Dr. Wei Chen, assistant professor in the College of Business, accompanied several students from UMW to China this summer for a two-month internship and travel program as part of an Environment of International Business Seminar course. College of Business students Maddie Carinci and Eileen Settlemyer have shared some of their memories from their trip below.
Photo credit: Maddie Carinci
Maddie Carinci
During my two-month study abroad program in China I interned for a company called Talent Point Asia. Talent Point is a headhunting company. Headhunting provides employment-recruiting services to firms who hire them. Once hired by the firm it is the headhunters’ job to find individuals who meet the specific job requirements put out by the firm. During my internship I was able to learn how to how to make cold calls which were a little intimidating at first but once you get the hang of it, it’s really not that hard. I also researched and got contact information from websites on companies that Talent Point could potentially do business with. The Chinese work place is very similar to that in America, maybe a little more laid back (a lot of my coworkers would take a quick nap after lunch) but for the most part they were very much alike in the way they are run.
We only worked Monday thru Thursday so if we wanted to travel we did not have to take much time off of work to do so. We did get to travel around a lot which was nice since I’m not sure when I will be back in China next. A few of my favorite places we went were The Yellow Mountains, Macau and Suzhou. They are all three very different from each other.
The Yellow Mountains were about six hours away from Shanghai by bus. We hiked up and down thousands of stairs on our three-day trek. The views were amazing; we even got to see a sunrise and sunset while we were there (it is very rare to be able to see both). We were all exhausted by the end of the trip but it was definitely worth climbing up the mountains to see just how amazing the views were.
Macau is another country that we went to which is about two hours away by plane and was originally a Portuguese colony. Two other girls from UMW and I went during one of our last weekend’s in China. Macau is known for casinos and gambling, it is the world’s biggest gambling center! Many of the same casinos there are in Las Vegas such as The MGM Grand, The Venetian and Hard Rock Café. The city itself is very old with many beautiful, historic ruins and churches. One of my favorite places was the Senado Square; the buildings were painted in all different colors with beautiful black and white designs on the cobblestone ground.
Suzhou was an overnight trip we had with everyone from UMW who was in China. Two of my favorite places we visited in Suzhou were the Hanshan (Cold Mountain) Temple and Tiger Hill (the leaning tower of China) where we took a nice little boat ride on the river. Interesting fact we learned: The Chinese government does not let tourists stay in some of the same hotels the Chinese people can stay in because they are not “nice” enough for tourists.
Although there are major differences in our cultures, this trip helped me realize that there are just as many similar things about our cultures as well. It is hard to summarize my total experience of China into just a few short paragraphs, but I absolutely loved working and living in Shanghai for the past two months and I hope to be able to go back and visit this wonderful city again in the future!
Eileen Settlemyer
One of my most immersive experiences in China was also probably my most frightening. We were in Huangshan (or Yellow Mountains) for the weekend, and our first day hiking was dark and rainy. First, hiking in China is very different from hiking in the U.S.- instead of trails, there are hundreds and thousands of stairs winding up and down the mountains. On the upside, you can climb much higher into these incredible mountains, but on the downside, it was like being on a slippery Stairmaster for two days straight. It was both the most beautiful place I went to in China, and the most taxing; my legs still ache a little whenever I see a lot of stairs. Anyways, we were coming down one mountain peak and stopped at a landing with two stairways going down, and through the dense mist, one of the stand-alone rock spires for which Huangshan is famous was visible over the edge of our platform. I stopped to take a picture of it, but the
rest of the group continued going down- only, I didn’t see which stairway they took. My local phone was out of minutes, and I hadn’t expected there to be cell service in the mountains anyways (wrong- apparently all Chinese tourist spots have cell service, no matter how remote), so I was stuck on this mountain with no idea which way my group went. A group of Chinese tourists came by shortly after, and thankfully, I knew enough Chinese to ask to borrow a phone from one of them; they were happy to help. I called Dr. Chen, but none of them remembered where they lost me (some time had passed before I was able to call). I tried to explain what the two different paths looked like, but they were so similar that it was hard to tell. I ended up taking the wrong one. They had said they would stop and wait, so I rushed down the steps, but when I didn’t catch up after a few minutes, I started to worry that I’d gone the wrong way. I caught up to another group of Chinese tourists and borrowed another phone, but again, descriptions of the same mountain from different sides are hard to tell apart. This happened once more before we realized that I wasn’t going the same way as everyone else, and by then I’d gone down so far that going back up was out of the question. As it turned out, both paths ended up at the same place anyways. I realized later that it was a decent metaphor for life; you may be scared that you’re going down the wrong path to accomplish your goals, but there is never just one way to achieve anything, so just keep moving forward.
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