After seeing Rockwell Automation and visiting the Ford Plant, i grew a better understanding on what working in China is like. Seeing the vast amount of people in the Ford plant, assigned to do one job every day astonished me. Also, both places kept everything very clean. Thought visiting these sites, i started to think more and more about potentially working in china. Then after visiting the Exxon mobile site, and talking to Xinli’s past student that now works there, i received a lot of inside knowledge on what Chinas like to live and work there. He mentioned the work transition is pretty simple, but the social and living situation is vastly different, and can be tedious at times.

On our free activity day, i went fishing with a couple of friends, and also walked around Huangshan, and tried to experience it on our own, As for the fishing, we didn’t catch anything, but still had a good time doing it. As for walking around Huangshan, we traveled through neighborhoods, wandering aimlessly, but we saw a lot of cool things. We realized theres a “mini muslim street” on the 4th floor of the hotel, and we found a huge “time square” like area 5 minutes from our hotel. From the first impression of Huangshan, it seemed like a small city with not a lot to offer, but once we found the big shopping area, filled with malls, department stores, fancy apparel stores, we realized Huangshan is huge and has a lot to offer.

After Visiting Xinli’s Village and his mothers house, i grew a greater understanding on how people live outside the cities. I realized that these places are semi-self-sustained. When it comes to food they have some chickens and ducks roaming around, as well as vast amount of farmland. As for jobs, one thing i saw was silk worms, which I’m guessing people made silk garments with them. The food Xinli’s family prepared was also amazing, from the ducks neck to the shrimp.

The cuisine in China is a bit different than the US. This is greatly portrayed on Muslim street, where they have live scorpions on skewers, skinned lizards, live snakes, and a lot more interesting and weird animals on sticks. Now this isn’t traditional Chinese food per say, but it curtailing is a strange thing to come by, and eat. I tried the fried seahorse, expecting it too taste like a fish, except it tasted like cardboard, and was hander than rock. Some of the dinners we’ve already have eating, also have some weird aspects to them. Im guessing Chinese people like to eat fat because the meats are very fatty. Also duck is a big thing here, from ducks neck to peking duck.

Tienamin Square is a lot larger than i expected it to be. I believed it to be 10-20 acres large, but i found out its over 100 acres big. This is also the first place i realized that some of the locals in China have never seen foreigners before, so they were amazed when they saw a group of 40 foreigners, taking pictures and videos of us every chance they got. The forbidden city is one of the largest structures I’ve ever seen. Walking through it, after every square, i was thinking the whole time “there cant possibly be more.” To my amazement it kept on going, I learned that the Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming dynasty to the end of the Qing dynasty. I also learned that it is the center of Beijing, and the city grows outward.