Day two started by me waking up at seven and going down to get breakfast. I still absolutely love the bacon here and tried a small dish called a curry pocket which was fantastic as well as yogurt that I drank with a straw, I ended up eating five of those. After breakfast, we were off to the beautiful Central University of Finance and Economics.
The first thing we did at the university was participate in a lecture about e-commerce for smartphones in China. I learned many new things in this lecture including the mobile payment options which are used, how big data is used to generate ads and suggestions, the amount of shopping done online in China, and many other points about the culture of Chinese families. This was all extremely interesting, and it was crazy to hear that somewhere near 55% of shopping is done online in China as well as the fact that there is a holiday called singles day on November eleventh where everything becomes half off and somewhere around 25 billion in revenue is made by companies. After this lecture was finished, we had another lecture on some events and things that were surprising to hear had either originated in China or were molded by it such as ketchup and Popeye the sailor. Following the lectures, we all went down to the university cafeteria and had lunch and had the opportunity to talk to the students at the university. This lunch was amazing, definitely better than market central. My favorite food at lunch was a spicy chicken that I just could not stop eating, everything here tastes so good!
The next part of the adventure was to visit the university library which made the Hillman look small and old. Every floor of the library was like a technologically advanced version of Hogwarts and the top floor had a beautiful art gallery which was wonderful to look through. While in the gallery I got the chance to talk to a sophomore at the university about what school is like in China. It was extremely interesting to me to hear that college admission is completely dependent on academic scores rather than activities or anything of that sort. To end the trip, we all went and played jump rope which was extremely fun and competed in a hula hoop escape race where my team got second. The trip to the Central University of Finance and Economics was amazing and I learned so much through visiting there.
After getting back to the hotel, Dave, Jon, and I decided to head to snack street. Our adventure through the subway was super fun and wondering around and looking at all the food was such a good experience. We all saw so many interesting foods which made it really hard to choose a place to eat. Eventually, we figured out where we were going to eat and went through the extremely awkward experience of ordering food without being able to communicate other than pointing and giving thumbs ups to the waitress. The meal itself was amazing and dessert afterward was even better. After getting food we headed east towards a lake where we found a celebration where people were dancing and playing games, this was so cool to see. Day 2 was a huge success and I cannot wait for tomorrow!
