Robstep into the Future

It was an early morning to ensure plenty of time to work on the marketing assignment. The team gathered at the wifi cafe where we planned our approach to market the Robstep people transporters. While crunching numbers and drawing notes be snacked on French Toast -which many people had craved since seeing it on the menu.

We worked straight up until lunch. Then we moved on the the TCL factory.

Talk about futuristic, here we went through the typically sales presentation. The technology was unimaginable 3D TVs natural light TV, and even a smart home control by one system. The factory floor itself was clean and well organization, part of the factory was a museum to tv development. There was a lot of pride for the end result and the company had big plans to develop.



I was excited to get to witness something like this, especially since a Global Stewardship degree may discuss production economies, it doesn't focus enough on it to get to see something like this first hand.

We returned to the cafe to put more work into the project at the cafe. I thought I wouldn't have much to offer a group of business students on the presentation, but since technology was limited it was up to us to present using posters and pens. Finally, a chance to draw.

That night we went out of a real authentic Chinese meal, one of the best in my opinion. The chicken was so greasy and tender it was best enjoyed by hand -so plastic gloves were provided. Every time the plate of pork neck came around I ate two pieces. Same with the warm homey taste of the pumpkin taro soup, I over ate out of enjoyment.



The night only got better when the Huizhou students put on a huge presentation for us about Chinese culture. It began with a demonstration of Tai-Chi, then music on the Qiguan, an introduction to Chinese calligraphy and papercutting. It was a good day for the unbelievable arts, culture, and food of China.

Tourist In Huizhou

We started the day with a breakfast in the canteen.

A bus tour around Huizhou helped us to understand the magnitude of this place. We stopped at one of Lin's favourite places, Iwo market. It was several stories of small shops put on each floor, a floor for womens clothes, for bags, for toys, and so on.

Outside the market I had a chance to try some of the food in the area. In contrast was the mall that we stopped at next. The stores appeared as they would in Capilano mall. Unlike the market -which was fairly crowded- this mall felt almost empty, and I ran into other students frequently. Kathryn and I decided on McDonalds out of sheer curiosity, and since the mall didn't have many affordable food options. McDonald's has an admirable way of adapting their menu to the local cuisine, in Hawaii I had a macademia nut pie, in Mexico a queso pie, in China I had a taro pie, while Kathryn had the pineapple. To be honest, I probably wouldn't buy a McDonalds pie in Vancouver, since there's nothing special about it, but in China it seems more special. As did my genuinely spicy McSpicy Chicken -which I will probably crave the rest of my life.

Then the bus took us to Westlake, a beautiful area when it's not pouring rain, which it was. We made a quick escape to the Kande Hotel where we were early for our tour.

The tour of the hotel was fascinating, and was made more fascinating by listening to Lin's thoughts afterwords in the hotel lounge where we had tea. Lin trusted the hotel as somewhere he could bring foreigners and know they would be comfortable. The extravagant hotel was an oasis in Huizhou, a beautiful view of Westlake and all the amenities to suits ones needs.

We returned to the university for our Hakka style dinner, of which I presented on. The meal was incredible, it was rumoured to be very oily and could result in stomach aches, and my research made it sound soft and flavourful. The experience was a positive on and I expect to be search for Hakka cuisine back home.

We closed the night with our first English corner with the Huizhou students. We had a split into groups to talk about international marketing although none of the Huizhou students in my group were actual business students. Even still they remained very engaged, they were curious about Canadian packaging standards as with nutrition facts and bilingual information.

After the assignments we were free to talk amongst ourselves. We talked until we were kicked out the entire time I hadn't check the time or even looked away from our little group. They wanted to know about money, family, relationships, jobs, rent, schooling, and pretty much everything if we had had the time. There's that push and pull, the students tell me that they're shy but they don't hold back on the questions. Even in a culture where uncertainty is common they still have great curiosity about the rest of the world. Even so that they far surpass the interest that Canadian students show in International Students.

It was so different to think that in Huizhou we were treated like celebrities, because we were from somewhere else. But when international students come to Canada they're greeted much much more modestly, and in many cases they're not treated all to well by their peers.

Huizhou, Expect the Unexpected

An early wake up and a long bus ride to Huizhou university. Some of the Chinese food culture must be rubbing off on us since snacks were getting passed around the bus throughout the trip. A  few students from the university even came to sit with us and eagerly pose questions as my neighbour on the plane had.

Alex informed us about some of the history of Huizhou. I had the impression from most people that we were going to a small place where we should expect the entertainment we received in Guangzhou. However Alex mentioned to my surprised that Huizhou and Toronto have roughly the same number of citizens. So was Huizhou big or small?

Our first introduction to Lin, our partner at Huizhou University. We stayed in hotel meant for parents visiting students at this large university.

We met Lin at the cafe next to the Hotel, it became a favourite hangout spot because of it's free wi-fi. From there the students gave us a tour of the campus. The dormitories we visited held six bunks with a small study/storage space underneath, and led to a shared bathroom at the end of the room. I was impressed with how committed the students were to studying, giving their small space. Even the library -while large by our standards- is known to fill up daily. The students were very thankful for their education.


We had dinner with Lin in the canteen next to the hotel, we had planned on having a Hakka style meal but that was bumped to the next night.

Anxious to find out the really size of Huizhou we went downtown that evening. We started with green tea ice cream from McDonald's, and went roaming. Eventually we found a large patio space where we stopped to relax, drink and watch the night go by.

Free Day in Guangzhou

This morning  held an 8:30am breakfast -it felt like a sleep in. We left at 9:30am for the Buddhist temple, with a slight "detour" through the old streets of the Song Dynasty.

Stanley once again offered his experience by explaining some of the Buddhist worship traditions. Engaging in worship unfamiliar to oneself it's always sort of a grayzone. For me, I've taken time to learn about a number of religions and the ways they worshipped, I've been to temples, mosques and many churches and I don't see what I did as offensive. It's about learning, tolerating, and maybe even understanding. However, Buddhism is often seen as an exoticized religion, it has great appeal in the west, but some of the more important parts are overlooked. Never the less I swam through the borders of my comfort zone and planted my incense infront of Buddha, praying three times.

After the Buddhist temple we went to a local restaurant on a whim. Yvonne ordered chicken feet and offered to share. This is a great example of one of these things I could say "I'm stepping out of my comfort zone and eating chicken feet!". But for me, trying new foods -no matter what- is very normal for me. Some thing like the trade fair was much more adventurous than chicken feet, after all, they taste like chicken.



We made our way to Shamian Island. A colonial-style area that looks like no where else in Guangzhou. The Victorian era building that housed a Starbucks became the venue for enjoying a green tea frappacino with red beans. Colonialism is a universal commonality in my travel experience. Only a few months prior in the Guatemala field school was I looking in wonder at the historic buildings of Antigua, not colonized by the British, but still very much colonized. Many colonial areas are still alive and well in Ghana and St. John's -which is where I had my Canada World Youth experience.  Whether we like it or not there's only 22 countries that Britain didn't invade (and most of those were invade by other European powers), so we do share a surprising amount of common ground historically speaking.


Then we moved on to the opposite side of the "in-common" spectrum, the medicine market. Instantly greeted with new smells and the halls are lined with sacks of shaved antlers, dried seahorses, bugs, and animal parts that are not easily identified. To return we went through the fruit and vegetable market, and through the meat market (where I understand we made a couple vegetarians).



Funny thing about meat in China, Canadians either don't want to know anything about their meat or they want to know everything about it. There's this McNugget mentality, where meat should not resemble the animal at all. No head, no bones, and don't tell me what it is, I'll just eat it and not think about it. Then there's this opposing idea  the "what's in this anyway?" idea, it usually accompanies the food that the McNugget people like. I actually prefer the Chinese connection to food. The butchering process is not something to hide, and people have more of a direct relation to the food they eat.

Lastly, we finished the evening shopping on the strip and grabbing some dessert. The market atomsphere here was more comforting to e and I even bartered down a backpack for myself, another Guangzhou backpack.



We cabbed back to the hotel where Stanley and I attempted to book some flights for after the field school to Shanghai and Xi'an. It was getting late so Ian and I walked around the corner and got some crunchy egg crepes. In addition to relation to meat, meals as a discussion space, I really appreciate the ease of access to food that we experienced in China. Even fairly late at night its easy to get cheap, delicious food, even without speaking a word of Mandarin beyond shey-shey.

Baby's First Culture Shock

Shower, breakfast, bus to Canton Trade Fair.

Decked out with our ID badges and our blue Capilano polos we dispersed into the Canton Trade Fair. I had expected to see mind-blowing innovation in a few small but quality booths. Instead I was exposed to something that looked more like multiple airports joined into one. The merchandise for sale was mostly fairly standard things. The workshop for the world had to supply the dollar stores of the world too!

The food, the metro, the people, the language, the toilets, I could handle that, but the Global Stew in me crumbled into culture shock at the Canton Trade Fair at the expansive of stuff. I was completely overwhelmed by it size and scope. The map felt more and more useless and I felt time running out to gather information for the assignment. They dealt in bulk orders, and a  lot of the booths were really just supplying fairly standard thing, setting themselves apart more by low cost and quality, than by design or functionality. I could rock a public finance class but I felt like a fish out of water at the Canton Trade Fair.

Still, it was an incredible experience, definitely not something I wouldn't never have encountered myself doing outside of the field school. It was meaningful as the fair is really and economic world wonder of my time, and I'm thankful for being there.

Next Iain broght us to The Fake Market  made famous for its cheap knock offs. Again I found myself in a market environment I'm not often exposed to. It's no wonder my backpack came from Guangzhou, in fact I'm sure many of my things came from Guangzhou. The city is a story of economic market success. From the Canton Trade Fair to the tree lined parks, Guangzhou is a real example of prosperity.

The subway hoe was much less devastating than the previous day. However Sally and I preferred to keep it simple and have ice cream, Guava juice, dumplings and chow mien for dinner rather than adventure back into the city for a big dinner.

Let's Meet Guangzhou!

We woke up for a bus tour with our guide Jermie (Not Germany). She made an effort to introduce us to many interesting parts of Guangzhou. Today was our day to be a tourist.

We visited the museum of Sun Yat-Sen, where Joe was passionate to inform us of the political history and its significance. Given the current Chinese government I didn't expect a place like this to be so popular and praised, yet is was. With respect to the current government, the democratic period is view as a stepping stone and is praised for bringing China out of dynasties and into the modern era.

The bus tour also took us to such attractions as the five rams, the stadium for the Asian games, and a look at some of the towers and parks.

The night finished off with a boat cruise down the Pearl river. It was dark, but this made it all the more better because of the beautiful lights on all the buildings. The lights incredible, but I knew that this isn't the kind of thing you would see in Vancouver, the vision of beauty is completely different. Vancouverites move more and more to a natural view of beauty, in trees, and waterfront, clean parks and open concepts.While Guangzhou can display power and affluence through its extravagant light shows. Both place value trees, but Guangzhou appears to embrace the practicality of trees over Vancouverites quixotic wonder.

I was quite blown away that a place this amazing could exist so unnoticed by the media I'm familiar to. It was like a modern Atlantis, unbelievable, massive and unique, but lost to the Western world.

Prepare for Adaptability and Flexibility

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.

The first amazing thing happened at Jinan University. Our guides were Felix (Former international student at Capilano), Emma (Future international student at Capilano), and Ian (Capilano student attending Jinan University). They gave us a tour of a campus so large it would make Canadian universities look like playgrounds. Again, China is arranged to accommodate  a large population and that kind of magnitude should really surprise us.

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.

Flying Out Of The Comfort Zone

Preconceived ideas of China were losing altitude as the plane dipped into PEK airport.

My first introduction to the complexities of cultural difference was with the girl in the seat next to me. She'd noticed I was watching a movie that was not in English (nor was it in Chinese), she asked if I could understand it, and I pointed to the subtitles and said "kind of".

She lived (judging by her map pointing) around Qinhuangdao, and was attending University of Victoria for Science. She acknowledged her struggle with English, but was still fairly persistent in communication -I was a little embarrassed about the pathetic extent of my Mandarin. The most spoken language in the world and I was limited to a few key sentences -this sort of thing was reoccurring all over the field school.

She asked me a number of questions regarding Canadian social culture (but never really referring to it as such). She wanted to know about things like crying in public and whether Canadian boys would want to  date her. Her shyness could not contain her enthusiasm for answers, a push and pull I saw with many of the Chinese students I met during my short time.

A flurry of movement through security and arrivals -I pitied the securities guard who had to pat down my sweaty back.

Finally, Stanley emerged in his element as a Mandarin speaker guiding confused Canadians to a ramen noodle spot. Since Stanley and I had already learned from the Guatemala field school, splitting a bill is where friendships break. But here, we paid individually for our meals and drinks before they even came to the table. Gradually over the field school I would grow to size up a restaurant and try and decipher how payment would be divided.

As our group wandered over to the gate our fascination sparked with little things such as squat toilets and water bottle fill stations. I was familiar with squat toilets from my adventures in Ghana, but those toilets didn't really have any flushing capacity, where as these were just as modern as what I now understand is a Western toilet. I sort of found out that a lot of people simply prefer this kind, it's not lack of innovation or capital, it's just the style.

Arriving at the gate we heard a noise that would become so familiar, the hoarking sound of thick snotty spit. Stanley sort of sighed that that was one thing he didn't missed about China, I figured it was an isolated incident -how wrong I was.

Our three hour flight to CAN airport included breakfast. This was the first flight where I knew there was no expectation that passengers would speak English. Should there be? It's a domestic connection. The breakfast itself became quite symbolic to me, I've flown across Canada and never had a single in-flight meal since the layovers were so perfectly spaced out. In China I can't think of a single flight where a meal wasn't served, even on what that was only an hour and a half. This emphasis on food was something I really appreciate about China, eating is something that does connect us all and using meal times a space for relationship building on validates the importance of both people and food -what's not to love!

Then we were in Guangzhou, in a cloud of smoke, surrounded by people, cars, and rain. This was the waiting for the taxi game. This was the first taste of what Chinese architects, government, city planners, and more go through to control crowds. With such a large population the snaking pathways and inconvenient escalator placement actually makes sense. It's not so much about the time it takes but about the quality of the outcome. It wasn't efficient to get from the plane to the hotel, but it actually did a good job of breaking up groups of people (saving them from getting pushed around too much).

The Poly Hotel was an oasis in a sea of exhausting travel. My first impressions were masked in an undying excitement to sleep. Sleep at 2:38am in room 203 with my new buddy Sally.