Today we visited the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing. The campus was beautiful, it held much more green space than any other university Iʼve seen. We started the visit off with a short lecture from a professor about big data and data analytics. We learned about the many ways data is collected and used. The most memorable example was singles day, a chinese celebration of young single people that includes online retailers offering steep discounts on their products. After singles day, customers will have spent around thirty billion dollars on over 1 billion orders, an impossible feat without data analytics. Next an American professor who lived in China for 20 years and teaches at the university gave us a list of American cultural staples that could actually trace their origin back to China. Some of the more notable examples were kiwi’s, Kanye West, and skiing. After the lectures we went to the school cafeteria, which was many times better than Market at Pitt. We ate an excellent lunch where I was introduced to several new foods like congealed pigs blood and the 1,000 year old egg, both of which tasted much better than I expected. We taught the Chinese students who ate with us some American slang and they taught us a few words as well. Next we went to their newly built library which was gorgeous and also very high tech, the designers seemed to really push how far they could go with the Internet of Things. Students could reserve any available room in the building and get directions at touch screen terminals located at the front of the library. There was a lot of student art on display, we spent twenty minutes just looking at a photography exhibit on the fourth floor. While in the library we spoke with Richard, a university student who spoke English well, about universities in China compared to universities in America. According to Richard, school is much more competitive in China because of the huge population so students have to try very hard to make it anywhere after high school. Then we walked outside to do a few activities like jumping rope and transferring a hula hoop between people while holding hands, if you broke hands you lost the game. My group finished first so we received a championship certification from the university, and the group that came in last had to sing Old Town Road for the rest of the group to hear. The biggest difference I noticed between CUFE and Pitt was how spacious it seemed. Even though both school are located in cities you would never be able to tell from CUFE’s campus. The area was surrounded by greenery that was clearly well maintained and everything seemed quiet. There were several outdoor basketball and tennis courts across from a large playing field, and in the distance we could even see a ropes course! The campus also seemed massive considering it is about a quarter of the size of Pitt.