Today was our first day of company visits! To be honest I didn’t really know what to expect going into the sight visits but I can assure you that any expectation I might’ve I had was blown away. Visiting Huawei was unlike anything I have ever seen before. I felt like I was walking in some crazy Sci-Fi movie 1000 years into the future. After first entering the building there was a huge chandelier and red carpet to welcome us, it was beautiful. Then, we were immediately handed ear pieces to put on so we could listen to the presentation as we walked around. Learning about the advancements that Huawei is making was super interesting! They are currently developing the first 5G network which will be huge for the future of all technology. It is known to be about ten times faster than the current 4G network and it will continue to help with the development of driverless cars, which I find absolutely insane! Huawei is also creating a new technology for cars that can detect when drivers may become tired or even fall asleep and the vehicle will automatically go into self driving mode. Additionally, they are working on implementing a way to recognize how many cars there are in the road and how long the traffic lights should stay green for in order to reduce the congestion of traffic. I really don’t have the words to describe how incredible these advancements are but I am so thankful that I got to witness some of it today. Following the tour we sat down and listened to a presentation about the company as a whole. Huawei is currently banned from many western countries, including the United States, however, after today, I’m honestly so tempted to get one of their smartphones. Despite the fact that they are banned in the U.S. they still have multiple locations and are headquartered in Plano Texas. They are a privately owned company but Huawei employees can purchase shares and earn a decent amount of money from them as part of their salary. Throughout the presentation we were given some coffee and yummy treats – the food was displayed perfectly! I learned so much about the smartphone industry at Huawei which was so interesting, although I would say my most memorable takeaway from the Huawei visit was absolutely the bathrooms. They had automatic toilet lids that would open when you walk in, heated toilet seats, and gold plated sinks. It was hands down the most amazing bathroom I’ve ever witnessed.
After the tour at Huawei, we went to the mall and had a very delicious lunch! There were many dishes served on a lazy susan, similar to how it’s been all week, the food here never disappoints!
Following lunch we went on to visit the second company of the day; VipKid, which was founded just five years ago! VipKid is working to promote a high quality online education system to connect Chinese student to English teachers in America. It was super cool to learn about how quickly the company has expanded over the last few years and get some insight as to where they are going in the future.
For diner tonight we just ate at the hotel, Dr. Li ordered us around 300 dumplings, they were so good! We ate every single one.. I love dumplings! After dinner we took the subway and explored the Olympic park which hosted the summer games in 2008 and will soon host the winter games in 2022! It was incredible to walk around and see all of these incredible structures where the world’s top athletes competed.
Today was a very interesting, informative and unexpected day! I enjoyed every second of it.