Monday, September 27, 2010

中秋节等等 - Mid Autumn Festival etc.

It's been awhile since my last post. Since then, classes have been going for 3 weeks. I like my schedule a lot mainly because I have no classes on Friday. I'm taking Korean, Chinese, Business Statistics, Intro Management, and Corporate Finance. I'm the only white person in my Korean class, so a lot of people like talking to me. We have already learned how to read the entire alphabet in Korean, so I can read every word but might pronounce it incorrectly because the pronunciation is really rough. My Chinese class is completely focused on business and business terms. I'm learning some really useful words for Chinese business that I'm sure will help me on the BCT(Business Chinese Test). Statistics is easily my worst class. The teacher's English is incredibly difficult to understand, and she makes it impossible to stay focused in class. Instead of saying sample, she says zample. Probability turns into probiblity. Intro Management is with all of the IBCE students from USC and CUHK. The teacher is really passionate about teaching, and the material is pretty interesting. Corporate finance is more like what my teacher does for her own personal finance. It's a really interesting course, but I only have it once a week, and it's for 2 hours and 45 minutes making it a bit difficult to pay attention.

Last Wednesday night was the Mid Autumn Festival. It's pretty much the Chinese equivalent of Thanksgiving. They all celebrate the end of the harvest and eat mooncakes. We celebrated with most of IBCE on Friday night. For 60 HKD each, you and your friends get an unlimited supply of meats that you can grill over a fire. They had good stuff like some kind of steak, chicken wings, hot dogs, and sausages. Then they had some more questionable things like fishballs, squid, and something even the Chinese kids didn't know what it was. After that, we ate mooncakes. Mooncakes are one of the most filling foods that ever existed. I had one with green tea, mango, and something that looked like cookie dough.

The next day, we woke up early and decided to go cliff-jumping. The site is pretty far from our dorm. First you have to take a 45 minute bus, then a 20 minute taxi, then an hour or so hike. We actually ended up walking past the waterfall, but we found another beach which was really nice and had very few visitors. It was about 4-5 times as big as the other beach we go to with only 10 people instead of over 200. Anyways, the cliff was about 30 feet above the water. After getting up to the top, I was a little nervous, but I didn't wait too long to jump. I only brought flip-flops to hike in, so after a couple hours I was really excited to get back in the taxi. We ended the day at McDonald's where I had 2 Big Macs, fries, and a Coke since I hadn't really eaten anything all day. 'Til next time...

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

最后部分 - Last Part

The day after visiting Want Want Group, we went to the Shanghai Futures Exchange and Amway. The SHFE was probably my least favorite of the three just because I had no idea how trading of futures was carried out. We got to see their trading room, but because it is all electronic, it wasn't too interesting to watch. At Amway, we learned all about how their company worked and why they had become successful in China. Since its a direct selling company, its a little pyramid schemey but still interesting.

The following day was our first day at the World Expo. Because it happened to be the first day of school for kids in China, the lines were relatively short. The first pavilion we went to was Australia. They had a really cool movie/presentation at the end which was a good way to start the day. We went to some other interesting countries like Singapore, North Korea, and Iran. There was a section where we pretty much hit up all the countries that hate the U.S. My friend and I had heard the Japan pavilion was really cool, so we decided to wait 3 hours to see it. It was well worth the wait. I wasn't allowed to take any pictures, but they have some really cool technology they are developing like an amazing camera by Canon, a touch screen you can put on your wall, and smaller personalized "cars". Overall that day we visited about 16 countries getting stamps in our fake passports for most of them.

The following day the lines were a bit longer. Thankfully, Amway was one of the sponsors of the USA pavilion, so we were able to skip the line completely. It was nice to get a little taste of America after being gone for so long. We had a couple hours to ourselves then had to meet at the China pavilion. We got incredibly lucky by getting reservations to go inside. It is easily the hardest pavilion to get into having to wait multiple hours to get a ticket to then wait in the actual line. The pavilion itself was pretty good. They had a short ride inside which was one of the coolest things.

Our last day in Shanghai was a free day. We ended up going with a couple of the CUHK kids to a kinda touristy place a bit outside of town. We went on a gondola type boat ride through the canal that last about 15 minutes. We then walked around and looked at shops. At one cart, they were selling pets, and you could get a rabbit for less than $6. They also had a chipmunk which I'm fairly certain they captured off the side of the road and put in a cage to sell. Saturday, we headed back to Hong Kong and our trip was over. Coming soon, I'll be talking about my life at CUHK now that real classes have started up.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Quick Post

Just a quick post before I forget. I left out the performance we went to go see in Yang Shuo. It is called 刘三姐 Liu San Jie. It was directed by the same person who directed the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. It was an amazing musical/play thing and had over 600 people in it. Most of them come from villages nearby and do other things during the day.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Continued

Sorry it took so long to get around to making this next post. Getting started with classes has been a little hectic. So, after an entire free day of biking and driving mopeds, the next day we took a 4 hour bus ride to the Long Sheng Rice Terrace Fields. Before we began the hike, we stopped by and watched a Yao minority group performance. One of their beliefs is to never cut their hair, so most of them have hair that is longer than they are tall. One of our friends was called up on stage to get "married" to one of the women. After that, we began the 45 minute hike to the most scenic spot for the rice terrace fields. From the top, the view was great; however, it was a little hazy making the pictures of the mountains in the background not as good. The next day was a traveling day. All I did was wait the entire day. We finally got into 上海 Shanghai around 1:30 a.m. The next morning we woke up to go to the first of our company visits. The first stop was 旺旺集团 Want Want Group. They are actually a much more legitimate company than they sound. I can't remember exactly which product, but they hold 70% of the market share with the next closest competitor around 2-3%. After eating lunch and changing clothes, we went to Chenghuang Temple, but it was just a complete tourist area selling everything you could possible imagine.(Yes mom I bought a mask :D)

Just to talk about the food briefly on the trip. The first meal we had in mainland was $3 yuan for a bowl of noodles. Morning noodles are on of the specialties in Gui Lin. At this particular restaurant, it was served with a choice of beef or pork, peanuts, and some sauce. In Gui Lin, dog meat is also a very popular dish which is usually eaten in the winter. Some slang used in Gui Lin is to actually call friends 狗肉 dog meat. So while we were in Yang Shuo, we set out to find some dog meat. We spot a restaurant called 狗肉饭馆 which literally means dog meat restaurant. Well its a little bit down an alley then you have to turn up the stairs and find the restaurant. Conveniently located on the right side of the poorly lit stairs is some throw up. We then go up and find the restaurant, and it turns out it is closed. Fearing for our lives, we run back to the main street. The food we ate in Shanghai is similar to what we usually eat in Hong Kong, but they have one specialty called 小笼包 Xiao Long Bao. It's a dumpling with regular meat inside, but they also put some soup broth, and they are incredible. We had a restaurant that was relatively cheap and served them about 5 minutes away from our hotel. It was 1 yuan for 1 dumpling. We ended up eating there 3 times in our 5 day stay.
More to come! I promise you won't have to wait as long as this time

Monday, September 6, 2010

桂林- Gui Lin

Due to the massive amount of things I must cover in this post, I have decided to break it into 2 or 3 sub-parts. First is about Gui Lin. We left for Gui Lin on August 23rd, and I went on my first real train ride. It was a 13 hour trip total but wasn't nearly as bad as you would think it was. Each seat is actually a bed so from about midnight until 7 a.m. I was asleep to pass the time. Everyone said the beds were uncomfortable, but I slept fairly well. When we arrived, we went to get get ready, and then went to breakfast. We ate breakfast for 50 cents, but it was still incredible. Later that day, we went to Elephant Trunk Hill and hiked up to the top. You can see some of the pictures on my Picasa. After that, we went around in a small cave, and then hiked to the top of that. After that, we went to Reed Flute Cave which is where all the colorful pictures come from.

The next day, we headed to 阳朔 (Yang Shuo). Instead of taking a bus, we took a 3 hour boat ride down the river which had really nice scenery. After arriving in Yang Shuo we had free time the rest of the day. I ended up passing out asleep as well as my roommate. We went to dinner, and afterward decided to check out the night life. At one place, they played the only Chinese song that I know all the words to, so everyone liked me. The next day we went on bicycle ride through some of the village/towns outside of Yang Shuo. We had more free time in the afternoon, so we decided to rent Mopeds. To rent a Moped in China, you only have to give them $10 USD for 60 km of Moped use. They don't require you to present any form of ID or require you to fill out a waiver. Driving in a downtown city.

It may turn out to be longer than 3 posts. It is a lot longer than I expected.