Hello dear readers! I hope you’re all doing well. Okay so as you know I recently returned from a trip to China. The trip was awesome and I learned a lot about Chinese culture and history. Now originally I planned to create a new post each day I was in China so that you all could keep up with what was happening, but I found it a bit difficult since I was gone usually until late at night. By that time I was exhausted from the day’s events and passed out as soon as I lay in bed. My last post was the first entry in the journal I kept during the trip. I decided that instead of writing a single post each day, I would combine several journal entries into one post. I hope you guys don’t mind the format. The entries are below. Enjoy!
Entry 1:
Journal, allow me to go through my first day in China. After having my first meal in China I can already see the clear difference between American Chinese food and authentic Chinese food. Big difference! Everything is lighter and less greasy. The sauce and seasonings are much more distinct and everything isn’t breaded or deep fried. The style of eating is very different also. In America you take one plate of a few items and fill it up. Here you take a little bit of several dishes so that way you get to try everything. I really like their style of eating and can see why they’re not dealing with an obesity problem like the US (too harsh? Maybe..) There are more organic options and less processed crap which I think is awesome. You don’t have to pay an arm and a leg for some fresh food! That’s how it should be everywhere.
In the dining area I was lucky enough to get a window seat so I could see right out into the hotel’s garden. It was so beautiful. There’s this little river and all these beautiful flowers surround it with small fountains. When the sun shines down on this scenery I get this really peaceful feeling. I suddenly just want to lay out in the sun and laze the day away. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. A relaxing day in the sun is good for everyone. Anyway after breakfast we went to a carbon trading company in the business area of Beijing. The company was bought out by a Swedish bank so the the big boss (who we spoke with) was obviously Swedish. He was very nice and answered all our questions, but I have to be honest. The dude seemed a bit arrogant. Just a bit. Oh yeah, okay so just in case you don’t know what a carbon trading company is let me give you a quick definition. Countries that have caps on their amount of green house gases like the US help other countries that don’t have caps like China reduce their amount of green house gases and increase their amount of clean energy so that inn return countries with caps like the US can somewhat extend their cap limit and be able to produce more green house gases without breaking the cap. You get it? Though the business was definitely interesting and a fresh idea, I cant help but to wonder how other environmentalist feel about such companies? Okay, so these companies do give a somewhat strong consistency to the amount of green house gases (because one country helps another produce less gh gas the first country gets to produce the amount the second country didn’t), but environmentalists don’y want a consistency in the amount. They want a decrease. I look at it like this. If there wasn’t a consistency there would be an increase in the amount of gh gases and I prefer consistency over an increase. Of course a decrease is better,but the chances of that happening are slim to none. Sometimes you have to settle in life.
Entry 2
Apparently the way business is done in China is quite different than the American style of doing business according to my Professor. He claims that in the US business is more formal where in China its on a more friendly level and more relxaed. People want to get to know you before they do business with you. I guess in American business there no play time. This comparison is unexpected because in general I believe Chinese culture and society to be more more reserved than the US, but there are certain aspects of the cultures where the opposite is true instead such as business handling. It’s late and I’m tired. I’ll try to think of some more comparisons tomorrow. Night.
Entry 3 will be posted tomorrow. Thanks and please give feed back.
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