Blogging from China was blocked. We're back in Hong Kong.

2012 China Blog Pratt

Sunday/Monday, 20-21 May

3:45 departure from Eau Claire was early (especially after going to be around midnight), but it actually helped me get on China time. The flight over was wonderfully uneventful, as I slept most of the way, waking only to eat. Scott was on the same flight but seated a few rows over. After we landed, we shared dinner with Alvin, our Hong Kong tour guide, who introduced us to a new term: TIC. It means, “this is China,” and refers to the unpredictability of working with the Chinese. He had encountered some challenges in arranging for our ferry tickets to the mainland.

Tuesday, 22 May

The 4 undergrads had arrived and had been sightseeing in Hong Kong before Scott and I arrived. They are having a good time. Taking a cab from the airport to the hotel worked the best for them and made me less anxious about ensuring their safe arrival to the hotel. I took Alvin’s suggestion to pick up the grads: take a shuttle to the train and then the train to/from the airport. It worked well. The grads came in 2 groups of 2. The first group was delayed 2 hours and the second group (Greg and DeeAnne) arrived a little early.  All arrived safely and we travelled by train/shuttle back to the hotel. We met Tim and son Michael at the airport, and they joined us.

Wednesday, 23 May

Alvin arranged for a bus to take us to the ferry. Thank goodness! One of the original budget-cutting decisions was that we would walk to the ferry—bad idea. Some students travel with huge pieces of luggage and the distance was farther than originally estimated. The ferry trip was a bit rocky, as I remembered from before. We need to put “take Dramamine before ferry trip” into the pre-departure notes. Only one person sick. Susan and some of the Zhuhai “buddies” met us at the ferry station. After getting us checked into the Junlin Hotel, the buddies took us by bus downtown to buy necessary toiletries. The Chinese-American students are already starting to bond.

Thursday, 24 May

We had a very nice opening ceremony attended by the top people at Jinan University Zhuhai College (JUZC), which impressed upon us the importance of this relationship to both universities. We were surprised and humored that the ceremony did not follow the printed agenda, but that Tim and Scott were both called upon to address the group. There was much laughter throughout the ceremony. After an Oral Chinese class, the JUZC administrators treated us to an excellent lunch. One student got sick, but Pepto Bismal was available in the group and she was well enough to join the rest of the group in the afternoon.

Based on the 2011 January trip to Shaoguan, the schedule this time included some early relationship-building activities for the students. This worked great. The students took off together in the afternoon. They took a bus to some nearby islands and rented tandem bikes to ride along the shoreline. Each bike was powered via Chinese-American collaboration. I could not have planned such a great relationship-building experience.

Scott and I had dinner at a little community restaurant. The tall apartments are arranged in a U shape with shops on the first floor. The center is concrete and is the gathering place for young and old. We watched a woman help an elderly man do his walk therapy, very slow and laborious. A young boy with only a shirt on played in front of us. School children were playing kick-ball. Several small groups of people sat and visited. It was a very pleasant and relaxing evening. More people came out as the sun descended and the heat subsided.

Friday, 25 May

We had two more classes today: Oral Chinese and Chinese Culture, with a focus on the cities we will visit this weekend. Both classes were informative. The afternoon included another relationship-building time for the Chinese-American buddies. I took the opportunity to catch up on some university work.

Saturday 26 May

Took the bus to Shenzhen to visit the Shenzhen Museum, H&T International Transportation and the Yantian Port. The bus ride was nice and provided an opportunity to see some rural settings as opposed to the more affluent city environment. Shenzhen is incredible, having transformed in just over 30 years from a fishing village to a major metropolis. It's one of the Special Economic Zones that is friendly to international trade, and it shows.

A Shenzhen Museum exhibit included some 10-year span before/after pictures depicting the city's development. Amazing. The museum gift shop had 3 sections. The first was your typical gift shop with inexpensive touristy items. A doorway in the back led to a jewelry shop with nicer items. As I walked around the glass cases, they opened up the “wall” at the back of the jewelry store to enable entrance to high-market jade and pearl jewelry. When they realized I was not planning to buy anything, the wall closed again.

Yantian Port was also amazing--they move 1 million containers through there each year. It's the largest port in China. Melody, from H&T Int'l Transp got us as close as she could to the port, which was in full operation (the only port open on Saturday in China). It was mammoth.

Interesting sights:

1. The street lights in Shenzhen have small wind propellers and solar panels on them. Presumably they generate their own electricity. Very forward thinking.

2. An Asian version of a Tour de France bike race was weaving in and out of traffic on a busy freeway.

Public smoking is something that surprised me. Our hotel rooms here are smoker rooms and people smoke in the restaurant. I prefer our clean WI air.

Learning Experience: Allow at least 15 minutes between checkout and departure. They have to check each room to ensure nothing was left or stolen. I had two infractions. First, I checked out an iron and ironing board and then lent it to Sam and Chris. Our bus was held until I told them in which room to find the items. Second, the evening before I pulled back the desk chair to set up my computer. The chair leg was broken (I was glad I had not discovered this while attempting to sit on the chair!). A maid was servicing a nearby room, so I summoned her to my room and showed her the chair. Being from a customer-service society, I assumed she would call someone to replace the chair. That didn’t happen. Next, I found a service person and, through gestures and pointing at the chair, was able to communicate that I needed a new chair. That worked. The next morning, though, the hotel would not let us depart until we resolved who was going to pay for the broken chair. That discussion took close to 15 minutes, mostly between our Zhuhai faculty member, the travel guide, and a hotel manager. The end result was that we did not have to pay, but the whole discussion of both situations put us a bit behind schedule.

Sunday, 27 May

Today we travelled to Guangzhou, where visited the site of the Asian Games, had lunch with David Schroeder, the Economic Officer at the U.S. Consulate, visited the Chen Clan Academy, and the Dr. Sun Yat-sen memorial Hall. We concluded the day with a lovely dinner cruise down the Pearl River. Like Hong Kong, Guangzhou lights up its buildings and bridges with neon lights at night. Although it rained most of the day, it stopped raining for the cruise, so we were able to go above deck to appreciate the light show.

The site of the Asian Games was similar, but on a much smaller scale, to the Beijing site of Olympics. I can only imagine how spectacular the opening ceremony was. At night the site lit up in different colors. We could see it from the dinner cruise.

The Memorial and Academy were both interesting. We would have benefited greatly from having an English-speaking tour guide who could have provided us with contextual relevance. Our wonderful little tour guide spoke very broken English. Fortunately some English captions were provided.

The lunch with David Schroeder was very informative. He provided us with the “American on site” perspective that helped us interpret what we hear both from US news media and from Chinese students/faculty. Possibly of most interest to me was the depiction of China as three fairly geographic regions representing economic purchasing ability. The high-purchase consumers are located on the shorelines, especially in the Special Economic Zones. About 200 miles in exists a type of middle class (can’t remember the population number) that represents about 5 times the purchasing power of the first class. Then the entire rest of the region is comprised of the majority that have little purchasing power. China and the US need to focus on the middle-class consumer, since they represent huge purchasing power. China is focused on exports, not so much on producing for domestic consumption. One major barrier is lack of domestic freight transportation.

Tuesday, 28 May

Attended two classes today: one good, one not. Why? Personal and cultural instructional methods, content, and possible lack of confidence in English language. Interesting. The first instructor spoke better English so engaged interactively with the students, answering questions as they occurred.  His presentation compared/contrasted differences in transportation logistics between the US and China. Very interesting. The second instructor read from full-page-text slides and shut down questioning early. Her content was intro textbook content that our students have had (e.g., difference between implicit/explicit knowledge and how knowledge is diffused). One student fell asleep; others played computer/phone games. Couldn’t blame them. I would read her slide and then work on my blog until the next slide.

Lunch was a welcome KFC, even though I rarely eat there in the States. I even had an ice-cream cone…can’t remember the last time I had an ice-cream cone!

Afternoon site visit was to Gree Electronics. The visit was very interesting. They are very interested in changing the “Made in China” negative connotation to a “Gree equals six sigma high quality”) brand awareness. They don’t let anything under level 3 (out of 5 levels) out of the plant. A Zhuhai faculty member pointed out to them that their fail rate was still 3 points off six sigma. Their competitive strategy is to focus on their strength, maintain high quality, diversify only within their area of expertise (refrigeration) and outsource everything else.

Sending our questions to Susan for distribution to the sites prior to our arrival has worked out very well. Doing so has provided the spokesperson for each site the ability to research questions outside the area of his/her expertise. It also provides opportunity for translation. Even with having the questions distributed early, we saw some confusion, but the questions provided a base from which other questions were asked.

Dinner was at the Red House, where Rama and I stayed in November. Although also a school cafeteria, the food here was much better than in the student cafeteria and better than in some of the restaurants we’ve visited.

Wednesday, 29 May

Two classes again today. The first, International Investment, was delivered by Dr. Wu, who is the CFO for the Hengqin New Area, the new development area we visited on Monday. Educated at the top school in China and then at Cornell and Knoxville, he was both very knowledgeable and very familiar with Western-style learning. His fairly short presentation about the Hengqin New Area provided a good foundation for the interactive Q&A which engaged the students so much that we ran about 10 minutes overtime. That’s okay, though, because now we’re enduring the second painful reading from the instructor from yesterday (and I’m writing my blog). J

We met Print-Rite’s founder and Chairman Mr. Arnald Ho. He’s the Steve Jobs of printing. I was amazed at how genuine he was. He provided forthright answers to our questions and kept us comfortable with jokes and stories. The innovation he develops in his employees is demonstrated through the diversity of their products in a time when personal printing of documents is decreasing. He and Print-Rite were amazing.

The faculty (Scott, Tim and I) joined Yang, Jane and Jane’s family for dinner at a traditional Hunan restaurant. We’ve been eating primarily Cantonese to this point. The food was delicious. Some was very spicy and brought tears to my eyes, but there was plenty of tea to cool the mouth. I like the Chinese version of dessert after meals: fruit.

Paying in cash is a bit inconvenient for me, since I’m so used to using my debit card everywhere. One of the tourist places we visited accepted credit cards, which some of the students used; however, day-to-day transactions are cash, and the shopkeepers keep the cash in a regular desk drawer. Limited security.