The China Study Trip – worth 0.5 a credit, as big as an elective course – officially commenced on Saturday, Dec 12 with 76 students, 1 faculty, a local guide and two buses.
The day started off with an hour drive to the Great Wall of China section in Mutianyu. The entry fee is about 40 Yuan. We had to climb through steep stairs and the Chinese proclaim that if you could climb the Great wall, then you are a real hero. To me, it is an experience of life time and the fact that the wall spans over 6000 km is unbelievable. We were told that the wall was originally built somewhere during 700 BC and 200 BC and was renovated by the Ming dynasty in 1300s AD. On the way down, I took the exiting toboggan slide chute. In the afternoon, we visited Beijing National stadium – Bird’s Nest. It is said to be the world’s largest steel structure worth over $400 million, constructed using more than 100,000 tons of steel. The stadium was being prepared for the snow season carnival when we visited. We also had glimpses of Water Cube, Olympics Tower, Pangu Building(7 star hotel) and the Ling Long tower. Later, we had dinner with Tsinghua MBA students. Tsingua School of economics is one of the top business schools in China which runs an international MBA program in collaboration with MIT Sloan School of Management.
Dec 13th 2009, Sunday – Cultural Plunge: Sunday has been quite an interesting and a challenging day. We were on our own and had to complete a cultural plunge exercise without the local guide or pre-arranged buses. In groups of four, we were given tasks such as finding locations, involving in a bargaining purchase, understanding benefits of a Chinese herb, appreciating the local cultural flavour from tourist spots such as temples and courtyards, experiencing Chinese food etc. The fact that not many Chinese understood English made things challenging. Overall – a great day to understand and comprehend the local culture.
Dec 14th 2009, Monday – Chinese Business Environment: Understanding the way Chinese businesses operates has been one of our top agendas of the trip and Monday was quite an important day in this regard. The day started off with a presentation from SABMiller (South African Brewery) – one of the world’s largest brewers with sales over $21 billion. The second session was an alumni panel discussion on the successes and failures of China market. We had three Ivey alumni participating in the discussion panel. Finally after lunch, we had a presentation on Chinese economy. There were representatives from the Canadian Embassy in China. Later in the evening, we took the China Eastern Airlines flight to Shanghai.
Dec 15th 2009, Tuesday – GM Factory visit and Yu Garden Market: While Beijing is obsessed with the Chinese cultural flavour, Shanghai is more westernised. Beijing has about 17 million people and Shanghai about 20 million. One could easily witness exceptional skyscrapers and some are better than their counterparts from developed countries. Forenoon, we went to the one of the Shanghai General Motor’s production lines. They had a very efficient process and the production line produced 2 cars every three minutes. To me, it was quite obvious that there was a lot more room for improving automation. But the availability of cheap and massive labour force must have rendered things this way. Later, we visited the Huangpu River, Bund and the Yu Garden Market. We had some free time in the afternoon and I met my undergrad buddy who is pursuing MBA from CEIBS (China European International Business School, Shanghai). Finally, we had the dinner with Ivey Shanghai Alumni.
Dec 16th 2009, Wednesday – Presentations, Seafood and Acrobatics: We had a series of presentations and panel discussions on Wednesday. The topics included real estate bubble in China, super trends of future China, presentation on Dupont China. For lunch, we went to a seafood place where people had to choose fish fresh pools and the restaurant cooked them fresh. Luckily, I found some veggie stuff as well. Later in the evening, we witnessed a brilliant acrobatics show.
Dec 17th 2009, Thursday – Baosteel and Maglev: On Thursday, we visited the Shangai Baosteel Corporation Factory in the morning. I understand that the steel factories are typically huge and this is the first time I am getting to witness one. Baosteel employees more than 110,000 people and it has over $21 billion in revenues. Baosteel is the one that supplied steel for the construction of Bird’s nest in Beijing. The factory has the capability to produce over 20 million tons of steel annually. We also had a company presentation in Mandarin and a classmate of us, translated in English. They are located very close to the port of Shanghai and they have some serious location advantages. In the evening, we took the Maglev (magnetic levitation) transport to reach the Airport. The train took about 7 minutes to complete the distance of around 30km, with a maximum speed of 431 km/h. We were told that the train achieved a maximum speed of 501 km/h during a test run in 2003. This technology is however, slower than airplanes because of the air drag, which is comparatively less at higher altitudes. I read in wiki, that this technology can achieve speeds of over 6000 km/h if deployed in an evacuated tunnel. Interesting!!!
Dec 18th 2009, Friday – Huawei, Great Wall computers and Hitachi: In the morning, we visited the Huawei Factory and had several presentations on supply chain, human resources and Huawei’s business in general. The one thing that impressed me in all of the presentations is the fact that we could literally witness several aspects that we learned at B-School, such as joint ventures, economic policies, etc. Later in the afternoon, part of the group visited the Shenzhen port and the others went to Great Wall computers and Hitachi.
Dec 19th 2009, Saturday – Hong Kong: We left to Hong Kong from Shenzhen by bus and I loved the scintillating scenery. It was a 2 hour drive including all required immigration checks. In the morning, we had presentations from the Hong Kong Canadian Chamber of Commerce on economy and public policies, a session from HSBC on Asian debt and equity markets and a panel discussion with Ivey Hong Kong alumni about life at Hong Kong for expatriates. The China Study trip officially concluded. Overall – an incredible one!
Arun worked as a database administrator for the world’s largest business software company where he managed 800+ E-business environments. He completed his 5-year integrated dual degree program (Bachelors in Civil Engineering and Masters in Chemistry) from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS-Pilani), India. Arun holds a wide variety of extra professional and extracurricular activities under his experience, including those of leadership positions in undergrad students’ union. His specialities include Technology Operations, Resource planning, Workload management and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) suites. Arun enjoys volunteering, travelling, swimming, golf, table tennis, high technology, consulting and social entrepreneurship.