Reflections: When is 'Trenton Does China 2' Dropping?

Looking back on the trip, as well as my expectations essay (in-class assignment), there were a lot of things that surprised me, as well as things that I expected. One of the things that I expected was for the Chinese natives to be really fascinated with me and everyone would want to take pictures, not only because I’m an American, but because I am also a black American. I heard that many Chinese natives find our fashion sense weird and our overall look to be intriguing. I realize that being an American who only knows English puts me at their mercy at times because they can insult me right to my face. Luckily, I really do not care. The pictures theory was only sort of true. I did get a lot of photo requests, but it was mostly in tourist attractions and the rural towns we would travel through. What did these two places have in common? They both had Chinese natives who probably lived in countryside towns instead of the more modern and diverse cities like Beijing and Shanghai. The natives in the big cities gave me a glance, but didn’t overreact like I thought they would. It makes since though. Beijing has a basketball team with quite a few African-Americans roster. They also probably see a few of them in their cities for tourism and business ventures as well. A lot of rural Chinese people do not have TVs and there is very little to compel an African-American businessman/woman, athlete or tourist to go there. A couple of the people I took pictures with said that I was indeed the first black person they ever saw in person. I do know that when you are in a foreign country but you live in a hotspot for globalization and modernization, you tend to meet a variety of people.

            One of the major motives for this trip was to get an understanding of how the Chinese conduct their business and compare it to how Western countries, like America, conduct theirs. We got to visit both state owned and privately owned enterprises so we got to see both sides of the Chinese industrial coin. What surprised me is that from multiple accounts, we learned that in China, the relationship between the boss and employee is of upmost importance. I remember we saw a slide which abstractly showed the difference between the boss-employee relationship in America vs. China. The American slide had silhouettes of multiple people. The center person towered over everyone else and made them look like ants. The China slide had a center person who was only slightly bigger than the rest and you can tell that the other people in the slide were subordinates, but still were acknowledged by the man/woman in charge. What we heard from the guest speakers pretty much confirmed what we learned in class. When making business decisions, the Chinese really emphasize the team element. The boss still makes the final decisions and is still in charge, but the people in the circle allowed to add their inputs in. In the American business model, the individual is emphasized and the gap between the boss and the person in charge seems to be bigger. One of the heads of the AMD plants said that he would be willing to get to know an employee for a full year in order to build a healthy relationship between the two of them.

            Other topics that were often talked about during the trip were the opportunity of starting a business in China, what it means to go international for business and understanding the Chinese market. What I already knew is that if you have a popular product being sold in China, you will be making a major profit. China is home to over 1 billion people, so if you can provide a service or product that is popular to the Chinese consumer, their market is worth looking into. Then, you have the angle of a business that is already successful in its home country but decides to go into the Chinese market in order to expand. Companies like PPG, GMC, and AMD have done this. Another example is the abundance of American fast food chains we saw during our trip.

            Part of going international with your business is understanding if and how you will adjust your product(s) to fit the desires of your new market. For example, when we had a Q and A session with Shanghai GMC, they said that the Chinese consumer very often wanted small cars because of the size of the people in the car or for those people with smaller families. So, GMC produced an extra small version of a Buick that is sold to match the wants of the consumer and is not sold back in the states. In the Chinese version of American food chains, I saw a lot of rice dishes and Chinese sauces that supplemented the typical chicken or pizza. When these food chains expanded, they probably sampled some of the Chinese population and asked them what they eat. I know when I eat at restaurants that serve foreign cuisine, I tend to look for food I am familiar with so I do not take too much of a risk. The marketing departments probably were thinking this as well and wanted to mix their foods with typical Chinese cuisine so there can be a since of familiarity with the consumer while still selling their typical product.

            Chinese college life was something I was looking forward to witnessing as well. XULU was more of a sit-down lecture with lunch afterwards, but I did enjoy my time at Peking University. In hindsight there weren’t too many things different from a typical American University like Pitt. They had typical sized lecture halls. Their dorms and convenience stores looked normal as well. The dining hall was packed. But, I expected this because during our INNOVATE lecture class about college life, we learned that all the students tend to eat at a certain hour, so the dining halls tend to get crowded. What did surprise me was the intense security at PKU’s gate. They had intimidating officers and you had to show your ID just to get into campus. At Pitt, anyone can step foot on campus. The only places we have any serious security are the dormitories.

            Overall, I really enjoyed the trip. I learned that China is a really interesting market to test if you have an idea, the resources and the time. Having a start-up in China now seems not as impossible as I once thought. I loved seeing both state owned and privately owned businesses and learning how they make business decisions differently. The historical landmarks were beautiful and I would love to go back to china before I leave this Earth. I feel that I have a better sense of business in China now. So, I feel that, at least for me, this course has accomplished its goal.

Day 10: Language Barrier Stronger Than the Chinese Great Firewall?

I mainly just packed today and stayed in my hotel room until we had to take the bus to the Shanghai airport, so instead I will reflect on a situation that I experienced earlier in the trip. It happened all the way back in the first day of the trip. The day ended with a challenge. The flight to China didn’t allow shaving cream, so I needed to go to the supermarket to buy some. The guides from the Asia Institute had to say in one place to wait for everyone, so I had to go alone without a translator. It was the first time I was in a situation where I was the only one in the place who could speak my language and I could not communicate verbally with the people around me. Luckily, I was able to talk with my hands well enough for one of the cashiers to tell me where the shaving cream was and I got out safely. I ended the night with some Chinese MTV. They have some weird music videos. I then went to bed to prepare the Great Wall and the Temple of Heaven the next day. As I lay up in bed, I thought to myself that I will be in those situations quite a bit during this trip, so I need to come up with a plan for when something like this happen. That night, I practiced talking with my hands more. The natives were not going to understand English, but they can understand the signals I made with my hands. Once I practiced speaking with my hands, my communication skills got better and eventually I was able to explore the towns we stayed in without a translator always needing to be with me. The lesson I learned that night served me really well.

           

           

Day 9: China Is the Best Place for Big and Tall Spandex

We started the day with a boat trip on the river. The smog we saw in Beijing was back and I took pictures that were similar to the photos I took on the first night in Shanghai in the Bund Area. The difference between night and day was drastic.

            After, eating soup dumplings for lunch, we wandered around old Shanghai and bought some things from the local shops. People call it old Shanghai because of the more traditional architecture and way of live. It has a different feel from modern Shanghai, where all the famous shopping outlets are.

We were allowed to split off and do our own thing afterwards. I decided to use the Shanghai Subway to get to the New World City area in order to do some shopping. The view at night, just like The Bund, was amazing. However, after getting some gifts from M&M’s world, the actual shopping was a mixed bag. The Chinese are not very big in terms of stature, so they size their clothes differently. I did not know this at first, but I learned. I tried on a XX-large hoodie that I liked and it fit like a regular large. I was so disappointed and I kept on experiencing this for the rest of the night. The inconvenience with the clothes sizes was another example of how a company needs to adjust its product to its consumer if it wants to go international. It was a shame too, because the clothes were awesome and I loved the style that modern, more westernized Chinese culture has.

            The last activity of the trip for me was a go-kart track, but with a bar. I have never seen anything like it in America. People literally could get a drink from the bar and then drive high speed go-karts. I do not drink personally, but I was still able to have a great time. After sleeping in until around 10-ish am the next day, we flew back to Pittsburgh.

Day 8: Shaq Can't Fit In That Buick, But the Last Emperor Can!

The next day, we had a scheduled visit to Shanghai GMC, and then we visited a couple of museums. Shanghai GMC is a joint venture between SAIC and General Motors. We took a tour of the assembly lines and we learned a little about how the JV adjusts their products to their consumers’ demands. For example, the Chinese like cars that don’t take too much room and as a population they are relatively smaller than other races, so cars with smaller interior room are sold that aren’t even produced in the U.S. One of the car brands that are really successful in China is Buick. The last emperor of China always paraded around in his Buick car (pictured below) that he received as a gift. Buick became one of the first foreign car brands to really take off in the Chinese Market. Also, in China GMC makes their cars to order, so unlike American dealerships there aren’t too many excess cars left over. After the visit and our group photo, we went to the Urban Development Museum, where there is a scale model of Shanghai that was really awesome. It showed the light rail, the airport, the industrial parks and Shanghai’s overall development in the past few decades.

            I then went to the Shanghai History Museum where I took pictures of different pieces of traditional clothing and calligraphy. I also had authentic Italian coffee in their tea café. We then had the night to ourselves. I used the time to practice using the Shanghai Subway system so I could use it for my free time the next day.

Day 7: Fall Out Boy Are Not The Only Ones That Can 'Light 'Em Up'.

Today was a travel day. We checked out of the Suzhou hotel in the morning and by the time we arrived at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, I realized that my book bag was still in the hotel lobby. After paying for the taxi to drive it to where we were, we listened to a presentation by Dr. Glover, the person in charge of scientific research at the university. XULU is definitely different from other Chinese universities in quite a few ways. They use the British university system, so most undergraduate programs take 4 years, just like American Universities. Also, there is a 2+2 program in which a student can take 2 years of courses at XULU and then you can finish your undergraduate degree at the main Liverpool University campus in England. We ended the trip by taking some of the students out to lunch. Since XULU runs English based lectures, the Chinese students get intensive English class right as they come in, so their English is really good and we were able to chat for a while.

           

When then went to OPPLE, China’s largest lighting company. They are also a privately-owned enterprise so the state does not own them. Remember earlier when I said I would explain the difference between privately owned and state owned enterprises in the business setting once we visited our first privately owned business. Because OPPLE is privately owned, they do not have the same access to government money that state-owned enterprises do, so their business decisions must be quicker and more efficient. Not only that, but since their main product is an LED, they have to make innovations to their product quicker as well because consumers will not by new LEDs because their old LEDs’ life spans end anytime soon. The constant innovations to OPPLE LEDs compensates for their products’ long life span. After another Pitt grad showed us around and took a group picture with us, we soon arrived in Shanghai. After dinner, we went to the ‘Bund’ area. It is a river that separates the New World City shopping district from the industrial buildings of different companies like Samsung on the other side. After taking some awesome pictures, we turned in for the night.

Day 6: Put On Your Tux. We're Going To Pizza Hut?

This day had a packed schedule. The first place we visited was a historical landmark called ‘Tiger Hill’. This location is home to the resting place of a state ruler who died during China’s state period as well as Buddhist Temples and statues. The complex is called ‘Tiger Hill’ because from above, the cliff takes the shape of a crouching tiger. While looking through the Buddhist Temple, I saw swastikas on the Buddha statue’s chest and I was surprised to learn that long before Adolf Hitler used the swastika as a symbol for his cause, the swastika was used as a symbol in many different cultures and religions, including Buddhism. So, if you see a native of China wear something with the swastika symbol on it, most likely they are not Nazi supporters.

After taking pictures of the summit of the hill and other locations in the Tiger Hill Complex, we then bused to our boat tour of Suzhou.While on the tour, I noticed there were a lot of clotheslines, some over the river. I also saw bathrooms and porches that hung over the river as well. Our guide told us that the reason that some of the houses in Suzhou have exposed parts and there were so many clotheslines is because the natives treat their neighbors as family and a very strong bond was formed between them. I began to wonder in my mind what America, especially in the ghettos, would be like if neighbors were as trusting as they were in China.

            We then visited the famous Suzhou Silk Factory. After we witnessed the process from the specially grown Mauberry tree leaves to the unwinding of silkworm cocoons into silk, we went to the store to buy some pure silk gifts. I then enjoyed some Chinese KFC. I had a chicken wrap with sweet and sour sauce, onions and rice and it was pretty darn good. Other people had meals like chicken tenders over rice. We then went to AMD, a company who develops computer chips for tasks like PC gaming. They showed us the factory section in which the chips are soldered, filled and more attachments are added. We then talked to one of the people in charge of the plant in a Q and A session. He said something about business in China that definitely surprised me. To paraphrase, he said that in Western countries like America, the money and the contract are top priority. In places like China, relationships-in particular the relationship between the boss and the employee- is top priority. Bosses in China, value spending personal time with their employees and some are willing to spend up to a year trying to build a relationship. It is actually pretty common in Chinese business for an employee to turn down a contract worth a lot more money in order to work with a boss that they like. After the visit, I ate dinner at Pizza Hut and Chinese Pizza Hut is a lot different from the Pizza Hut here. Chinese Pizza Hut is a fancy sit-down restaurant with a full menu of hotpots, steak dinners and desserts. People were dressed up in there too, so I stuck out like a sore thumb when I showed up in sweats. We ended the night with a 3-hour karaoke session. The Chinese love karaoke to the point where they have multi-storied buildings with party rooms and refreshment stores. It was quite the experience.

Day 5: Don't Worry, No Snakes On a Train!

This day was mainly a day used for travel as we left Beijing to travel to Suzhou. We drove 3 hours through the Chinese countryside and after stopping in a gas station for a restroom break and snacks, we arrived at the PPG plant in Tianjin. They are a painting company in charge of making coating for products that colors and protects them. They color anything from the body of a car to the cover of a cell phone. The chemical engineers had a chance to shine because the secret in getting efficient coating to stick to different items involves using ion attractions. The grounded of metal surface of their car frames have a negative charge and their base coat is filled with positively charged ions so the coat almost immediately binds to the surface. We were showed around the factory area by a Carnegie Mellon alum. PPG was actually founded in Pittsburgh.

                                               

            Next we got on the Bullet Train to get to Suzhou. We had a great time. Every few cars there was a bar with refreshments and you can turn rows of chairs around so you can sit and face each other. The train topped out at about 306 km/hr. I heard that a typical American train tops at about 90km/hr. Our first chance to compare American and Chinese versions of American food chains came in the form of Subway. Chinese tasted good. My sandwich came with a sweet and sour sauce on sesame bread and it was pretty darn good. We arrived at our hotel in Suzhou, which was by far my favorite hotel, and after dinner, we went to bed.

                       

Day 4: Time to Get Corporal!

The two highlights of this day were our visit to Peking University and our first company visit which was to COFCO, a state owned enterprise. Peking University is a very prestigious school in China. It is pretty much similar to their Harvard. Over ten million people take China’s college entrance exam, the Gao Kao, every year and Peking University only accepts around 2600 of them. I was able to get some nice photos of the campus before cold weather caused our walking tour to be cut short.

                                               

            Once inside, we listened to 2 PKU students talk about their senior design project. Their goal was to make a self-driving car and they collaborated with University of Toronto and University of California-Irvine. We then listened to a lecture from Professor Guo, PKU’s professor of modern Chinese History. He couldn’t English, so Ivy, one of our Asia Institute guides, translated for us. He gave a brief history of PKU from its founding in 1898 to the present. After the lecture, we were escorted to PKU’s dining hall and there were some similarities and differences I noticed between this dining hall and Market Central back at Pitt. Like Pitt, the dining hall had multiple food options and you can add as many items as you want to your plate, however, before you sit down, you have to swipe your ID and pay for the cost of the food, which is more like our Dining Dollar system. Also, while Pitt students tend to have an even distribution of when people eat at Market Central, PKU students and most other Chinese Universities have a central lunch hour (anywhere from 11am-1pm) when practically everyone eats, which explains how packed the PKU dining hall was so packed! We ended the visit at the school book store and I bought a couple of souvenirs. One thing I will say is that compared to Pitt, PKU’s security was extra tight. There were armed guards at the front gates of the school and only students, faculty and authorized visitors could enter. At Pitt, just about anyone can walk on our campus and the only places that have constant security are the security desks to the dorm rooms.

            We then travelled to COFCO, where a Pitt alum greeted us and showed us around. Like I said earlier, COFCO is a state-owned enterprise. They are also the biggest and most successful food processing and distributing company in China. We saw how they use technology such as facial analysis and analysis of eye movement when consumers look at their product in order to examine what the consumers want in a product. We also emphasized COFCO’s use of their entire industry chain strategy. They want to lead the journey from ‘field to fork’. They want to be in charge of food production and agriculture, food processing and testing and marketing. Now, the person in charge of operations in this building said that being an SOE means that they can be less urgent about business choices. I will talk about this later when we visit our first privately-owned company.

Day 3: A Celebrity In a City Built For Royalty

We started the day with a visited to the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was where the Chinese royal family lived and it was forbidden to commoners, hence the name.  What occurred with the old man at the end of the Temple of Heaven visit happened a lot more here. One of the most entertaining things I noticed during the entire trip was how often the natives would run towards me to either take pictures of me behind my back or with me. I had at least 20 picture requests and probably more pictures were taken of me without me knowing. Ivy, one of our guides, told me that many Chinese people have never seen an African-American in person, and I was still young as well. So that kind of explains why I became a celebrity for a day. The Forbidden City itself had some more of the classic Chinese architecture I am a fan of, but what I really thought was beautiful was the garden and the Women’s quarters. There were really beautiful stone formations and plant life.

We then headed to the art district which was a shopping area with art galleries and sculptures mixed into the architecture. We had lunch and I took some pictures of the surroundings.

                                               

            We then went to the silk market. Here, many Chinese people who know really good English will try to sell you various items and there, you can bargain your price. The Chinese tend to treat business negotiation as a game of wits, so if you can outsmart them, you can save a lot of money. My defining moment at the silk market was saving 410 yuan ( about $70) on one of the infamous knockoff Chinese NFL jerseys. This one was a Roger Staubach (Dallas Cowboys Hall of Famer), so I really wanted it. We ended the day at the Red rose restaurant, which was a place inspired by Western Chinese culture which is a mixture of Chinese and Indian culture. We were treated to nice food, music and traditional dancing performances. I then went to bed and prepped for our first university visit and our first company visit.

Day 2: The Great Wall Is So High, It Reaches Heaven!

The day started with a bus trip to the Great Wall of China. We got there in about a half-an-hour, but that was just to the bottom of the summit. We did not pay for the ski lift to the top so we needed to climb 1200 steep steps in order to get to the wall. I am not the most in-shape person in the world so despite the weather being slightly chilly, I was sweaty and gasping for air along with half of the class when we got to the top. When we reached the wall, I noticed there were steep peaks and valleys in the walkway and when we encountered steps, they were steep and their angles and size were uneven.

                                                           

It was a struggle, but we finally reached the summit of what was left of the wall and our group took a picture together after sharing some drinks. There was a surprise for us when we began to descend the wall. There was a toboggan slide that we could ride in order to get to the bottom of the summit. Because of my weight, I got stuck midway through the slide, but I was eventually able to pull my way down the slide and keep on going. When leaving the wall, I was in awe. The wall reminded me of how far back Chinese history goes and how it makes the length of our history seem miniscule. The Chinese started construction of this wall-with amazing architecture for the time- more than two thousand years ago. Our country’s first account of significant history came less than 400 years ago. Also, the Chinese soldiers that patrolled this wall must have been really in-shape. We visited a second important landmark called the Temple of Heaven. The significance of the Temple of Heaven is that the Emperor of China would go to the Temple in order to pray to their gods for a good harvest in the upcoming season. What really stood out to me was the architecture of the temple. It was very beautiful and it was a sharp contrast to the buildings in the inner city of Beijing.

                                            

We ended our visit with a 30 minute tai-chi lesson and I really enjoyed it. Tai-chi is very popular in Beijing and I saw many senior citizens practice it as a recreational activity. I also had my first experience with a native who desperately wanted my picture. He didn’t understand me, but when I showed that he could take a photo with me, the old man ran towards me as fast as he could with the most excited look on his face. We ended the night with a formal dinner in which we introduced ourselves in broken Chinese and we listened to a speech from a Beijing start-up company CEO who was a Pitt Alum. He talked about the ups and downs between working in the U.S. vs. working in China as well as building start-up companies in foreign places. The talk was helpful because foreign business ventures were a very common topic during our trip.

Day 1: Crazy Night in Beijing

The first day in China was mainly used to get adjusted to our surroundings After a 14-hour flight we finally arrived at the Beijing Airport, I went through customs and I withdrew 600 RMB (about $100) out of the ATM. Chinese currency is very interesting and they even have coins and paper bills that equal the same amount. After I took pictures of my yuan, we met with the Asia Institute who walked us to our charter buses. When I looked out the windows, I noticed a couple of things that I had expected.

The smog was immediately noticeable and I definitely could not get any good pictures because of it. Also, the traffic was terrible. It was almost bumper to bumper the entire time we were on the highway. It’s to being expected considering Beijing is one of the most crowded cities in the world. After we checked into the hotel, we got to know the international students accompanying us and our guides from the Asia Institute. We had two students from Israel and another from Japan. Our guides were named Ivy, Jody and Ariel. After we mingled for a little bit we went to a nearby mall to explore and get dinner. The way the Chinese eat dinner in restaurants is different from American dining. Instead of each person ordering their own entrée, in Chinese dining, multiple dishes are put on a spinning disk on the table and everybody spins the disk to their food of choice and adds it to their own plate.

                                               

Trenton Does China Entry 1: Before the Trip

Hello everyone! My name is Trenton Gilstrap, a junior Bioengineering major at the University of Pittsburgh and that is me in the picture above. I have started this blog to get the word out about a program offered at the University of Pittsburgh called INNOVATE. The program accepts applications from business students and students of all engineering disciplines and forms a class out of them. The class will then meet once per week during the Spring Semester. The goal of the class is to teach students about Chinese culture, tradition, and how they handle business. The last component is the most important to this course. Turns out that how the Chinese attack issues in Industry is significantly different from the U.S. I will go more into the differences as I experience them in later postings.

Right as Spring Break begins, the INNOVATE class board a flight to China and stay there for break. While we are there we will split time between Beijing, Suzhou and Shanghai. At each stop we will be visiting different companies to see how Chinese companies handle industry and in particular how they attack the issue of sustainability.

I am very excited about the trip. It will be the first time I have ever been to Asia and it was a miracle that I found the money to attend the program. I have always been interested in Asian culture and before I never had the resources to travel abroad, let alone fly all the way out to Asia. So, INNOVATE seemed like a perfect option to me. I will talk about the ups and downs of the trips and talk about specific topics that interest me like the native cuisine, travel, landmarks and other things that catch my eye. I am about to do China and I am taking you, the reader, along for the ride.