#hogsabroad Update from the International Business in China program

Howdy y’all! Last day for our group here in Suzhou, so I wanted to sit down and try to give an update for the week. After flying into Shanghai, our group successfully linked up and hopped on a bus for 2 hours.  We drove out past Shanghai to the “Garden City”, Suzhou.  We have been staying at a nice hotel called Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool International Conference Center, which is just a short mile or so from our host University, Suzhou Da Xue (Suzhou College).  We dove straight into things here, starting class the day after arrival and eating our first Chinese family style meal that evening.

The traditional Chinese meals that we have been treated to have been multi-dish events with tons of variety in content and flavor.  We all sit around a large circular table with a turntable in the center where dish after dish is placed.  Some of the dishes hardly make it around once before our clumsy chop-stick efforts clean the platter. Others, like one plate I remember with a chicken head on it, just enjoy a merry-go-round during the meal. As is to be expected, there are some among us who are quite adventuresome with the food, trying squid, eel, and cow gut; and others who aren’t. In response to a little heckling about spinning the dishes on rather than trying them, a great quote about the food that came from Eduardo* went like this “I’m not picky at all about what we eat, as long as it’s not Chinese food!” 

*Eduardo is one of three students from Panama joining our trip. Eduardo’s older brother, Francisco, and another student named Jose form the trio.

Squirrel Fish – a signature Chinese dish. It is called that because of the
way the meat is cut up and looks similar to a squirrel tail.

This week has passed very quickly, with a brisk routine for each day. We’ve had classes each day till around 4 pm at Suzhou University, taught by a number of different lecturers. We generally finish out the school day with a debrief session with Professor Aloysius, which has been very useful to help pull together some of the material presented by the Chinese lecturers. Midweek, we had the opportunity to break the normal routine and visit a logistics business here in Suzhou at the invitation of David Wang**. After the business visit, we had the privilege of joining Mr. Wang at the club he is a member of. While there, we played pool, hit some golf balls on a virtual driving range, and ate a Chinese rendition of spaghetti.  After the club, we got the chance to go out into historic Suzhou, and a place called Ping Jiang road. Overall, that was one of my favorite days in Suzhou.

**Mr. Wang is a Suzhouese entrepreneur who taught one of our lectures.

Remember how I wondered how many times I would hear someone call me tall while walking around?  Well, I actually haven’t anyone say it outright, although some of the Chinese guys on our trip have told me they have heard people talking about me.  What I have noticed, though, are the glances and photo taking, which I see happen about 20 times a day (glances+photos). An outlier day as far as that number goes, though, was the day we visited the Suzhou Museum. That promised to be an interesting trip from the very start of the when we were all posing to take a group photo in front of one of the architectural features at the museum. We passed 2 or 3 cameras to the Chinese students with us so they could take our picture, and they stepped back to start snapping shots. Pretty soon, it wasn’t just Meng* and her friend anymore, but a group of about 8 other Chinese people with camera’s formed a paparazzi line taking pictures of our group! As the rest of that day went on, I continued to garner a lot of stares while I walked around looking at the different artifacts in the museum. In fact, it kind of got to the point where I wondered if I was one of the exhibits! It made for a fun day, I don’t mind being a novelty for a few days. Plus, I happen to work as a great moving meeting point for our group in crowed areas.

*Meng is a teaching assistant from Suzhou University that has been accompanying us as a tour guide of sorts. Several of her friends have joined us over the past few days also. 

This is the Suzhou University Library building.

We’re moving on from Shenzhen, and I really expect that the novelty factor will be much less in the next few days as we enter the larger cities of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Beijing. We were treated to an incredible send off meal by Suzhou University, really first class. Some of the things I’ll remember from there include the fun students, beautiful gardens, and cool university campus. We’ll be starting things off in Hong Kong tomorrow morning with a business visit.


Wish I had more time to write, thanks for reading this!

Nate Z.