8am wake up to be introduced to the breakfast buffet. I only have good memories about the breakfast buffet at Poly Hotel, it was probably luck. I somehow avoided the rotten tofu and found what must've been the only red bean bun every morning. I enjoyed it so much that I had seconds.
Two memorable things happened this that makes Western bones shake with fear: uncertainty. As discovered in our in class sessions Asian cultures are more comfortable with uncertainty than ourselves in the West who like to ask a lot of questions and understand all the little details.
Guangzhou was such a surprise in itself. A city of over 12 million in habitants, with endless skies of unique skyscrapers that test both imagination and gravity. I had heard of Guangzhou once before the field school, I bought my backpack online and it was shipped from Guangzhou. In my head Guangzhou was probably a smaller version of Shenzhen, where things had been assembled in workshops around the city center and shipped out. I picture the city would only be large in area, not much density and not particularly metropolitan. I'm so thrilled that I was this wrong.
Our tour brought us to a pond where I looked into the water with the same uniformed expectations any curious Canadian would take. "Must be dangerous" "full of garbage and various waste" "Wouldn't want to fall in there". But then I saw a fish "Must be dead". Then there were many, and there were tadpoles. Some even had full grown legs. Then right by the bank there were tiny little frogs, in fact they were everywhere.
The environment in China cannot be described simply. The toxic air that Guangzhou produces is also swallowed up by infinite amount of green spaces they've developed. Again, Vancouverites may think they're fairly eco-conscious, but they can rely on the natural forests that surround our small, cleaner-energy city. In Guangzhou they have made outstanding efforts to use every available space to pant trees, shrubs and flowers. Not only is it effective, but it's unbelievably beautiful.
From the pond we went to the restaurant for our first family style meal. Here we practised our seating arrangements that respect power distance, for us we used age as a means to determine status. The food was cycled around on a lazy Susan and ultimately went over very well. I had a chance to talk with Emma about her plans to attend Cap next Fall. Emma was interested to try skiing, and since I work at a ski resort I was all to excited to get to be tour guide for her.
Finally the Canadians faced their first uncertainty as we joined in on a class in Public Finance, for whatever reason things had changed and we did not expect to be in this classroom speaking about healthcare. For me as a Global Stewardship student I felt totally comfortable speaking about this topic. Times changed unexpectedly and we finished early (?) to meet the dean -again a respect to power distance. Listening to the dean's presentation decorated with connections to Capilano I couldn't help but think about how globalization must have been a very exciting thing in China. Clearly a lot of effort is put into maintaining relationships even across several timezones. The students in the public finance class were representing many different countries and each represent hundreds of different connections.
The next uncertainty was the casual decision to take the subway to the hotel to avoid traffic. This traffic was especially heavy to do the holiday long weekend. The metro itself was clogged with people and it took several hours to accomplish a simple route, many students identified this as their first culture shock. Since many were following without understanding every little thing a Canadian would want to know everyone was more than a little flustered. People were pushed on and off the train with little to no control of their movements. I witnessed a number of people get pushed off the train before their stop, and people of all age were being pushed around. The only experience I had like this was taking the skytrain during the Olympics and New Years Eve in Toronto. Groups split up and reconvened in some sort of helter skelter harmony. The event has great significance since it showed how important organization and crowd control must be in a city that has to accommodate so many people.
The Metro fiasco moved us way off the planned schedule and a group of culture-shocked students gathered around two tables for our first family style dinner late into the evening. The mood was good for the meal and many of us feeling completely exhausted. I joked to Sally that this is what field schools ought to do, wear us out entirely so that were always to tired to go out at night.
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