Tuesday (August 31st)
We started the day off pretty much the same as the day before—with a visit to one of the Chinese companies sponsoring our trip. This time it was the Shanghai Futures Exchange:
Just as at Want Want Group, we were led into a conference room and given a brief introduction via Powerpoint.
Here’s a little information about this place. China once had a lot of exchanges, which heated the market up big time. In order to cool things down a bit, the government forced all 50 something exchanges to combine into 4 large ones, of which Shanghai Futures Exchange is one. They specialize in the markets of copper, gold, aluminum, and various other metal-based raw materials. We got to see the stock floor:
Afterwards, we had half an hour to kill before lunch so we took a stroll around the business district. It started to rain, though, so we ran into the nearest building for shelter. As luck would have it, this is where we ended up:
Technically, you could say we stayed in a 5-star hotel, but it was just for 20 minutes or so. When we got back onto the tour bus, Alex (our tour guide—Chinese name: Yu Zifeng), pointed out some of the famous Shanghai buildings. Just as a side-note, for those of you who don’t know, Shanghai is the financial capital of China just as Hong Kong is the trade capital. Interestingly, both of these cities have a short history—only dating back to the mid 1800s. Both were originally collections of small fishing villages, some of which are still here and are now almost 1000 years old.
Anyway, the building in the middle of the picture below is the tallest building in Shanghai. It’s Shanghai’s most important financial building and has the nickname of “The Knife.”
The bridge:
Around 2:00pm, we headed to our second conference of the day, this time at Amway China. Like Want Want Group and Shanghai Futures Exchange before them, Amway gave us a “warm” Powerpoint welcome:
Out of the 3 visits, I enjoyed the one to Amway the most. It’s not like I want to immediately go and work for their company now, but they definitely seemed to be the company most interested in our visit. For a little background about Amway, it’s an American company but most of its success has been in China. They’re direct-selling which means that, traditionally, they don’t have stores. They have salespeople just like Mary-Kay or Avon. Salespeople recruit others to join and then benefit from their own sales plus the sales of people they have personally recruited. If this sounds familiar, don’t be surprised. While direct-selling is a legitimate business model, its next-of-kin, the pyramid scheme, is not.
Anyway, what was most interesting to me was how Amway has had to change its business model over the years according to the regulations by the Chinese government. It can be very difficult for international companies in China. However, for any company to truly consider itself “international,” it’s impossible to ignore the one country that’s home to 1/6 of the world’s population. Firstly, many Chinese succumbed to pyramid schemes in the late 1980s and early 1990s, losing almost everything they owned. When Amway tried to enter the Chinese market in 1995, the government was very suspicious, but granted them a “direct selling license.” Only 3 other companies had the license at the time. Amway was fairly successful with direct selling in China, but a few years later “direct selling” was suddenly banned. The company’s sales immediately shut off and, with no source of revenue, many employees quit and creditors flooded into the offices demanding payment. Eventually, a compromise was reached with the Chinese government. Direct selling companies could still operate in China, but they had to have a physical store in every region where sales were of a particular amount. This business model is a kind of hybrid that previously had not been attempted. Still, wanting to maintain its status as an international company, Amway opened stores. In China now, you can see both Avon stores and Amway stores. Avon seems like it rented out dilapidated shacks and painted “Avon” on the outside. Amway, I think, made the right decision by deciding to really invest in its stores. Because of that, it has built up its brand power here in China and gained the trust of the Chinese people. Now the rest of the Amway branches outside of China are copying the Chinese hybrid business model and seeing record sales. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.
I apologize for the mini-history there, but I found that really interesting and I’ve learned a lot about the real problems businesses face in China. Because of the complexity of the Chinese market, there is even a special business term to describe the problems that arise from it: UCC (Unique China Circumstances).
We got to see the Amway China Training Institute, and several of the various departments. What really made me feel welcome was that we had a lengthy Q&A session with the Vice President of Amway China. He actually went well overtime, which gave me the impression that no one was trying to rush us out of there. Amway was also kind enough to pay for our dinner and, since they are the sponsor for the American pavilion at the World Expo, made reservations for us at their pavilion so we wouldn’t have to wait in line.
After a nice dinner, we went to one of the most famous spots in Shanghai, the Bund. Originally, this was where all the foreigners lived so you could say it’s the nice part of town. It’s about as historic as Shanghai gets, and offers a wonderful view of the river and the business district. Shanghai is famous for its skyline at night because, like Hong Kong, there is a nightly light show. The American students spent about 15 minutes looking around then got bored and left. Therefore, one more American and I grouped up with 11 kids from the Chinese cohort and kept looking around. They love taking pictures! I think I’m probably going to drown in facebook photo-tags when we get back to CUHK. It was fun, though, and we did a lot of the cool stuff at the Bund. Here are some of the pictures/videos:
It’s a little blurry looking at the ferries with the neon lights, but this is the best I’ve got:
Behold the Shanghai Bund! Occupied by foreigners from 1848 to 2010:
This is a little self-explanatory:
Our sweet tunnel ride:
It was a little late when we got back to the hotel, but the World Expo was the next day and we’d all heard the horror stories.
Wednesday (September 1st)
This was the first day at the World Expo. Remember how I mentioned those horror stories? Let me elaborate: 40 degrees Celsius, 500,000 people, 6 hour lines, people passing out from dehydration/exhaustion, trampling, and riots. According to those who had been and made it out alive, this was going to be a true test of stamina and survival.
Our trial was set to begin at 9:00am, which is when we were scheduled to board the tour bus. Naturally, we didn’t leave until 9:30am…surprise surprise. When we got there, we all went through the metal detectors, had our belongings searched, and had the little wand waved over every inch of us. One security guard even insisted on seeing every single content of my wallet, making me pull out all my money bill-by-bill and then carefully watching me put it all back.
I stuck with my group from the Bund and we decided to spend our whole first day at the European Square, since the pavilions there make up about half of the expo anyway. The plan for the second day was to explore the smaller areas of Africa, South America, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. For a small continent, Europe sure knows how to make a presence. Here’s a glance at what some of the pavilions look like:
We didn’t actually go to the Belgium-European Union one because the reviews weren’t that great, so first up on our list was Spain (which was the featured pavilion this week). The first stop in Spain was the dancing show:
And the last stop was (for me) the stuff of nightmares. I welcome you to the Uncanny Valley. This is a giant robot baby that’s supposed to look sleepy. To me, it just looked drunk…and creepy. I don’t like stuff that looks that realistic but still not quite realistic enough—especially when it’s moving around trying to act real. That is simply too creepy for me. To prove my point, behold Spain-Baby:
At least the baby was the worst part of the Spain pavilion. We waited in line for only 30 minutes, which is insane because Spain is one of the most popular pavilions. Hoping to continue our streak of luck, we headed over to Denmark:
Denmark’s pavilion was a little dull, but at least they were nice enough to specially transport their famous mermaid statue:
Once again, there was almost no line. It was the same going to Sweden (which ironically reminded us all of an IKEA store on the inside):
The wait for Greece was also quite short:
We ate lunch at the Greek pavilion. All the CUHK kids ordered the same thing because the restaurant was having a special. You could get 2 orders of beef & rice, 1 liter of Coke, and 2 fruit salads for 195 yuan. That’s still ridiculously expensive for China, but well-priced for the Expo. What’s funnier is that none of them really enjoyed the meal, but they all prided themselves on “ordering the cheapest thing on the menu.” I ordered the soutzoukakia and a drink, which was immensely better than the beef & rice. My meal altogether also cost me 95 yuan, which is slightly cheaper than one person’s share of “the cheapest thing on the menu.” It pays to pay attention.
The next stop was Iceland and (guess what?) there was hardly any line:
I thought this one was also kind of boring. Noticing a pattern perhaps? The theme of the expo was “Better Cities, Better Life,” which means it was all about going green. There was practically no culture or history on display, just solar power, windmills, eco-friendly cities, etc. All the pavilions were about “the future of Country X,” and (surprise surprise) they all own the same pair of the proverbial rose-tinted glasses. All the pavilions were practically the same! I hate to say it, but I was bored. I would rather have visited some of the cool places around Shanghai. Even some of the odd signs provided little amusement:
Seriously, this was all that Iceland had:
Here’s my favorite: Turkey. Maybe it’s because Turkey isn’t doing much in the way of “going green,” but their whole pavilion was about history and culture. Thank goodness! Catal Hoyuk? OK! Hammurabi’s Code? Bring it on! Being a history-lover I was already familiar with most of what I saw, but it was a nice change. Not to mention (even though I didn’t buy any) they were selling Turkish ice-cream, which is actually very different from regular ice-cream:
See? Culture, history…fertility statues:
Next stop was Ireland, which was just a bunch of solar housing with an Irish jig in the background:
Norway was even more boring. Their biggest attraction was a water fountain with “pure filtered water.” Oh boy!
It was a pretty pavilion though:
Now Latvia was actually one of my favorites.
I have no idea what this has to do with “going green,” but allow me to introduce you to the Latvian Superman:
Pretty much all the myths about the World Expo ended up not being true for us, which is nice, but I just thought the expo itself was quite boring. I did, however, find out why the rumored 500,000 people weren’t there that day: (1) it was the first day back to school for Chinese kids, and (2) we got stuck in a giant typhoon. From my point of view, the typhoon was the coolest thing that happened all day. It wasn’t fun being stuck in the Austrian pavilion for 2 hours, but we managed. The worst part about that was also the best. We were really hungry for some dinner while we were stuck in Austria so we went to the restaurant. It was way overpriced (my meal cost about US $12), but the food was absolutely amazing. I had pork tenderloin and vegetables in mushroom sauce with spatzle. Delicious! I guess, when you look at it in US dollars, it’s not too bad.
We got back to the bus around 9:00pm to head back to the hotel. Of course we left much later than scheduled, but what else is new? I took a shower and hit the sack.
Thursday (September 2nd)
Welcome to the second day at the World Expo! Our first stop was at the American pavilion, where Amway had been kind enough to make reservations. Besides Turkey, the American pavilion ended up being my favorite.
We got in very quickly and got talking to some of the staff. They were pretty much all ABCs (American-Born Chinese) from California, but we had fun joking around and listening to one girl trying to explain to a crowd of 300 or so Chinese how to pronounce “Obama.” They loved it. We watched a video called “America Welcomes You,” which was a lot of people on the street trying to say “Welcome to America” in Chinese. There was a lot of cutting up, and I was glad to find that, out of all the countries, America seemed to be the only one with a sense of humor. The pavilion itself was very good, and I felt proud that my country knew how to make a good impression abroad. America’s pavilion was also the only one where the leader of the country (in our case, President Obama) directly addressed the audience via video. I heard a lot of Chinese people talking later about how honored they felt to be addressed specifically by such an important person. Based on my observations, I wasn’t the only person who thought the American pavilion was great. The Chinese loved it and couldn’t stop talking about it. No wonder it’s one of the most popular pavilions at the expo.
Our next stop was Canada:
The pavilion was pretty since it was designed by Cirque du Soleil, but (like most) I found it rather lacking in the interest department. I think the CUHK kids had a great time there, though, because Canada is so foreign to them. I’m glad they had a good time, and so I didn’t mind waiting a bit. The only problem was that I kept getting mistaken for one of the Canadian staff members and people wanted to take pictures with me. Even when they found out I was American, they didn’t care. I’m probably now in the vacation photos of at least 15 Chinese families. My favorite is one of me with a 3 or 4 year old girl with both of us smiling and making the peace sign.
We didn’t have much time after Canada because we had a 1:30pm reservation at the China pavilion, also one of the most popular. I had had a big breakfast and the pavilions never really take more than 15 minutes to go through. Because of that, the plan was to have lunch after the China pavilion and then check out some of the Asian countries. Here’s the Chinese pavilion:
We went into a small section called “National Treasures.” I have no idea why “treasure” was plural because this was the only thing on display:
In the section about the future, we got to see some interesting “future car” prototypes:
That was about halfway through the pavilion and, unfortunately, I can’t tell you much about the other half. About that time, my hand started getting shaky and my head hurt. I was trapped in a giant pavilion that seemed to have no end. Even the largest pavilions had never taken more than 15 minutes or so, but we had already been in China for over 2 hours. Despite the presence of emergency exits, the crowd was so dense it was impossible to escape. Thankfully, it takes a long time for my legs to get weak even once my blood sugar starts to drop. That’s usually one of the last symptoms. By the time we finally got out, it was almost 4:00pm and a lot of the usual symptoms had already set in: my hands were very shaky and I had trouble gripping or holding onto anything, I felt like I was moving in slow motion, my head felt like it was filled with air, I had passed the point of being hungry and instead had to fight the urge to sleep (probably making me look narcoleptic), and I had trouble talking. I’ve rarely gotten to the point where talking is difficult because it’s only ever happened when my blood sugar reaches the high 40s. Still, I had no problem walking so long as I took things slowly.
Shortly after my blood sugar got too low, I knew that I would not be able to stay at the expo. I tried to ask Dr. Ho where I could find Dr. Hudgens because he’s the one the USC students should talk to if they have a problem. The last thing I wanted to do was make a scene. The best thing to do was to tell one person in charge and then find the closest spot to eat a square meal with the 3 important components of carbohydrates, fiber, and (most importantly) protein to back it up. I got the words out, but very slowly and with a lot of trouble. Instead of telling me, she completely freaked out and tried to make me lie down. With a lot of trouble, I tried to explain that lying down was just prolonging the problem. I wasn’t sick—I had low blood sugar. Lying down and waiting to feel better would really just make things worse.
At the words “blood sugar,” everyone suddenly thinks 2 things: (1) the person with the blood sugar problem is a severe diabetic, and (2) they (the people trying to help) are experts on diabetes. Firstly, I am not a diabetic. Do not try to take me to the expo clinic for an insulin shot because that will make the low blood sugar problem get worse a whole lot quicker. Thankfully, I was able to vehemently shoot down that idea before anyone went too far with it. I told them quite calmly (though speaking with increasing trouble) that I needed to eat a meal—not candy or cookies. Those things help temporarily when sugar is just a little low, but when it’s already in the high 40s the insulin just gobbles up the pure sugar in the cookies or candy or even fruit and then makes the blood sugar problem worse. What I needed was a meal with carbohydrates, fiber, and protein (because protein slows the absorption of the sugar and stabilizes it).
Naturally, after this detailed explanation that I really didn’t have time for, everyone proceeded to make me lie down again and shove bananas and cookies in my face. Everyone, I really appreciate how much you care about my health, and I know you just want to help, but for future reference, please do not do that! The best analogy I can think of is a blood transfusion. Let’s say someone desperately needs a blood transfusion, but has type O blood. Type Os can receive only from other Type Os. It’s like the person who needs the blood transfusion keeps telling the doctors and nurses he needs Type O blood, but they continue trying to give him Type B. It’s nice that you want to help, but when someone has a medical problem, please trust that they know more about how to treat it than you do.
Dr. Hudgens and Sarah (USC Study Abroad Advisor—and actually the person who interviewed me for my medical assessment prior to departure) eventually came to my rescue. At that point all I could manage to get out was “Blood sugar. Need to eat. No sugar.” Miraculously, I could still walk perfectly well although my eyesight was starting to get a bit blurry on me. Within minutes, the 3 of us ended up at a Starbucks. After my description, it sounds like the worse place to take someone with my problem, but that’s just Starbucks in America. Although it isn’t my first choice by a long shot, Starbucks in China serves hot meals that are actually very well balanced and healthy for me to eat. I pointed at a meal which included a small serving of rice with chicken, mushrooms, carrots, and broccoli. It also came with iced Chinese tea, and a side salad of cucumber, celery, cherry tomatoes, grapes, and cantaloupe. I don’t think I could have designed a more perfect meal for my needs at that time. I ate up and thanked God.
Unfortunately, once I’ve been wiped out like that I tend to stay tired and very lethargic for the rest of the day. I knew I needed to take a taxi back to the hotel. It turns out Dr. Hudgens needed to run by the bank anyway (and it closes at 5:00pm) so we both took a taxi. I spent the rest of the day sleeping. I ate a granola bar and a couple pieces of lemongrass dried pork around 9:00pm because I wasn’t very hungry but still had to eat something, and after that just slept until 7:30am this morning (Friday September 3rd).
I feel a whole lot better now, though still somewhat tired. Being an optimist, though, I feel rather lucky about a lot of things. (1) My friends care about me. I wish they wouldn’t go into panic mode, but I suppose I looked and sounded pretty bad. (2) There just happened to be a restaurant nearby with just the right food for fixing my problem, and I didn’t have to pay an arm and a leg for it. (3) Dr. Hudgens also needed to head back so I didn’t have to return to the hotel by myself. (4) The World Expo was rather disappointing anyway so I didn’t feel like I really missed out by leaving early.
All in all, though, I’ve definitely enjoyed my trip—even if I liked some parts better than others. I think Shanghai is worth a return trip because this time around was practically nothing but business meetings and World Expo. I’d rather see some of the historic spots and famous temples. I did meet some wonderful people, however, and I think I can safely say that just the fact that I got to meet those guys made the trip completely worth it.
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