Harvard China Student Internship Program—         
Student Experiences

Andrew Alcorta  •  Jan van der Kuijp  •  Chelsea Shover  •  Tian Wen  •  Sylvia Chen  •  Will Guzick  •  Kelly Gu  •  Phillip Zhang  •  Vidya Viswanathan

Andrew Alcorta

I arrived at Dulles International Airport just before 5 A.M., with two large suitcases in hand and one thought in mind. What am I thinking? I had made the decision to travel to China for the summer, and I would be working in Beijing for Hay Group Consulting. It was a phenomenal, once in a lifetime opportunity. But as I sat waiting for my plane, my head buzzed with doubts: I can’t speak a single word of Chinese. How will I get to my apartment from the airport? What will working in China be like? Do I even really like Chinese food?

I now write from my flight home with one, very different thought in mind: Coming to China was one of the best decisions I have ever made. The work experience I received was valuable, but the true benefit of the trip was personal growth.  Spending ten weeks as a foreigner in China will push someone beyond their normal limits and force them to adapt, for better or for worse. For me, this trip has epitomized the old adage “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.

The crux of my experience hinges on being in a place that was extremely, almost entirely, foreign to me. I have visited Thailand, Singapore, Mexico, Italy and England. I have spent time briefly living in Ukraine and Spain. But I have never been in a place where I was truly foreign, where I could not communicate at all, where I lacked a basic understanding of the culture. At least, not until I arrived in China.

The language barrier epitomized this foreignness. Prior to touching down at Beijing Capital Airport, I had engaged in extensive debate with friends and family over just how much English would be spoken in Beijing. In retrospect, the most telling and accurate interaction I had occurred with a friend, who had just finished traveling in China. I recall explaining that I would be living in Beijing, despite not having studied any Mandarin. She responded to my naïve optimism by looking me in the eye and laughing. English was a rare commodity in China, and getting around without any Mandarin was no simple task.

I have countless stories of the language barrier causing logistical catastrophes. I don’t think I will ever forget the confused look on my cab driver’s face on the first day when I handed him the printout of my address. He looked at the paper, looked at me and shrugged. Now, that can’t be a good sign. These half-mimed interactions continued almost everywhere I went, whether I was trying to buy deodorant at the supermarket or getting a kabob on the street. And with enough practice comes some success. By the end of the summer, I could communicate squid kabob without spices with a quick series of gestures and a few words of Mandarin. Learning Chinese is anything but easy, but being surrounded by it required me to focus, work and listen.

The logistical problems faded, although never completely disappeared, but that does not mean the communication issues vanished. Whether I was interacting with a coworker, someone I met in the gym, or a cabdriver, I simply could not share stories and truly connect with the person on the same level. One cabdriver asked me a series of very simple questions in Chinese, which I was miraculously able to answer. That little personal connection was one of the best feelings I had the whole trip. On another occasion, a driver attempted to speak to me in English. Only about half of what he said was intelligible, but the Cheshire-cat smile spread across his face said it all. By the end of the trip, just a simple smile and a small gesture became a lot more significant.

It is also much harder to take life for granted traveling through China, be it Beijing or Anhui. Living in America, it is all too easy to forget the way in which the vast majority of the world actually lives day to day. Whether it was the skeletal outlines of construction workers near midnight, the bent backs of women farming rice paddies, or the homeless lying on the streets, each image hit like a bucket of cold water. The world is a harsh place. And as comfortable as I am to ignore the many ills of the world from my Harvardian bubble, the ugly truth is that those ills still exist. That harsh fact can create a consequence of its own. For me, it made me appreciate what I have and the opportunities that lie in front of me. Even more importantly, it reminded me how much work remains to be done to help the world.

Alleviating the pains of the world is a seemingly insurmountable task. Yet, individuals have set out to conquer it for hundreds of years. From the Roman expansion to more recent attempts by American missionaries to improve living conditions, people have set out to make the world a better place. Historically, the task has been truly insurmountable, and people have generally had to settle for changing the lives of a single village or, at most, a region.

However, my experience in China emphasized that the world is truly interconnected to a degree that was previously unimaginable. Within 24 hours, I could contact a friend in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Egypt, or Turkey. And I could do all this from Beijing. The world truly is flattening. Actions in one country, be they economic or governmental, truly can and do change the lives of individuals. Our scope of the world has grown infinitely over the past 15 years, and with it our awareness of global suffering. Yet, our ability to change the world for the better has grown in tandem, and continues to every day.

To conclude, I’ll return to the very beginning. This paper would be incomplete without my reflecting back to my first meeting with John Chen. In answering John’s first question of why I should be chosen, I began discussing my qualifications for a consulting internship. Mr. Chen quickly cut me off and said, “I am not asking for job qualifications. What will you take from the experience and how will you give back to it?” The answer I would now give: appreciation, understanding and growth.

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Jan van der Kuijp

I was nine years old when I first stepped foot on Chinese soil.  Because I was so young, I remember very little about this land, with which I share not only part of my cultural lifestyle but also my part of my familial heritage as half Taiwanese.  Now, exactly one decade later, I had the good fortune of both working in China at a Chinese company and living in one of the greatest cities in the world, Beijing.  This great internship experience has allowed me to go beyond merely learning about China and its people from the news; in fact, because I was both in a student and a work environment, I was able to see such developments first hand and observe the differences and similarities between America and China. 

When I first arrived here two months ago, I felt like a typical foreigner in Beijing: unfamiliar with the language, overwhelmed by the loud honking of the taxis, and constantly swarmed by people.  But now, after living here in China for this long, after learning how to bargain at places like Xiu Shui and Ya Xiu, after getting lost among swarms of people in Tian An Men, after learning how to order bullfrog at a strange xiao chi, after taking a subway holding 100 people per car when it could only hold 80, I finally feel a strange connection to a place that used to be merely another land mass to me two months ago, a place that I could potentially call my second home.  Because half of my ancestors hail from China, whereas the other half mostly consists of Europeans, I cannot ascribe myself a single identity that sums up my bloodline.  Neither do I feel that I could do this with my homeland.  Although I was born in America, I have never stayed in the same area for more than a few years and have even lived in Germany for several years.  As a result, I only feel comfortable, and truthful, in saying that my home is in America.  Now, however, I feel a small link to the China that was the birthplace of my relatives, where I feel the small Chinese traditions that occasionally take place at home truly exemplify.  Nevertheless, being born in America by immigrant parents of different nationalities exposed me to several cultures at once:  Chinese when I lived with my mother, European when I visited my father, and American when at school or with friends.  Sometimes I do feel out of place even in America (although this is rare), but I also believe that I have been provided with an invaluable opportunity to understand Earth and as many of its inhabitants as possible.

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Chelsea Shover

We arrived in Shanghai from our host cities on Saturday, July 3. That night, after a dinner of Shanghai delicacies including seafood, bullfrog, and cow tendons, we attended the “Going to College” forum at Fudan University. A panel of Harvard professor William Kirby, two Fudan University students and three Harvard students took questions about college life and college preparation from an audience of students from elementary to college age and parents. A popular topic was differences between the American and Chinese systems, especially the focus on sports and other extra-curricular interests in American college admissions. In contrast, China’s National College Entrance Exam is by far the largest factor in college admissions.

On Saturday morning we visited the Shanghai museum and then stopped by the Harvard China Fund office. After lunch we went to a market, where we toured a silk factory. A man demonstrated how silk is extracted from silk worms, and women showed us how to stretch out and layer sheets of silk to make insulation for quilts. We tried on fancy silk jackets and looked at luxury bedding in the shop next to the factory. After dinner we watched an acrobatic show. Holding our breath, we watched acrobats balance in a stack extending to the ceiling, fly through the air, leap somersaults onto tiny platforms.
Sunday we took a day trip to a water village in Suzhou. Boatmen and women poled sampans through the town’s network of canals. Shops along the streets sold bamboo origami, glutinous rice balls, bone combs, snails in buckets. We had the evening free to explore Shanghai, and many of us went to Nanjing Rd to see the lit up retail district.
On Monday we toured China Mobile in the morning. In the afternoon we returned to Suzhou and wandered through the Humble Garden, taking in the peaceful scenes of contoured rocks, elegant royal dwellings, and lotus flowers resting on tranquil streams. After dinner we were free to explore downtown Suzhou, a main street of trendy clothing stores, teashops, and a mall with designer brands.

The next day we drove to Anhui to first meet county officials and learn about municipal government in the province. At Anqing Normal University, students from their theater department put on a joint performance with our musicians. The Anqing students, world class Huangmei Opera performers, sang enchanting traditional stories in elaborate costumes. Another act was a first year student who was a mask-changer. With flourishes of his cape his face changed from red to blue to green to black. Wendy Wang sang “Think of Me” from Phantom of the Opera, then Yi Cai on violin and Phillip Zhang on cello played a duet. Charles V played the erhu, and Wendy sang again, finishing with “Wo Ai Ni Zhongguo” (“I Love You, China).
Our next stop in Anhui was a village. People from the village showed us around the temple and the schoolhouse. Inside the schoolhouse teachers talked about educational practices and goals. They were very committed to their students, and a general sense was that parents want their children to be educated in order to move out to more developed areas. As the talk ended, some of us played on the playground with schoolchildren or played basketball with older students. The kids borrowed our cameras and took pictures of things around the schoolhouse–a plant, a feather duster, Mao’s portrait, a baby’s round face. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped to buy watermelon from a man selling it by the side of the road, forty kuai (about $6) for ten.

On Thursday we visited Hong Cun, a village built in the shape of a water buffalo. Walled alleys form the intestines of the creature, bridges are the legs, and two trees make the horns. Small shops in the maze of narrow streets and waterways sold paintings, bamboo carvings, and tea. I stopped at table with three bamboo waterwheels. The man carving another at a bench farther from the road came over and showed me how to turn the level so the twisting wheel would touch off the tiny hammers. He told me he spent three days carving each one. He took me inside his house to offer tea and show me his other pieces. The most elaborate had ladders and gazebos. Spread over the table they suggested a miniature amusement park. After lunch we drove a few hours through gorgeous countryside of Anhui to get to the airport to fly to Beijing.
Our first morning in Beijing we toured Lenovo. The display rooms showcased the evolution of laptop design, a living room of the future, and technology demonstrations like a game that senses when you make a basket-shooting motion and then show’s the basketball’s arc on the screen. In the afternoon we visited Waseda University, where a professor who leads service groups of students through rural regions gave a photo presentation on poverty in China. Thursday night we had our farewell dinner at Quanjude Peking Duck Restaurant. Xiaoguang Fang, formerly an interpreter for Deng Xiaoping, gave a speech about China thirty years after the economic reforms of 1978.

On the last day of the trip we visited two of the must-see destinations in Beijing: The Great Wall and the Forbidden City. On July 12 we returned to our cities to finish the remaining six weeks of our internships.

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Tian Wen

More often than not, the experiences at Harvard that shape us and that remain with us for the rest of our lives come not from our lectures or sections, but rather from the time that we spend outside the walls of the classroom.  The ten weeks I spent as an intern at Shekou Container Terminals this past summer proved to be no exception, and I can say without a doubt that, long after those eight-to-five workdays have been forgotten, the conversations that I had with my friends, my coworkers, and my boss outside the walls of the office will still remain.

To be perfectly honest, I had mixed feelings about being placed in SCT, especially since it wasn’t something that I had put down in my application.  Yet, like so many times before, over the course of the summer I came to realize that everything does happen for a reason, and looking back now I am so thankful for my placement, because at SCT I worked for a boss who not only cared about my interests and my well-being, but who also encouraged and inspired me.

Oscar was the type of boss who wanted to show James and I the best that Shenzhen and China had to offer.  He took us on outings with his family, including a trip to a driving range and a special Peking Opera performance, and when it came to food, he would always try to find some sort of regional specialty for us to try.  Once in conversation, we casually mentioned that we were disappointed with the beach that we had visited over the weekend, and in hearing such he made arrangements for us to go with his family to Shenzhen’s best beach, a three-hour drive away from the city.  He even rented little huts so that we could all stay overnight, and made arrangements with the people of the village to take us out to catch fish.  That night, when he saw that people were lighting “wish lanterns” by the water, he wanted us to have a chance to set off one of our own, and without thought quickly went out in search of a place to buy one for us.

What I remember most about Oscar, however, happened not at a special event or location, but at a local restaurant one night soon before we left.  While waiting for our food to arrive, he asked me what I wanted to do after graduation, and I replied that my biggest aspiration was to go to law school.  He looked at me and said, “Tian, do you think that oriental people in Canada or America are discriminated against?”  I told him that, although there were a few instances where I was given strange looks because I was Chinese, I had never been on the receiving end of any blatantly hurtful discrimination.  He thought about this for a while and said, “I hope you know that I really support you and your dreams, and I hope that one day you’ll be accepted at the best law schools.  Do you know, about 24% of students at top universities in the US are oriental, but only about 8% of people who work in top government or highly respected positions are oriental?  I hope that you can do something to change that number.”

 A simple statement, an opinion, a thought.  Yet that night, I found myself tossing and turning, unable to sleep, running those words over and over again in my head.  I thought about the numbers, and I thought about how those of oriental decent could be just as capable in any position in society.  I thought about the two years I had left at Harvard, and I thought about the difficult process of applying to law school.  And then, I thought of how proud Oscar would be, and certainly how proud I would be, if I could look back on that summer day and see how far I had come from the girl who only knew where she wanted to go, but not how.

Some might think it silly, but even today I still think about, and am truly inspired, by what Oscar said to me that day. I’ve always wanted to go to law school for different reasons, but now I feel that I have an even greater reason to do the things I do each day.  By going after my dreams, I have the chance to change not only my own life, but also a number that in turn reflects upon the entire oriental population.  And while this summer was certainly a great chance for me to learn about the shipping industry in China, it was also a chance for me to learn about something so much greater—it was a chance for me to discover myself, to discover where I’m going, and most importantly, to discover a greater reason for why I want to get there.

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Sylvia Chen

My roommate Maeve and I had taken the overnight train from the capital of Taipei to the busy port city of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan.  I had never before crammed so many attractions into one weekend!   It was liberating.  It was exhilarating. It was delirious at times.  It was only one weekend out of my best summer yet … and it was only 309 photos out of over 2000 from the summer. 

6:00 a.m. MOS Burger at the Kaohsiung Main Station
The city was eerily quiet.  The threats of a typhoon lingered, but we dashed into the newly built subway system to find something edible.  Luckily we found the Japanese fast food burger chain MOS and sit down for The Plan.  The Plan was the schedule for the next 36 hours, our limited time in Kaohsiung.  It was going to be epic.

9:30 a.m. Street-side café with delicious traditional Taiwanese breakfast
I had already been in Taiwan for nearly a month, and I still had not eaten the to-die-for delectable street-side Taiwanese breakfast.  Luckily we found this café right outside our bed-and-breakfast, so we fueled up before we headed out for our first stop.

10:15 a.m. Lotus Pond
The sun was out!  The typhoon was a myth … or at least Mother Nature liked us enough to divert the forecasted typhoon.  The wind could have been a bit more cooperative, but Maeve and I were thrilled nonetheless.  Even though Dragon Tiger Pagoda looked a bit too much like an amusement park attraction, we still captured some fun wind-blown-hair photos.

2:50 p.m. Tea Street by the Airport
We could not obtain last minute tickets to the 2009 World Games gymnastics events, so we ended up going a bit out of the city to explore the tea shops by the airport.  It turned out to be a mini town and getaway attraction by the take-off strip of the airport.  We had some tea and some chicken nuggets while planes zoomed off the runway.   What a capital investment!

5:30 p.m. Dream Mall
The largest mall in all of Taiwan, the Dream Mall touted a Ferris wheel on the roof along with 2,300 other stores and services.  The best part? The free food samples.

9:45 p.m. Liuhe Night Market
After wandering around the Shoe Street, an entire city street lined with shoe stores and only shoe stores, we found our way by broken directions from locals to the Liuhe Night Market.  One of the defining aspects of Taiwan, night markets present the best and cheapest food, the best and most affordable shopping, and the best and most fun company. 

Grabbing food to-go from a diverse collection of street vendors, we decided it was time to return to our bed-and-breakfast as the hands on my watch passed 11:30 p.m.  The last picture of the day was of us happily eating our food.  It was absolutely astounding how much time we had spent on our feet.  When we found ourselves at another subway system, the building looked fleetingly familiar.  We laughed when we realized we didn’t recognize the Kaohsiung Main Station, our starting point of the day. We spent so much time in transit that all the places seemed to melt together – luckily I took enough pictures that day to help record all the memories.

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Will Guzick

During my two-month internship at a human resources consulting firm in Beijing, I discovered more problems within the office than among our clients.

How do Chinese solve problems?  As I sat in the conference room, I realized how little I knew about Chinese culture.  All of my research, all of my attempts to learn Chinese, and I still did not understand this most basic element.

On the first day of my internship, my boss ran up to me (quite literally) with a notepad outlining several deliverables due by the end of the week.  I was swept into the conference room, where a stack of reading materials was placed in front of me.  I was to skim them before her return in 30 minutes and present my initial thoughts about the case.  My internship promised to be a great experience.  But I still had no idea how Chinese would approach the problem, and I had less than half an hour to figure it out.

During the next two months, I would learn this and much more about Chinese culture.  In a way, the problems that I faced are similar to those encountered in any multinational consulting firm.  But in many more ways, they are uniquely Chinese and deserving of careful examination.  Let us start by profiling the key actors in the company.

My boss Mary is 32 years old and a graduate of Peking University.  The constant flurry of activity that she puts forth bewilders some in the office.  Her parents are both professors and researchers at a local university, although she prefers to speak about her own statistics studies.  Her English is accented, but good, as she earned her master’s degree in the States.  She is the case team leader for the current project, for the Chinese Ministry of Education.  Also, Mary is currently a full consultant and is due for promotion to senior consultant shortly, assuming that the project proceeds as planned.

In my conversation with Mary, she emphasizes leaving no stone unturned.  Instead of the three organizations suggested by our client, she wants to conduct benchmarking analyses on no fewer than eight comparable institutions.  The entire office is working overtime to meet her demands.  Her problem solving style is to constantly narrow down the scope of research, like a sphere contracting into a single point.  Mary covers all the bases, but the case is inordinately slow and inefficient.   

That afternoon, I met Ralph, who works in the marketing department.  Ralph is exactly the same age as Mary, but he comes from a very different background.  His parents are farmers in the northern part of Hebei province.  He distinguishes himself by working farmers’ hours, as he is always the first one there in the morning and the last one to leave the office.  His thick Beijing accent and lack of a diploma from a prestigious university also set him apart from the others.  Nevertheless, the consultants often come to him for help with their cases.  For one, Ralph’s English is the best in the office.  He is the most open with foreigners and often speaks about friends in other countries.  Within several minutes of meeting him, I had dinner plans for the evening and a standing invitation to tour Beijing’s hutongs. 

Ralph has come a long way from his roots in the countryside.  It is every Chinese student’s dream to work for a multinational corporation, and his chances of finding another such job are slim.  Under the surface though, he is bitterly disappointed with his lot.  Instead of being a consultant, he is one of only two people in marketing.  He cannot afford to buy a house, one of the things that he would need to provide to his wife before marriage.  Moreover, consultants are being promoted rapidly, but Ralph has been in his position for five years, with no opportunity for advancement. 

Ralph even went to speak to Jerry, the boss of the office, to express his concerns.  Jerry, who is American-educated, is very attentive to the needs of his employees.  But he doesn’t hesitate to point out that any Chinese client would be cautious of embracing Ralph’s recommendations because he lacks the credentials of Mary and the other consultants.  Indeed, Ralph would like to go to business school overseas, but it is prohibitively expensive.  Behind Jerry’s back, Ralph rants about guanxi, the relationship structure that allows those with connections in business or government to vault several rungs on the career ladder.  Ralph has no guanxi, he found it difficult even to get on Jerry’s schedule.  Without an overseas education or some form of guanxi, Ralph’s progress is effectively halted.

Meanwhile, at the end of the summer, Mary receives her promotion to senior consultant.  This was long-awaited, as three years in the same position is a substantial commitment to a single firm.  Ralph’s future, however, is far more uncertain.     

I’ve presented the situation of Ralph and Mary to illustrate several issues facing China today:

1) Economic mobility - Every day, thousands of migrant workers commute into Beijing on fleets of truck and bicycles.  Buried in Chinese society are significant prejudices about those migrants and others living in rural regions.  People may move across the country in one generation, but moving up in the world happens in two generations, never in a single one.  Ralph and Mary are already the elite, but at the highest levels of Chinese society, there remains a glass ceiling for Chinese from provinces and poor families.

2) The education emphasis - With millions of people competing for Ralph and Mary’s jobs, the only way to separate candidates is by brand name qualification.  The limits on a Chinese person’s future are decided early on in his or her career.     

3) The international connection – While Mary’s background appears to show her understanding of foreigners, Ralph is actually more open in daily interactions.  I often observed this paradoxical phenomenon in action.  Despite his lack of a Western education, Ralph embraces a philosophy of efficiency that contrasts with Mary’s approach.

I liken success to a snowball effect.  A slight push, perhaps due to hard work or luck, starts the snowball rolling downhill, gathering speed and momentum.  But what happens when the snowball is slowed – or even stopped?  China will have to address this issue not only on a macroeconomic level but also on a personal level.  In the future, there will be no one way that Chinese solve problems, the country will need both Ralphs and Marys to survive.

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Kelly Gu

Looking back on the two months in China, I can best describe my experience as a fortuitous surprise.  When I had applied to the program, I was someone born in China but without a solid memory of my life there, curious to learn firsthand what China was like and more than a little apprehensive about whether or not I could adjust to living and there.  I was also someone particularly interested in international economies who hoped to engage in the strategies and particularities of multinational corporations doing business in China. Things hardly turned out like I had imagined, but I am all the more grateful for it.
When I boarded the plane to go to China, I had no idea what to expect. In the course of a few short weeks, I had been moved from living in Pudong and working at Shanda, an online game developer, to living in Nanxiang and working at Gemdale, a real estate developer. Admittedly, both industries were completely new to me, but I was now quite a bit away from the city center, and expected to speak and work only in Chinese at Gemdale, and living alone--three factors that caused me more than a little anxiety. Little did I know that each of these, in turn, would guarantee an experience that I won’t soon forget.

First, I am so grateful to have been placed both with Gemdale and in the Operations department. Almost immediately, I had the chance to interact with coworkers from every department, from design to accounting, and to sit in on whichever meetings were of interest to me. I was surprised by how much each person contributed to the discussions and how much vertical parity there was, although everyone certainly showed a tremendous amount of respect and deference to the company’s strata of leadership. My manager even gave me the chance to accompany a group of employees on their biannual check of progressing projects in Nanjing and Hangzhou. By the dim light of the farmer’s tea houses in the Longjing Tea Hills in Hangzhou, I got to interact with many managers across divisions and branches and to hear how they saw and discussed the fruition of their projects.

Of course, my own manager taught me quite a lot about effective leadership. I don’t think I would have had the experience that I had if it were not for my manager, Mr. Huang, and the atmosphere he created for our department. As Harvard College students, we are often told that we are going to be the future leaders of our country. It was only appropriate that John would choose the question of ‘what makes a good manager’ as a running theme throughout the duration of our internship. Because of his vivacity, generosity, and sense of humor, the workplace was always an enjoyable place to be. He also believed firmly that as interns, it is our responsible above all to learn as much as we can. To that end, he arranged various orientations for us, and also gave us the chance to give our own trainings to our department about topics of our own choosing. It is in this way that I was able to immediately feel like a part of the Gemdale family, which was crucial to my feeling at home in China.
I can say without hesitation that living and working in Jiading worked out for the best. If I had not lived alone and in a more remote area, I do believe that I would have missed out on the most important piece of my internship experience:  getting to know natives closely. Certainly, there were times during which I was bemoaning the lack of a subway station that would deposit me downtown with ease. Not only did I not have easy access to transportation, but I did not many places to choose from for breakfast and dinner within close walking distance from my hotel (which to me was very strange in the culinary paradise of China). I even let the more than dozen kilometers between my hotel and the rest of the students downtown prevent me from seeing the rest of our “Shanghai family” as often as I would have liked, although I tried to make family dinner when I could. I point out all these negatives only to compare them to the immense positives that I gained from my experience in Nanxiang, which I have found immeasurably meaningful.

Indeed, one of the most valuable lessons I learned this summer was how important it is to improve my Chinese. Although Chinese is my mother tongue and I am fairly conversant in it, I realized how much of a handicap it was to not have pursued my study of it to attain fluency. Although I could have conversations with people about daily life, it would take me three to four times longer than the local interns to read any materials that were sent to me as I looked up phrase after phrase in Google Translate. Thus, my greatest frustration all summer was sometimes feeling like I didn’t have as much to contribute as I would have been able to had I been able to do my work in English. Although I was initially quite intimidated by the idea of working at a local Chinese company where Chinese was the only operating language, I think I gained such a better insight into the politics and dynamics in the workplace than I otherwise would have.

I know that my fellow interns in Shanghai all got something different out of their internship, but I think it’s safe to say that no one spent as much time getting to know local Chinese people as I did. From the impromptu rides that some of them would give me to work if they saw me working in the morning, to the many times when we as a department went to sing karaoke, to the various combinations that we sat in at lunch every day, I came to know each of the ten or so members of my department well. Outside of work, we occasionally spontaneously met up for meals. I also had the good fortune of having four other fellow interns in the Operations Department with me, all from Jiaotong University. Each of the four individuals, studying four different majors, coming from four different places in China, and having four very different sets of interests, collectively gave me a much better picture of how college students in China think. I was surprised by their incredible diversity and connected very well with two of them, who I am sure I will keep in touch with for many years to come. Their friendship assures me that other similarities bind stronger than cultural differences divide, and inspire me to continue to explore ways to return to China for work after I graduate.

When I got to the airport on August 23, I couldn’t help but think about how much I had gleaned in terms of understanding. I came to appreciate what it a local Chinese company was like, how coworkers and cohorts interact, and what the lives of my many Chinese friends were like. What’s more, I couldn’t help but marvel at how I had unexpectedly come to have such a genuine Chinese experience and how I had found myself to how fit and grow into such an environment.

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Phillip Zhang

In the rural Chinese village where my father spent his adolescence, people believed that upon a man’s death, he must collect all the footprints he has ever laid before being allowed to enter heaven.  The villagers concluded that it therefore must be best not to venture far from home, and so they allowed the myth to bind them to their simple, everyday lives.  My father saw things differently.

The son of a Shanghai doctor, my father grew up with dreams of studying and later working in a university for the benefit of society.  But when that society, in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, seemingly betrayed him by shutting down its universities and shipping him off into the countryside to “learn from the peasants,” he was forced to reconsider his options.  Separated from his family and without even a middle school education, he remained hopeful but uncertain about his future.  He began to learn on his own, believing that knowledge would serve him well regardless of his surroundings.
Ten years later at the end of the Cultural Revolution, my father took the national college entrance examination, competing with tens of millions of high school graduates for a limited number of places in the newly reopened schools.  Remarkably, he received one of the highest scores on the examination and was admitted to Peking University, the nation’s most prestigious institution.  Later, he realized his dreams of studying neuroscience abroad and becoming a professor in the United States. 
Although I have never lived in a rural village, I draw daily inspiration from my father’s stories.  He has bestowed in me a deep appreciation for life, a love of learning, and the courage to pursue my dreams.  While my father struggled to obtain opportunities to succeed, I endeavor to make full use of the many that have been offered to me.  Constantly striving to improve myself and my surroundings, I take the high road and encourage those around me to do so as well.

Growing up, I heard many stories about my father’s life in the village.  Now, having spent a summer living and working in Shanghai, I have stories of my own to share with him.  Indeed, the city he once knew as a child is now barely recognizable, a jungle of modern apartment buildings and futuristic skyscrapers.  China, in all its transformations and reforms, continues to defy casual prediction.  A place that must be experienced firsthand, explored fully, and watched constantly, China demanded my attention and I gladly obliged.

One day I hope to visit my father’s old village.  It is a long way from home, and I would leave many footprints along the way.  But perhaps the real meaning of the villagers’ parable is simply that we must all review and take responsibility for our deeds here on Earth—a theme of universal importance despite its humble origins in a rural Chinese village.  When the time comes to collect my footprints, I hope to have left some lasting, positive impression on the lives of others. 
Then, the journey will have been worth it.

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Vidya Viswanathan

My first time in China was last summer. After gallivanting around the major tourist attractions with my parents—Shanghai, the Three Gorges Dam, Xian, and Beijing—I spent nine weeks learning Chinese in the capital city. I came back with an understanding of China at one of its turning points, seeing the city of Beijing change over the course of a few weeks to prepare for the Olympic games and a worldwide spotlight.

I thought, coming back to China a second time, that my experience would be similar. Imagine my surprise when, on July 1—the anniversary of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China—I found myself observing a crowd of almost 100,000 people taking to the streets in protest of the government. I was still in China, yes, but this was Hong Kong—a version of China I had never seen before. Jam-packed onto this island were trams, tourist attractions, and foreigners—vestiges of colonialism. On top of that were businesspeople from all parts of the world, piling into offices that climbed higher and higher.  And yet, the street I lived on remained a microcosm of what I knew in Beijing—open meat stalls and wet markets, fruit stands, and bargaining for clothes and shoes.

The duality of culture and lifestyle amazed me. Announcements within the subway were made in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. At the English newspaper I worked for, reporters would go to meetings in Cantonese, write down their notes in an English-Chinese mix, convey the story’s gist to their editor in Cantonese, and then end up writing it in perfect English. And many people spoke of a “Hong Kong culture”—characterized by the cynical as a Gatsby-like pursuit of wealth and luxury, through constant work and efficiency.  The city was full of malls, high-end restaurants, and gossip about business tycoons.
But, to me, there never really was one way to characterize Hong Kong. As I start to call it very business-oriented, I remember the passion of the ten thousands who protest on July 1 each year. As I start to call it liberal, I remember the gender discrimination that my coworker complained still exists in the workplace. As I start to call it China, I remember how far the “one country, two systems” policy has gone, making almost everything—visa, media, or lifestyle—different once you cross the mainland border.

Much like in America, the cultural merging happening in Hong Kong has made it hard to characterize. It is an epitome of the answer to the question, “What is China?” in demonstrating the fact that there is no single answer and no single way to describe the vast and diverse culture of the country. My feelings were solidified as I made trips to Macau, Taipei, Shenzhen, or rural areas like Anhui—each teaching me something different about China. What I will treasure most is the opportunity I had—through reporting and through traveling—to interact with Chinese people.

Whether playing with rural village kids in Anhui or listening to a top PRC official in Quanjude, each encounter gave me a new lens through which to view the people of China. Actually working in Hong Kong and having to encounter everyday people in my roadside interviews on anything from the solar eclipse to Michael Jackson’s death truly made me part of the city rather than just a visitor. And talking to the other students in the program who were also interested in China on many different levels allowed me to reflect on my journey so that it stayed with me, rather than just experience it in isolation.
In reporting for a newspaper, the one thing you learn is that the amount of information out there for you to collect is endless. Every story has a new angle, a new source, or a new importance. The key to making the paper work is to remain constantly open and aware of the evolving nature of the story you cover. I see China in the same way—an evolving country to be looked at from many angles, and one that will grow more important and more interesting the longer I engage myself with it.

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