Been There, Beijinged That

At long I am finally able to make my first blog post of the fall travel recruitment season. For the past week I have been traversing China, but due to the Chinese government's attempt to control its people at all costs, most blogging sites are blocked. Therefore, no blogging. Also, due to the amount of work I have occupying my non-school visit time, this post will (unfortunately) not include any visual images from China.

I departed Nashville on the afternoon of Saturday, September 18th after leaving class early and getting a ride to the airport. I arrived at LAX and then on Saturday night I boarded a Singapore Airlines plane and 16 hours later landed in Singapore around 5:00am Monday morning. Yep, another trans-Pacific flight that took away a Sunday. I had a layover in Singapore and then boarded a plane bound for Shenzhen, China. Shenzhen is a city of 8 million people that 30 years ago was a little fishing village in Southern China near Hong Kong. Now Shenzhen is bigger than HK and has some great schools. On Monday morning I landed at 11:00am, was shuttled off to the first school visit where I met my travel partner for the week, Kevin McKenna from the University of Chicago. We had two school visits on Monday and rushed back out to the airport and got on a plane for Nanjing, China before a typhoon hit HK and Shenzhen...we missed it by a few hours.

The next day was spent visiting schools in Nanjing, a city of 7 million people that means "Southern Capital." Nanjing was almost the capital of China, but Beijing ("Northern Capital") won the distinction of being the national capital post-dynasties. Before heading out to schools I did wake up at 5:00am local time to Skype into my Monday afternoon grad class - Analyzing Org Effectiveness. That took 3 hours of my morning and the rest of the day was filled with work. The highlight of the day was going to the Nanjing Train Station to take the high-speed train to Shanghai (70 minutes by train). Tuesday afternoon was the day before a major Chinese holiday, so the train station and the train were packed like the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in the States...all the better for people watching and hilarious comments made by Kevin and me.

Wednesday we had a great day in Shanghai. Since it was a national holiday we were not doing visits, but instead hosting a counselor breakfast and information session at the Grand Hyatt Pudong (the hotel where we were staying). Both events were smashing successes, we had an engaging counselor breakfast with new faces and old friends from Shanghai area schools, then we had a break and led an information session for a large crowd of students and parents that afternoon. After all of that we wanted a break so we walked a couple blocks from our hotel to the Apple Store - only the second such store in China. It was huge...you entered the store from a class cylinder above ground with the Apple logo and then descended a set of steps to the massive store below ground. We had a little time to look around and then we went and met one of the counselors who is a good friend of ours for some great Japanese food in the French Concession district of Shanghai.

Thursday consisted of visiting a school in Shanghai and then flying north to Beijing. Friday was a full day of two school visits and then hosting a counselor event and information session at the new University of Chicago Center in Beijing. This was our last day of work in China, so Kevin and I celebrated by grabbing some Cantonese cuisine for dinner and then collapsing for an early morning. Saturday we left the hotel at 7:30am for the Great Wall. We took a car to the Mutianyu site, just 1.5 hours from Beijing. We climbed the entire length of the restored Wall at that location...and we even hiked on a stretch of the Wall that was still in ruins and overgrown with trees, shrubs, and even had some parts that had long-ago washed out. It was some fun exploration. We got back to Beijing in the afternoon and went to the Pearl Market to do some wheelin' and dealin'. The day was wrapped up with some Peking duck - naturally, when in Beijing...

On Sunday Kevin departed for Chicago and I departed for Seoul (where I am currently sitting, typing, because the South Koreans enjoy internet freedom). I have been to China numerous times, so most of this blog post is probably similar to many of you based on previous years, but it never gets old going to the Great Wall and exploring sites, restaurants, and places in Chinese cities. Pictures of some things are available on Facebook, I posted them as I went through the week. Next up will be some info about the goings-on in Seoul and Singapore. Back to doing reading and homework for my Skyping-into-class tomorrow morning!