Today was a day mostly devoted to class. First we got breakfast. After breakfast, we had our second class. In class, we learned about Chinese thought. This included Confucism, Daoism, Buddhism, and Legalism. All of these schools of though were very different. They are also very different from any religion that you would see in the U.S. After class, we had our fist company visit. The company allowed us to see a little bit of what China looks like outside of the city. The building was in a lot of open land just outside of the city. We actually saw our first single houses on the drive out there. During the drive, it was also neat to see the mountains off in the distance behind the city. I never knew those mountains were there until we left the city. The company was actually a part of Tsinghua University. Most of the high executives are professors at the University. The company is called Capital Bio. They produce biochips that can help places like hospitals detect things about patient’s blood. For example, from a blood sample, their biochips can detect what disease a person is prone to get or maybe even what drug will work the best for treatment. While we were there, we got a nice little tour of the company. They have a wall of awards as well as patents in China and various other countries like the U.S. We were told that if you looked at the building from above, it was actually shaped like a leaf. They also demonstrated how their machines worked to create the biochips. There were multiple machines on display. One was for mass production another one was for lab size work. They also had different ways of making the chip. One of the machines would have needles actually touch the glass chips to put the information onto it. The other machine did not touch the glass at all. They also showed us the machines that read the biochips and interpret the information from the chips.
We then watched a small video of the company’s short history. It actually began in September of 2000. We then got a little tour outside. There was a cool pond and exercise facility for the workers to enjoy. There was also a cool Feng Shui garden inside the building, which was really neat. The only other thing we did this day was eat dinner at the same restaurant that we ate at our very first night, which was delicious, and walked around the markets. We also played with the cheap dogs they had in boxes.