Today was our second day in shanghai and we had two company visits starting with the American Chamber of Commerce also known as Amcham. We met Chris and Daniel who worked for Amcham and PNC. Together they gave a very interesting presentation about American business in China. We learned a lot about the economic growth over the past forty years and how that has started to slow down leading to uncertainty for the future. We also learned a few things about life in China such as the difficult process to get a license plate. To get one you have to enter an auction each month with an entry fee of 200 rmb and only a 4% chance of winning. They also talked about the lack of credit card usage in China due to them not having the same benefits they do in America such as frequent flyer miles or other types of discounts. It was one of the only companies that kept my undivided attention the entire time because of how knowledgeable they were. After leaving Amcham we went to a restaurant for lunch before our next company visit. It was a pretty normal lunch besides the bowl of slimy squid.
In the afternoon we went to our first engineering company, Horiba. Horiba has been in business for two hundred years and their technologies are focused in five industries, automotive test systems, process & environmental, medical diagnostic, semiconductor, and scientific. Some of their most important products are blood cell counters and blood glucose analyzer which means a lot of their customers are hospitals. When we arrived at Horiba, we had a presentation and a Q&A. One of the presenters who worked in the automotive part of the company worked at Carnegie Melon prior to Horiba. They produce over one thousand products in their five market segments, and they have impressive market shares in each one. Horiba’s first products were their pH meter emission measurement systems. The presentation was interesting, but the tour of the company was the coolest part of our visit. Most of the things we saw and learned about were new to me because I am not an engineering student. We got to see their offices and a lot of their products being built. They also showed us a clean room where all of the people working inside had to wear bunny suits.
Tonight, we were on our own for dinner so some of the girls and I decided to get Mexican food to switch things up a little bit. I think we are all starting to miss food from home. We ordered tons of food and it was all amazing. It’s kind of weird that some of the best Mexican food I have had was in China of all places. And the waiters spoke English too so that made our lives a lot easier. Today was a long workday but, so far, I am absolutely loving Shanghai.
