Today started with breakfast and a short lecture about modernization of China. We talked about how China has evolved incredibly quickly in the past two decades. There is a large generation gap and wealth gap due to this rapid growth. We also learned about some of the problems that China faces if certain trends continue. One big problem is caused by the “One Child Policy” because families want men to carry on the name, so abortions are common when doctors are bribed to reveal the gender to the families. This causes a much larger man to woman ratio that obviously causes issues. Lecture ended early today because there was no DVD player to watch the documentary we were supposed to.
After a short nap, we attended our second company visit to Tsinghua Solar. I enjoyed this visit more than the first because everything was organized and easy to understand. We sat and listened to a powerpoint presentation that was detailed and interesting about the solar water heaters. Then a bunch of questions were asked and some products were shown. Unfortunately, the energy efficient devices are not very popular in the U.S. due to costs, but they are much more environmentally friendly and are used often in China. The specifics of how the solar panels were made were also discussed in detail. It is the job of engineers to come up with these designs and to continue to research ways to improve the overall efficiency. Once the tour was over, we went to our first Chinese Subway. It was not as impressive as American Subway and had fewer choices. I thought the food was still fine while others did not like it very much. Later, we went to Propaganda again, followed by a trip to McDonalds. This trip was also not impressive to me. The fast food was nicer than American McDonalds, but the food was not quite the same. They also did not have a dollar menu, so the overall choices were limited.