we haven’t lost too many readers. Contrary to what the Cary Academy home page says, the foreign exchange trips are not over for all of us, as at least four students are still overseas. Mark, John, Julie, and I are all now interns at Chinese branches of American corporations, with Mark and John in Shanghai and me and Julie in Beijing. I figure I should just continue the story from where it left off, Wednesday night, and describe what happened next.

Setting – Jade Palace Hotel
Time – ~ 7:30 P.M. Wednesday night
Main Character – Me

All of us had just finished up a rather emotional final dinner together, and we were back at the hotel. Getting ready to leave at 8:30, I was surprised to find that my host parent was already at the hotel ready to go. Some quick packing was in order, and also unfortunately some very quick goodbyes. I have got to agree with Camryn’s post that you know you have had an awesome time when you are sad to leave a group of people you had to put up with for many four hour bus rides. Also smoking is not cool. Where was I? Oh right - I got into a taxi to go to the final residence I would be staying at for my time in China. Coleman (Host) and his wife Janet are both incredibly nice, and live in a pretty spacious apartment in Beijing. Its about 25 minutes from Tiananmen square, so its kind of far from Beijing proper. That’s about it for Wednesday night – I was a little nervous about my first day of work so I went to bed early to get prepped for NCR.

Setting – National Cash Register, Beijing Office
Time – Thursday
Main Character – Me Again

I really was nervous for no reason. Coleman and I got on an NCR shuttle at about 7:45, and I soon found out that everyone at NCR was very nice. I got a desk in the Order Management team and a mentor named Jason Liu. Unfortunately it’s the end of quarter here and the office is also involved in a major procurement, so there is not much work for a new intern. Downside = not much to do, Upside = finally get to surf the internet and find out what’s going on in the world. Crazy how much you miss in three weeks. Lunch was great due to the fact that it was Subway, about the only sandwich place I have seen in all of China. Not much to report about work, except that I did get to learn a bunch of shipping and ordering terms. That will undoubtedly come in handy back at school. For dinner the host family treated me to Beijing duck, which is incredibly good. The second time I have had it (first being with the school group) and I have to say that it is definitely one of my favorite Chinese foods.

Setting – See above
Time – Friday
Main Character – Hey, Me Again!

I cannot really report anything new from work today, it kind of followed Thursday. I kept myself entertained by imagining myself in scenes from Office Space, which really is not that hard with the generic cubicle farm setting. Also I have a coffee cup (filled with water) that I just carry around to help get myself into character. Lunch was also Subway again, and it was still good. For dinner we went straight from work to a fancy restaurant in Beijing to celebrate Coleman’s church leader’s anniversary. I got to meet many people in the small circle, and it was a great opportunity to practice some Chinese. Its funny how using one word instantly impresses people. For dinner we had Beijing duck. Third time now in about a week, and it is really delicious. One thing I did not try though was the well cooked duck hearts that was also an entrée. I am not that adventurous.

Setting – Beijing
Time – Saturday
Main Character – This line really is not necessary

I have got to start out by writing about a pretty embarrassing story. See last night the dinner party ended at about 10:00, and everyone was planning to go to the Minister’s house after that. Coleman suggested, and I wholeheartedly agreed, that since he did not know when it would end I catch a cab back to the apartment. Another fun opportunity to try out Chinese, and with a good amount of luck I found the residence. Now I had never used a Chinese lock before, and so once I managed to get into the apartment I assumed that I had to turn the bottom handle to actually lock the door. Well it did lock, but it was actually a deadbolt that could not be opened from the outside…yah, I really could not have foreseen what happened next. After a great, long sleep I woke up to find no one else in the house. I thought they had just stepped out, but when they arrived back about a half an hour later I found out they never came back. They could not get back into the apartment, and since I was sound a sleep I couldn’t hear them to open the door. In the end they just laughed about it, because they went back to the ministers house and had a very good chat with him before they slept in the guest room. My host family did not care, but I felt pretty embarrassed. Ah well, whatcha going to do? After that unfortunate start we picked up Julie and went out to lunch. Following lunch was a tour in a rickshaw of a Chinese hutong. A hutong is the traditional architecture style of Beijing, with many small walled off courtyards forming a kind of maze. With recent development in Beijing destroying the hutongs in favor of office buildings, I am glad that we got to see a still functional one. After the hutongs was a quick stop at a Chinese garden, and then back to the apartment to relax.

Setting – Beijing
Time – Sunday

So finally here is the day that I was planning to blog about. Since my host family are religious Christians, every Sunday they go to services. However, due to local government ordinances, foreigners must attend a separate church. Both Julie and I got to attend this foreigner only service, and I have to say it was quite an experience to have your passport checked before you entered. Only foreigners were allowed in. The service itself was very nice and was also non-denominational. For lunch Coleman and Janet picked us up and took us to a popular western style mall. Before Li Laoshi marks us down though we still had only Chinese food, at a great Chinese tea restaurant. The funniest thing that happened though was that after lunch Julie and I went to see Pirates of the Carribean 3 at a Chinese movie theater that plays movies in English with Chinese subtitles. I had already seen the movie in America, so I noticed when they cut out about 35 minutes of the movie. The entire beginning was altered, replaced by a scrolling, Star Wars-esque page describing what had happened. I honestly don’t know why the censors did it – it wasn’t that violent/anti – proletariat. That’s one of the weirdest things I have noticed in China.

I have kind of ran longer than I expected to, but I have got a good amount of free time to type. Anyways I think that's what I will leave all of you readers at home with – Ben G.

The last full day

June 13th, 2007

Today was quite the experience. We began the day with another amazing breakfast at the Jade Palace Hotel, which to everyone’s delight had lots of fruit, cereal, and bread. After a delicious meal, we were whisked onto our bus to yet another Jade Factory, although this one was much bigger than the last one, and the salesmen weren’t nearly as obnoxious. Despite the larger selection, no one bought anything, and we hopped back onto the bus and headed on to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace was huge, and filled with tons of interesting sites. I think we ignored most of the more interesting sites and instead spent our time looking at rocks with holes in them, buying ice cream, listening to Cherry talking about the “Dragon Lady” and being harassed by/ harassing the people selling stuff. I think everyone now has some form of a fake Rolex or Gucci watch. Lesson number 1: Salespeople who are selling fake watches and purses are probably going to be giving out fake money as well. Too bad for Colin and Ben, who got owned by the salespeople and their counterfeit money. The counterfeit money was printed on like regular printer paper, and had a huge bold line going through the side of it. The rest of the day Ben and Colin talked about how much they wanted to pay one of the salespeople with the fake money… we’ll hear if Ben succeeds when he posts from his NCR internship. It was a long morning, and we were all happy about lunch… especially Li Laoshi, because we went to a strictly vegetarian restaurant. For our “last lunch” we ate several interesting things, like water lily seeds, white fungus, various types of mushrooms, “vegetarian” fish, and some other type of “vegetarian” meat. All of the food was really really spicy, so by the end of the meal, my face had turned a little bit red. As John said, we Irish don’t do spicy very well.
The next stop of the day was the Llama Temple. The Xiao Lin Temple was by far the coolest temple we’ve been to, but that was because of the ridiculous gongfu masters. The Llama Temple was better in a more spiritual way. We got to see the monks at their evening chanting, which was a little bit eerie and a little bit awing. We also saw this really intricate painting, which turned out to be a sand painting. The monks design this kind of artwork a few drops of sand at a time, using nothing but patience and skill. As Li Laoshi explained to us, this kind of artwork represents life; the second that you put all of that time and energy into the sand painting, life takes it away. Normally the monks destroy these as soon as they finish them, just to prove this point. Lesson number 2: Two thongs don’t make a right. Self explanatory.
Our final stop of the day was the Temple of Heaven. The entrance to the Temple of Heaven was like a Chinese Game yard. People were playing Chinese hackey-sack, Mah-Jong, cards, singing, dancing, doing some kind of aerobics with fans, throwing balls, playing Chinese badminton, and just generally lounging around. It was really cool to see some traditional Chinese games and hear all of the laughter in this park that led to the Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven itself stood on top of a platform that was very windy. Because today was a cloudy day, there wasn’t very much light, so it was difficult to see inside it. Instead of spending much time looking at the Temple of Heaven, we instead looked at the stairs and decided to take pictures of ourselves jumping off of them… and filming a mock Rocky video, thanks to Colin and Mark. With the excitement that was the Temple of Heaven coming to a close, we journeyed on to our final destination as a complete group of seven. It was finally time for the Hong Qiao Market. Yay!
The Hong Qiao market was a fresh dose of Chinese salespeople. These people had every type of fake purse, watch, jewelry…if you wanted it, it was there. It was hilarious to see all of the foreigners who couldn’t speak Chinese try to bargain. They were like us at the very first Jade Factory we went to. “OMG, only 100 yuan!! That’s such a deal!” I moved on and watched as Kim and Julie got some great prices... for about 1/6 of the original price. Our bargaining skills have been fully honed. Our visit to the Hong Qiao Market was brief, but tomorrow the final four (Kim, Colin, Mr. Killmer and I) plan on returning to make more shopping ventures.
Our “Last Supper” was one of our best meals yet. Although slightly sad that we would soon be separating, we still had a little bit of time to savor the delicious sweet and sour fish, crunchy egg rolls, turkey in pineapple sauce, and, our all time favorite, white rice. This restaurant was so nice, they even gave us cold water!
Moving on, maybe *cough cough* you *cough cough cough* would like *cough* to *cough cough* know what a pi shu is. A pi shu is the son of a dragon. One of the nine sons of a dragon, to be exact. The pi shu is the brother of the bi xie, which, maybe you would like to know, is another very interesting creature. Lesson number 3: Smoking is a very unattractive habit that may inhibit your ability to speak smoothly.
But, really, the night ended on a sad note, with everyone saying goodbye to Julie and Ben as the left with their host families for the next two weeks. Lesson number 4: You can tell how good of a time you had if you’re sad when things come to an end. Lesson number 5: You can tell you won’t miss someone when you ignore their goodbye being announced over the microphone. Since I know the interns will be keeping this blog up to date: Good Luck you two, and be sure to facebook me and tell me how it’s going. Because the Final Four will still be asleep when John, Mark and Li Laoshi leave in the morning, we also gave them our final hugs goodbye. Lesson number 6: Coffee = Ka Fei, Cream= Niu Nai, Sugar = Tian. See you tomorrow!

Back in Beijing

So its 10:05 pm here as I begin to summarize what has been an action packed, adventure filled day in Beijing. We were all a little nervous (ed. we = Julie and I) to go to NCR today, where some of us would get to spend an additional two and a half weeks working. The cocoa – puffs for breakfast helped calm my nerves at least. You don’t appreciate how good cereal is until you’ve had to eat vegetables and pork like every morning. Anyhow our first site for the day was Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square, the biggest square in the world at 880 meters per side, is filled with Soviet style monuments to the proletariat and vendors selling Mao memorabilia. A couple of us bought some overpriced Mao watches, pretty sweet. We were a little pressed for time, and so soon it was time to go into the Forbidden City. Jam-packed with foreigners, it was difficult to imagine that this was once a city banned to everyone but a select Chinese. Now there’s a Starbucks located inside an 800 year old building – and yes, we all bought some expensive coffee. After the Forbidden City it was lunch time, where we got to eat Peking duck: delicious. Now running a little late we went to NCR. Upon arrival we were given an incredibly informative presentation by a man named Michael Low. Originally from Singapore, Mr. Low described in depth the business model for NCR and its operations in Beijing. He also noted that the goal for our stay would be to learn the product from start to finish. After the lecture we got a tour of the factory floor, which encompassed a huge operation to assemble the machines. Cool stuff. I am pretty excited about this, from all we’ve heard it will be a great experience. Now after NCR we got to go to both the silk factory and the pearl factory. In the former we learned how to tell the difference between real and fake silk (they burn differently) and how silk is created. Apparently a lot of silkworms had to die to make the bedspreads. In any event after they hooked us with the information they pointed us to the warehouse. There were some awesome silk clothes, if over priced. In the pearl factory they also showed us how to tell the difference between real and fake pearls (they rub differently) and also the difference between freshwater and saltwater oysters. Again there were beautiful pieces, and again rather expensive. On the bright side after the purchase we got free candy. Totally worth it. Finally we went to dinner and the teahouse. The teahouse, besides having a lot of tea, put on a variety show-esque presentation, encompassing Shaolin monks, sound effect comedians, Szechuan Opera performers, and more. After that we came back to the hotel, and I began to blog. This will be our final night all together, as Kim, Cameron, Colin, and Mr. Killmer get ready to go back to the states, Mark and John prepare to go to Shanghai, Li Laoshi travels to Taiwan, and me and Julie go to our host families. So yah, its been good, and I think I will go to bed. –Ben Goldhaber

The Great Wall

So today was the pinnacle of the China trip. We climbed the Great Wall. After an early rise and breakfast, we piled on the bus for the two hour ride to glory. …yeah. After we got there we dodged the waiting vendors near our bus and fended them off with promises of our return. With charger horse and blog camera in hand I began my ascent up the mountain along with the rest of the group…

So first we took a cable car up the mountain. A long cable car. Like seriously, it had to be half an hour getting up. Ben had wanted to walk up the mountain himself to get to the wall, but I think after our cable car ride he might have changed his mind… (it would have taken four hours for him to get up there walking, says Li Laoshi. Keep in mind we had two hours at the wall itself…) We managed to keep busy doing cable car Chinese fire drills and singing such classics as the Superman theme song, Kung Fu Fighting, Indiana Jones, and… I don’t even remember… As Mark might say: it’s whatever. So after the cable car we had to climb a lot of stairs. Going up isn’t fun, at least a nice Chinese lady fanned Julie and I as we went up (turns out she just wanted to sell us souvenirs for 100 RMB. Who saw that coming? Anybody?) So at the top… it’s… pretty great. It’s, y’know. A wall. A pretty great wall. It’s got a spiffy view, and there’s a nice hike to have up there. Also you can actually see the carvings on some of the bricks from the workers. I went the wrong direction when I got to the top, so I kinda wasn’t with the rest of the group for the most part, but it’s basically the same thing either way. I caught up with them and we chilled out in the shade of the guard towers. At the high end of the wall, one of us (me) got a really great idea (it was really stupid, but pretty sweet) to sprint as fast as possible down the entirety of this length of the wall (almost barreled into an old woman, nearly throwing her to a violent end at the bottom of the wall. Either that or she’d be stuck on the Mongolia side and half to walk around the whole blasted thing to get back. We ((runners)) discussed this in detail while waiting at the bottom end of the wall for the rest of the group ((walkers)). ) The rest is in the pictures. After the return trip to the bottom of the wall, we loaded up on chips ahoy and headed back to Beijing. After a rest, we headed back out for dinner…

In essence though, to sum up our afternoon attempt to go to the shopping mall and get food, I can use this one particular quote: “Guuuuys. This frickin’ sucksss…!” Also we came to realize that a haze similar to the Fog of Progress (y’know. The haze.) exists in most Chinese restaurants not in hotels or other similar establishments during Chinese meal hours. Seriously, my contacts shriveled up in my eyes from that level of cigarette smoke. “Bu yao, xie xie.” After great failure we gave up and went back to the hotel. A Samuel L Jackson movie was on HBO though, so at least it wasn’t total failure. Great Wall. Not so Great Evening. Semi Great Success for today.

~Colin

More Chengde

Today we continued our exploration of Chengde’s renowned summer palace. After a quick Chinese buffet breakfast at the hotel, we took a ten minute drive to reach the massive complex. Our first stop was the Puning temple, or, “Big Buddha Temple.” The temple contains the world’s largest wooden Buddha. The temple was built in 1755, and covers almost 3,000 km. The temple is significant for several reasons. It not only joins Han Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, but also hosts a plethora of religious ceremonies involving both lamas and monks. All of the roofs of the buildings are yellow; our tour guide explained that yellow was (and still is) considered a royal color that was only worn by emperors. The highlight of the trip was viewing the giant Buddha. The statue was an amazing sight, boasting 42 arms and 25 eyes. Each of the eyes represents a different Buddhist practice. It is referred to as the “1,000 arms and 1,000 legs Buddha.” After learning some basic facts about the life of Buddha, and observing a group of monks performing a religious ceremony in one of the temple’s many wings, we departed. Our next stop was a traditional paper cutting gallery. We were introduced to Shi Junfeng, a renowned paper-cutting artist in China. She demonstrated the technique of paper cutting by creating three intricate paper butterflies in only five minutes! After this brief but impressive introduction, we browsed her gallery, which contained various pieces of artwork depicting nature as well as traditional Chinese architecture and ways of life. Almost all of us purchased some of her works, which were remarkably well priced. Of course Li Laoshi helped us bargain a little… After our shopping spree, we departed for lunch. We ate at the same restaurant where we had lunch the previous day, but thankfully they didn’t load our table with 16 dishes again! Once we had consumed our manageable (and good!) lunch, we headed for the Lesser Potala Palace- another part of the summer palace complex. We climbed a little more than several staircases to reach the top of the temple. The view was definitely worth it, though. The temple is very significant, as the Dali Lama used to live there. The windows, called “blind windows,” are completely covered; this is because monks did not want be distracted by the outside world. After trekking back down to the parking lot, we drove to a mall to do some shopping. Unfortunately, the mall didn’t have the cheap DVDs that many of us have been searching for, so we made our way back to the hotel. We drove the bus to dinner, where we had an interesting debate concerning whether or not drivers in China were really good or really bad. I still maintain that they are crazy, as I have been in a taxi on more than one occasion where the driver played chicken with bikers, vehicles, and pedestrians! We ultimately agreed that the situation on the roads was “organized chaos.” After dinner, we enjoyed some free time back at the hotel. Tomorrow we scale the great wall!
-Julie

Chengde

The first half of today was a bus ride to Cheng De. We passed part of the Great Wall on the way there when we stopped at a convenience store to pick up some Chinese snacks. We got there for the most interesting lunch we’ve had yet. It included deer, an aardvark-like Chinese animal and fourteen other dishes. This northern area is apparently known for its unique game.
We went to see the Emperor’s Summer Resort after checking in. At two times the size of the Summer Palace in Beijing and eight times the size of Bei Hai Park, it makes the city seem small. We passed through the Li Zheng (beautiful and straight) gate, as only the emperor would have done in ancient times. After touching every part of the lions that guarded the entrance (everything is lucky in China, and everything is lucky in different ways so you’ve got to get it all).
The first building we entered has a large sign with the building’s name as written by the emperor on it: with three horizontal strokes instead of the two the character normally has because the emperor found it more visually pleasing. Hundreds of year old trees filled the space between buildings where the emperor did his various activities. One highlighted room was the bedroom, which contains the “Humiliation Desk,” where the emperor signed the treaty with England that gave up Honk Kong and other training rights. There was also the study, where the four ideas of softness, hardness, sublimity, and obviousness.
We ventured throughout the resort for a few hours and saw some unexpected animals like a few deer, a vulture, peacocks, and more, and larger, ants that I’ve ever seen in one place. It was hard to believe that we had traveled farther north, because it was unbelievably hot. I don’t know how the opera performers remained standing in their heavy costumes.
We ended the day with another memorable meal – one with French Fries eaten with chopsticks, orange chicken and friend chicken nuggets. We were actually able to enjoy some free time after that, which was amazing!

Beijing

Though everyday thus far in China has begun early, this was one of the earliest. With a 5:30 AM wake up call, most of us began to quickly assemble our bags for departure. Since we didn’t have predetermined time of departure, most of us (or probably just me) assumed we needed to operate as if we had borrowed time. We were only noticed of when we needed to leave when Li Laoshi came to each of our rooms. At that point, there was no time for breakfast. Fortunately, the hotel we were staying at packed us a breakfast consisting of hardboiled eggs, a Chinese version of pound cake, water, an apple, and milk in a pouch. For those of you who did not attend elementary school in the 1990s, there was a brief time when they switched from carton to plastic pouch. Needless to say, poor design coupled with responsibility of an eight year old made for some very messy lunches. This meal provided the Gang of Seven to reminisce about our early years. Good times.

After having to recheck the rooms for items forgotten, we departed for the train station a little late. Since all of us could see the station across the street from our hotel, we felt no major need to rush to the station. However, Li Laoshi can be quite “persuasive” at 6:00 AM. Once at the station, we quickly went through very lax security and began to wait in the #7 waiting room. At 7:00 exactly, we began to board the train. Though a bit of a walk to the train, we were pleasantly surprised to find our train to be a very sleek, modern, high speed train that was probably manufacture in Germany, not China. We were even happier to find that our 256.00 yuan dollar tickets ( ~$34.13) were for the first class cabin. This was greatly appreciated when we found out this train did NOT have a luggage car. We had to have our luggage strapped to shelves above our heads. Being the experienced travelers that we are, we easily ran out of room in our part of the car, forcing us to stick some bags in the aisles of the seats with people. Though slightly cramped, the comfortable seats more than made up for any displeasure we might have had otherwise.

Most of the train ride was low key, as expected. Some slept; some (Kim) worked feverously; some stared out the window; some even colored on Mr. Kilmer’s head. Since our train sped on to Beijing at 200 km/hr with only four stops in between, we easily made it to the West Station in slightly over five hours. Once at the station, a young worker at the station piled all of our luggage on to one cart, and carried it out to our bus. This feat, combined with the several hundred meters we walked to the bus made his effort virtually priceless. After meeting our local tour guide, Cherry, we went to lunch.

At lunch, we had pretty typically fare, nothing too unusually. The only different thing that we normally wouldn’t have access to was the squid, but it looked like the “faux” squid, not the real deal. After lunch, we all part took of a little Dairy Queen treat on the first floor of the restaurant building. I had the chocolate lover’s Blizzard. It was exactly what the name described it as.

Afterward, we went to our posh hotel. The Jade Palace Hotel is a five star hotel in northwest Beijing. We were stoked to find out our hotel had a pool, a bowling alley, and a spa. After settling in the hotel for a bit, we took the subway to downtown Beijing. The subway here is like the New York subway and the Chicago “el” were combined, except there were only three lines: 1, 2, and 13. We had to transfer trains twice, allowing us to ride on each line. I thought it was fine method of travel, but my classmates thought it was a bit cumbersome, and slightly taxing to try to squeeze your way on to three different trains.

Once at our destination, we were allowed to wander up and down this one block of a shopping center. Kim, Colin and I stuck with Li Laoshi while everyone else went with Mr. Kilmer. My group enjoyed a nice meal at a Japanese restaurant while Mr. Kilmer’s group went to Mickey D’s. We saw various street vendors selling unique street food, a short Beijing Opera performance, and some make blown sugar sculptures. Mr. Kilmer’s group went shopping. Later, we all ended up wandering around for the last forty minutes. At 8:00, Li Laoshi took us all to the Xinhua Bookstore so we could buy our textbooks for next years. Li Laoshi, the cunning bargainer that she is, got us a discount on our books in a store that NEVER bargains with anyone. Finally, we tried to hail a cab for about 10 minutes outside the bookstore before we realized we were hailing them from the wrong side of the street. Once we got a cab, I went with the first group home. Our driver was nice, but we felt he took the scenic way back to the hotel. The other cab beat us back to the hotel. While on route, my foot fell asleep, so when I stepped out of the cab, I literally had no feeling in my foot, and almost fell over as a result. Pretty much, I’ve been lacking my usual figure skating grace the past few days. I blame my lack of skating, but who really knows. Now back at the hotel, all of us are repacking for our next couple of days in Chengde. Since Chengde is a closer to large bodies of water than Beijing, we all hope we will get a slight relief from the intense heat that plagues China.

Best Wishes from Beijing,
- John

Shao Lin temple

Mark Blog 2

Oh man, what a crazy foreign exchange! Zheng Zhou is one jumping joint. Everyone had a unique experience, but I’ll give you some of mine. We all got picked up at the train station and our first impression was that this was not Raleigh. Zheng Zhou feels busier than New York City and more stressful. Simply there is too many people, too many cars, all moving too fast. There are absolutely no suburbs in Chinese cities, at some point you go from sky scraper to farms. It’s a great experience to totally turn our world upside down. Thank the Lord our exchange students rock at English. The average Chinese student practices English all the time, at least several hours a day. There are no other foreign languages, just English. Learn English or fail. We still tried to mix as much Chinese as possible to talk to the parents. Many of us got taken to buy pirated DVDs (usually a dollar or less, I got season 1 of 24 and two other TV shows for $15). Many of us went out to exotic Chinese meals including hot pot. At night we would hang out and enjoy the city. My family took me to the Yellow River, China’s oldest University and the Shao Lin Temple (and out to lunch and dinner every night). At school, we painted bamboo paintings and learned the history of Henan province, as well as visited the local museum nearby where they exhibited the new Chinese space rockets alongside classical artifacts and relics. We also took a field trip to Song Mountain, which was very beautiful. Tomorrow we wake up early to head by train to Beijing.

The exchange was a good time to see how to live in a Chinese city at the ground level, use our Chinese to communicate our needs to our providers, and give us an individual experience as opposed to the group one (especially John, his kid was the anti-social one so we never saw him practically the whole time). I’m glad to be back in the group though, we held a birthday party for Mr. Killmer today, Happy B-day Special K! I did get a chance to buy some sweet traditional Chinese clothes today as well, and see a Chinese Mega shopping mall for clothes. It was tough to say goodbye to our exchange students for the last time, but we are glad for the good times we had together.

Mark

Around Zhenzhou

Our tenth day in China started early as we met at school, loaded into a bus and headed off on a 2 hour drive. We finally got to something I can only compare to a national park. We paid a fee to get in then rode buses from stop to stop. Our first stop was a large dam. We hiked about a mile or two below the dam then followed the river back up to the dam. The landscape had been changed to include a series of smaller dams that created numerous pools and waterfalls all the way back up. Even though it was substantially manmade it was still quite beautiful especially in the setting of the Chinese mountains. It was a great hike but it seemed like there were a million stairs. Following this we traveled to a hidden little restaurant in the mountains for lunch. After lunch, it was more mountain climbing, following the river up to its source with more spectacular views, waterfalls and pools. Our final stop for the day was the monkey valley which just had about 10 monkeys locked in a small cage. It was a little sad. From there it was back to the bus and back to Zhengzhou where everyone went their own way with their host families.

You will be happy to know that starting tomorrow, the students will be back in charge of the blog. They will be saying goodbye to their host families but that is a story for tomorrow.

Cheers!