Today was the first full day in Beijing, China. I woke up at 5:45 in the morning because I am not used to the time difference yet. It may take me a couple of days before I get a full night sleep. At about 8:15, I went with Frank to get some breakfast. This was the weirdest breakfast that I have ever seen. The food ranged from french fries, bacon (much different than the U.S. bacon), fried rice, soup, and several variations of a salad. It was the most unique breakfast I have ever had. I must say that it was delicious though. After breakfast, we had our first lecture about Chinese history and culture. This involved learning about The Great Wall, The Forbidden City, and the Summer Palaces. I found the lecture was very interesting and that the teacher (Claudia) speaks English very well, which helped make it more enjoyable. Some interesting facts that I learned about The Great Wall is that the wall was always linked to death and bloodshed because the emperor of China believed that he must sacrifice 10,000 people every year while building the wall. They say that if you dig by the bottom of the wall, you will find skeletons of those who were sacrificed. Another fact that we learned was that the modern day China was created on October 1st, 1949. I think that when it comes to the business or even engineering world, it can be very helpful to learn about the culture of the country you will go to work in. The more you know about their culture, the more respect you will have for the people. If you show people respect, you will most likely get along better, which will help you achieve what you want to achieve.
The second part of the day was spent visiting Tsinghua University. The campus was amazing. The buildings were nice and everything just seemed big. What I like about the campus is that even though it is in one of the biggest cities in the world, you didn’t really feel like you were in the city while walking around. There were ponds and trails leading through woods everywhere. Another thing that interested me was that the buildings look more influenced by the Western culture. It looked like a college campus that could be found in the U.S. Apparently, they designed one of their main buildings off of one in Russia. I really enjoyed walking around the campus. Toward the end of our campus tour, I was extremely tired (since it was four in the morning back in the states and my clock was still running on that time). Everybody decided to go back to the hotel for a nap. After the nap, we went to dinner in a shopping center. The shopping center was different than anything I have seen (maybe it is due to the fact that I don’t live in a big city). It had four or five levels. There were a lot of clothing stores and a pretty big arcade on the top floor. It was neat to see a mall that was built more for height than for length. For dinner, I wasn’t completely sure of all of the ingredients in my meal but I thought it tasted good. I had a type of chicken fried rice.