Darden Beijing Trip: Day 2 – Class, Forbidden City, Exotic Food

Click here for Day #2 Flicker Photo Stream!

Greetings from Beijing on Day #2, the first real working day of our trip.  It’s about 5:30 a.m. here as I blog.  I thought I had kicked the jet lag last night with an uninterrupted night of sleep.  It’s seems to be a common problem with the crew and I wouldn’t be surprised if 1/2 the class was awake at this very moment bouncing around or reading material for today’s classes.

First Day of Class

Today was absolutely packed.  We had a 1/2 day of classes consisting of an introduction to the upcoming week.  We also had a guest lecturer, James Fallows whose an ExPat covering Asian for the “Atlantic Montly”.  Fallows had a refreshing and what I could consider unique perspective on China, especially as it relates to the US.  If you listen to the commentary in the United States, you can’t help but get the impression that China is a machine existing for the sole purpose of bulldozering the world economic stage and taking over.  Fallows pragmatically points out the math though: there are about 250 million people in the United States.  Contrary to this, there are nearly 1.5 Billion people in China.  Based on GDP per person alone, you have to consider that China will, at some point, over take the US in terms of GDP.  Scary?  There’s probably no real cause for concern unless China doesn’t address mounting environmental issues.  Fallows points to this as a much more pragmatic concern and something everybody should be focused on.  In general I found his perspective disarming and refreshing.

Our Visit to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square

Bring your walkin’ shoes – because we did a lot!  For starters, this thing is BIG!  While here, you start to get a sense of is just how many people are in China.  The Square was teeming with people.  According to our tour guide, Frank, the Forbidden City is a “must see” spot for nearly everybody in the country.  What this means is that you see an extremely diverse group of people from all over China.  This was kind of cool because Beijingers tend to be young/hip/urban and you don’t see many of what you would call “working class” folks.  In the Forbidden City, you did.  It was quite an experience.  The first thing you get is a sense of “old”.  Most of the buildings date back to the 1400′s and you really feel a sense of opulence.  I can’t imagine the labor and resources that went into building this place.  It’s quite a site!

Night Stroll
A handful of us decided it would be a good idea to out to the street vendors for aon a nighttime photo recon mission.  The city of Beijing is a city not unlike any other metropolitan area.  There seems to be things going on around the clock and in general, whatever you want, you can get.  Enter the city’s on-the-street food court.  To give you an idea what this place looks like, picture a local carnival in the United States where you load up on cotton candy, hot dogs, funnel cakes and fried chicken.  Beijing is JUST LIKE THAT except that I couldn’t find a funnel cake to save my life.  Now if I had wanted roaches on a stick, deer intestines, starfish (no kidding STAR FISH), or other items that many of us have as pets (I AM TOTALLY SERIOUS), you’re in business.  Monica, Omar, Asif, Mike, Tammy, Brad and myself spent a better part of an hour wondering around and taking pictures.  The sense you get is that there is NO WAY this can be normal.  I mean penis on a stick?  You’re kidding me?  No kidding, people were selling and eating this stuff.  I felt like I was dropped into a reality show.  The really entertaining thing is that locals working the carts are relentless to get you to try something, especially Americans.  I’m sure there’s mega bragging rights if you can pull it off.  About an hour into our expedition, the smell really started to get to me.  It’s hard to describe.  It’s a putrid burnt oil and all-things-dead smell that becomes over powering after a while.  I consider myself pretty hardy when it comes to disturbing sites and smells, but this was too much for me to take.  I had to bail and wait for the others upwind.

Man on the Street Interviews
My father-in-law wanted me to ask a “man on the street” what the current perception of the US is in light of our recent economic debacle.  Good question!  I set out for perspective and got a little over dinner last night.  Our tour guide Frank is native Chinese and runs a small tour business here in Beijing.  Darden has partnered with him to be our guide and facilitator for our visit.  I asked him what he thought of the US, his perception of our predicament and thoughts in general.  He feels that the United States could use a small dose of Socialism – interesting!.  He feels as though Democracy and a free-market economy aren’t always the answer.  He points to state run businesses here in China like China Wireless and the National Bank as endeavors that are more efficient nationalized.  With a nationalized business, regulation is easier and it is his opinion that it 1) makes it easier to set policy and keep those institutions on a firm footing and 2) in the case of China Wireless, there exists a unified and reliable network that everybody uses as opposed to a patchwork of multi-vendor, disparate systems in the US.  He rightly points out that the US approach leads to redundant and unnecessary infrastructure and decreased reliability.
I also spoke to Craig, an ExPat that I talked to who had an interesting perspective on democracy and the US election cycle.  In China, there’s usually a 10-15 year succession period from Premier to Premier.  This gives the opportunity for training and incrementally putting leaders in place with a longer period to test and vet those leaders.  Compare this to the United States where we compress the election cycle into less than two years and the choice, in most cases, and choose a candidate (mostly) on rhetoric and promises.  Seemed kind of silly to me when he explained it to me like that.
In general, I get the sense here that the Chinese don’t really care who wins the election because it’s going to be the continuation of policies and objectives that have been in motion prior to the Bush administration and will evolve long past whoever happens to land in the Whitehouse this November.  Very interesting.
All for today, talk soon, Peter

Technorati Tags: Beijing, China, Darden, EMBA

Tagged as: Beijing, China, Darden, EMBA