On day two in Beijing, we travelled to the Central University of Finance and Economics. This university had a very modern look. With green space and aesthetically pleasing buildings, the campus had a very homey feel.

Our first event for the day was a lecture presented by a professor at the University, Kai Yao, about big data, how companies gather and use broad information and consumer patterns to market efficiently, the strength of e-commerce in China, and the smartphone supply chain. This lecture was very interesting and made me realize the magnitude of technological strength that this country possesses is quite large, larger than that of the United States. One of the points that was brought up was the fact that e-commerce in China was able to deliver on the same or next day in most places in the country. This is because of the population density of the country. Since more people live in an even more condensed area, it is easier to provide same or next day shipping without the insane costs for transportation and shipping that may be faced if the same standards made it to the United States, where less people live in a broader, more spaced out region. After the informative lecture, we were greeted by an American investment banker who gave us a sheet of paper which had eighteen terms on it. They were not related to each other, but he said that each of the terms had something to do with China. Some of these terms were Popeye the Sailor, Kiwi (fruit), Computer Tablet Display, hip-hop, etc. In short, the point of this exercise was to show how much of our daily lives is influenced by ancient China. Although the stories behind these terms that related them to ancient China were interesting, some of them sounded like a stretch. For example, he said that the term “hip-hop” was derived from the word “hip” which was coined back in the days where opium ran rampant in the country. The story is that construction workers in China used to lay down to work and then they would lean up from the hip to smoke their opium, and since they leaned up from the hip, they started calling it the “hip” thing to do, or the most popular thing since opium was so popular. He said because of this, the name hip-hop was derived from ancient China, which does not sound right; there is no relation between the genre of music and that story…

Moving on, after the two lectures we ventured across campus to their cafeteria where we were served another Chinese style lunch. As a picky eater, it is tough to eat these lunches I have been receiving but it forces me to try new things and adventure, as I should be, in China.

After lunch, we visited their library which was only three years young and it looked very beautiful on the inside and out. The bottom floor of their library was an photograph gallery, which I thought was unique for a university library.

Lastly, we played with a jump rope and hula hoops with some of the University students we met and the ones who were showing us around. We made a new friend in Richard, who is a junior at the university. He seemed very happy to talk to us and we learned a lot about the difference in lifestyle between a Chinese university student and an American university student.