I woke with my throat very scratchy and I was afraid I was
catching cold so I took a Musinex in hopes it would prevent anything from
starting….probably not the best way to start the day…...
Now let's talk about the spitting. Anybody who has been to
china knows of this dreadful Chinese habit.
It's DISGUSTING. Anywhere and
everywhere it is acceptable to cough up a big one and spit it out. EWWWW. Not
just spit, but really hack up the biggest loogie and clear your throat down
into your lungs. In general, indoor
people will use a trashcan or SPIT BUCKET, but outdoors or public areas- the
ground is a free for all. It is such a
hard thing to ignore because some people are SOO loud when clearing their
business. After being in China for a
couple of days now, I can comprehend where this comes from- the crappy air! China has always had a bad reputation for
poor air quality and we all know why…it houses all the factories that makes
all of the world’s stuff. All that crap
that gets dumped in the air and then dumped in people’s lungs which leads to hacking and waking up with sore
throats….no good.
Now, our day was to start in the classroom, which was good
because the classroom was just a few stops from the hotel and it was chilly and
spitting rain outside. Once I got off the subway with my nice warm coffee I
began fighting with my shitty Chinese umbrella that I bought the day
before. The stupid thing didn't want to
open and when it did it was inside out, as I was trying to turn it right side I
was unknowingly dumping my coffee all down my coat and purse- nice.
Then to top it all off, I look up and everyone was gone. I kept walking hoping I would remember or stumble
across the right path to the classroom. But
not so lucky, after walking while I turned back toward the subway and found
my teacher and a classmate looking for me!!
So embarrassing. I am going to
blame the musinex, which all goes back to the shitty air.
But once I made it back to the classroom, we started the day
with a lecture on different market entry strategies. Our class has 3 different professors. One is from St. Louis and she is primarily in
charge of the online portion of the class and the other two are expats living
in Shanghai for about 10 years, one a lawyer and one a full time teacher. The lawyer really made many of the lectures
very interesting because he has so many real first hand experiences. One lesson
was on communication pitfalls. One funny
example he gave us was when he sent his assistant out to pick up a seedless
watermelon, poor girl went out bought a watermelon and picked all the seeds out
by hand. Lol. Another communication challenge is that there
is NO word in the mandarin language that means NO. So getting a straightforward answer is really
difficult.
After our lecture we had a little time to hit up some
shopping. We went to the fake market and
checked out some stalls. There weren't
too many people there so all the vendors were hawking us.
That night we had a business dinner with a leader from GE
avionics. China is now looking to enter the
aerospace market and GE aerospace is looking to supply their engines. We had a very traditionally Chinese dinner,
lots of dishes spread out on the lazy Susan.
I was exhausted from the shopping, smelt like coffee and was ready for
bed so I headed back after dinner.
