Today was another day that was pretty much devoted to the Plus 3 classes. We had another class taught by Claudia. In this lecture, we talked about the Chinese economy. We learned that many of the companies were made private in the 1980s. I always thought that a lot of their businesses were still government run but apparently, 2/3 of the companies are in private hands. We also learned that even though China has the fastest growing economy in the world and has a trade surplus of $200 billion, there are still over 300 million people living in poverty (earning less than a dollar a day). This really got me thinking. That is pretty much the entire U.S population living in poverty. Although China is doing well economically, they still have a long way to go to make things better for their citizens.
After class, we had our fourth and final business visit. This company was called Hanwang. Hanwang is also the company that my group is doing for our class project. I was really looking forward to this visit because during the pre-departure project, it was hard for me to find out a lot of information about the company. We were taken into a small room where they had their products on display to demonstrate to us. I must say, these products were the most intrusting to me compared to the other companies that we visited. The things that the devices could do were amazing. They are a company that creates the software and products themselves. Their main product is handwriting recognition that can read your handwriting and import them into a computer file like Microsoft word. It can read English as well as Chinese characters. They also had a small scanner that can scan individual lines into a file. Once the writing is converted into the file, they can easily be edited in Word as if it were typed in. They also had a face recognition device. I was actually registered into their system and the device recognized my face. Apparently it is the only one of its kind that can use a memory card for storage whereas other companies’ devices need full computer systems to store the information. They also had touch pads that allow you to draw things write into your computer. This is useful for artists. It is also pressure sensitive, which allows for different size paint strokes or shading while drawing. One device that I would consider buying is their e-book reader. It had the handwriting technology built into it, WI-FI, definition look up capabilities, note taking and mp3 capabilities. It could do everything and is reasonably priced. I really learned a lot about their products.
Late that night, we went to a karaoke place for a couple of hours. We had a lot of fun singing classics ranging from Celine Dion, Queen, Brittany Spears, Jason Mraz and Jay-Z. I actually sang more than I thought I would. I typically don’t like to sing in front of people but there were at least four people singing at the same time so it didn’t bother me. It was a neat experience. I saw a lot of karaoke places throughout Beijing. It seem like the Chinese like to do karaoke compared to Americans.