AUT in China

A group of lucky AUT students have been given the rare opportunity to get a taste of China and go behind the doors of Huawei HQ and see what is involved in being the world’s biggest telecommunications technology retailer.

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Just a short post. 

Today we started class. 

We spent the morning introducing ourselves and learning about 5g and mobile networking. 

It was very full on.

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It’s Sunday today and we had another day of checking out Shenzhen. We spent most of the morning at the Museum. It was incredible. They have life-like scenes all over the place that do a great job of story-telling. 

We had indian for lunch then we went to a market. We wanted just a general tourist market, but for some reason our guide Peter took us to a childrens toy market. It was strange and we didn’t stay too long. 

Last night the Romanian group had hot pot. It’s where you get a pot of stock and add things to it, take it out and then eat it. All in front of you. We asked Peter for this tonight, and boy was it good. 

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Since it was granted a city status some 30 years ago, Shenzhen has quickly become one of the key cities in China to contribute to its economy. It is one of China’s major financial centre and home to one of the busiest ports in the world. 

From very modern roads to huge skyscrapers, you can easily mistake Shenzhen for a western city. Property prices range from 30,000 RMB to 100,000 RMB per square meter. Thats $6-20,000 NZD!! No wonder why so many Chinese migrants find Auckland housing so affordable.

This is possibly the greenest supercity we’ve had the chance to visit. Majority of the public transport buses are electric (also produced locally) and we’ve been told the adoption of electric cars is quickly rising.

Today we went to the Shenzhen markets in hopes to score some bargains. There is an abundance of souvenirs, handbags, electronics and watches. Having only been here for a week, I’ve realised bargaining is quickly becoming a second nature to me. 

Eating pizza for lunch was a real fine dining experience. Pizza hut here is nothing like what we have at home. Although a large pizza with stuffed cheese costed us 120RMB (approx $25), it was a lot tastier to the $5-$10 pizzas we’re used to back home.

Our tour guide had tickets to the mini China theme park and suggested we go there. The park contains mini replicas of the most famous Chinese architectures such as the great wall, temple of heaven and Tiananmen square. For obvious reasons, the experience doesn’t compare to visiting the actual attraction but it was cool nonetheless.

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We left our hotel in Beijing at 5am and headed to the airport. The security is so thorough- even just travelling domestically. Seb’s gear got scanned heaps, and we all had a very intense pat down.

We got to Shenzhen early afternoon and were greeted with torrential rain and lightening. We had no idea to expect this and all got drenched! Apparently it's supposed to rain for the rest of the week, so umbrellas may just be one of our first purchases here.

After checking in to our hotel we went to Huawei’s HQ where we will be having classes for the week. We learnt all about the company and its history. Next week we start with the networking and mobile labs. Yay!

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Even though we have a big lunch break we aren’t allowed to leave campus. That means we go exploring at night. On Tuesday night we went to the Olympic Stadium. It’s an incredible showstopper. An artwork of Chinese innovation. They have a massive screen made out of LED strings that spans the entire wall of the skyscraper sized stadium. It’s the largest screen I've seen in my life and illuminates the courtyard for miles. The Olympic pool is a water cube and has been turned into a theme park with crazy waterslides for families to enjoy.

The Olympic arena pool itself is massive. They have turned it into a conference arena. They are currently setting it up for a KPop show. In a pool! How cool is that.

Outside there are many people trying to sell stuff for money. It's clever though. Not like in India this stuff does some things and changes the world

We also went to Tiananmen square and the nearby markets. Michael ate scorpion at the markets. Just because yolo. He says it tasted like a decent potato chip. He said it was very nice, but we all thought he was crazy.

What amazes us is how the country works. Its similar to India in the way that people work on the street to sell food and vendors push you to buy cheap crap goods. But everything is so much more controlled. There are security checkpoints everywhere- it makes you feel safer. The cool part is that everything in china is broken down into high wall compounds with security. Nobody gets in or out of a university campus or CBD area without being checked. This makes it impossible for any sort of security problems. 

The people are very efficient for a place with just as much population as India. People move fast and efficiently. The subway makes a mockery of India's roads and the highways are less stuck than Auckland's. This in the biggest country on the earth. How crazy is that...

The subway is cool. We took a trip through the city with the train. The train goes so fast so get this to build some advertising they have lined the tunnels outside. The train with thousands of LCD screens which play ads. You travel so fast that they all blend into one and make an ad. Why don't they just put a single TV on each train huh? It's pretty nuts. But the subway is actually amazing. People just flood through. When one train goes another train comes. It's like a snake. People like off and then pile on again. It's like a factory. It's such fantastic ease to travel and best of all its all underground. 

Tomorrow morning we are heading to Shenzhen. We have to get up at 4am! Eeek.

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Over the past week we have been learning Mandarin, Chinese painting and calligraphy. It was an absolute treat! Our teachers Jin Min, Shi Feiyu and Leon were very nice and understanding with us, such as when we pronounced some words wrongly or held our paint brush the wrong way, they were patient and corrected us so we could learn properly.

Learning Chinese is hard. It’s very very complicated and even when you understand a phrase they speak so fast it is hard to understand. It’s also in different dialects. The classes are easy going, they are content heavy but are given enough time and break to absorb the knowledge provided. We get breaks every hour and lunch break between morning and afternoon classes. We play games in our breaks sometimes and even our teachers join us. We have music in our painting and calligraphy class and fun discussions about our likes and hobbies. Almost every class has had some video to help us understand the content better and to relax and get a break.

The campus food with massive variety is amazing and we have been trying out different food each day and treating ourselves with an ice cream every lunch break. Our tour guides : Lily and Jasmine have been taking us to a new restaurant every evening after class for dinner and of course we have our buffet breakfast in the morning in the hotel.

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Time for more food…

After the Forbidden City we went out for dinner and had another delicious meal. Our favorites this time were the dumplings, and these delicious deep fried custard sticks that you dip into condensed milk...!

When we got back to the hotel, we met up with the Romanian group and had a couple of beers with them and got to compare cultures a bit more. There are a lot more of them, and they are lots of fun. They told us they get free study in Romania, so we are going to bed a bit jealous.

Tomorrow we have our first day of class, and then we have an opening ceremony at Huawei’s HQ in Beijing where we have to do a performance and make a speech. Wish us luck!

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Flags and the Forbidden City... After lunch we drove back into Beijing and went to the Forbidden City.  We have learnt very quickly that most tourists in Beijing are actually Chinese people from other areas, and the city was no different. We couldn’t get over how many people there were, it was so busy! Our new guide Lilly had a flag so we could always find her; at first we found it funny that she would need that. Within 15 minutes, we were pleased she did! Even with the flag we were still getting lost. The Forbidden City is a series of buildings where the Emperors lived. You can go inside a couple of the buildings, but most of them are closed off with barriers that you stand behind to see into them. Most of them have amazing gold thrones inside....

The area is huge, it took us a couple of hours to see them all and we were rushing because we were running out of time too.

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Stepping and jumping our way up the Great Wall....

The wall is surrounded by beautiful green hills everywhere you look. It was also a great test of our fitness. We were expecting lots of steps, then a stretch of flat, then more steps, then more flat. Boy were we wrong! It was only steps. Sometimes they were at very high angles, sometimes a little bit less.

We were constantly having to stop to take a breather. The steps also varied from being one brick high, to four bricks high. That meant a lot of the time we were actually having to pull ourselves up rather than just walking. Every step was worth it though. The views were breathtaking!

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The Great Wall... The Great Wall really does live up to its name!

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Day 1 - Chopsticks After a couple of hours of meeting the Romanian and Japanese groups that are also part of this Huawei trip, we went to bed to rest up for our big day sightseeing.

Breakfast at our hotel is a mix between west and east. There are some sausages, eggs, and croissants, but most of the foods are traditional Chinese foods, like dumplings, noodles and fried rice. We fueled up for the day then hopped on our tour bus to go to the Great Wall. We went to the JuYongGuan Pass. It is about 50km out of Beijing.

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Day 1 - Chinese Food Time We had traditional Chinese food. Our favorite was sweet and sour pork. :) We also got to try traditional fried rice. It is nothing like at home, it is much simpler.  Before we ate though, we had a quick chopstick lesson, and realised we had been using them wrong our whole life!

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Day 1 - Planes, Trains and Automobiles

A bus had to take us to the plane; it was so full we were squashed like sardines for the short journey. On board our Air China flight we were surprised to learn that we weren’t allowed to use electronics on board, so we had to entertain ourselves by attempting to read Chinese magazines and talking to each other! We also experienced our first taste of Chinese cuisine, with chicken and pork with rice for lunch. On the side we had a delicious custard desert. We are quickly realising that custard is the dessert of choice here. It comes in all forms at all meals. No complaints from us!

We arrived into Beijing about 2pm, where we were again bused to the terminal. After going through customs we were met by our first guide of the trip-Chris. He works at Huawei here in Beijing. We began our drive to our hotel, which is about 40 minutes away from Bejing’s CBD. There was a lot of traffic but he kept us entertained with lots of facts about China. He told us cars cost about 1 million Yuan, which is just over 200k New Zealand dollars. We couldn’t get over the flash cars people have here. There are Audi’s, Mercedes and Volkswagen cars everywhere. We also got to see two Tesla Model S’s. He told us housing is very expensive, and usually parents have to buy apartments for their children. He also told us we were lucky to come here now, in autumn. He says it is known as the golden month because all the flowers are out and it is so warm and beautiful. He was right.  We were told to expect lots of pollution in Beijing, but we lucked out. We have been greeted with bright blue skies since we touched down. Everywhere we go, trees line the streets. It couldn’t have been more different to what the media portrays. Chris had amazing English. We only had one translation error. We asked where we could get suits made. But he thought we were asking for suitors- or girls. After a good laugh, he said there might be some girls around for us!

We finally arrived at our hotel, which is at one of the universities. We checked in, relaxed for an hour, then went and had dinner.

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Welcome to China... 

We touched down in Hong Kong early Saturday morning, with a two hour stop before we flew on to Beijing, where we are based for our first week. We had a quick breakfast at the airport, checked Facebook and Instagram for the final time and then headed to our terminal to catch our flight.

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Day 3, Music and Masks After dinner that evening, the opening ceremony began. We were welcomed by Huawei and then each country had someone from their embassy make a speech. Al Ross, who is NZ’s Counselor of Science and Innovation in Beijing spoke for us. Then Seb had to make a speech on behalf of us. He did great! After that we were treated to probably the most amazing meal of our lives. We had delicious Chinese dishes, wagu beef from Japan, and lamb from New Zealand, and we ate more dessert than anyone would probably recommend. As we ate we also had a performance from a traditional dancer. As he moved, he would jolt his head suddenly, and then a new mask would be on his face. It was incredible. It was a really late night though, so straight to bed for us. Tomorrow we have class all day. But, we have a two hour lunch break, so we are going to get an Uber and go to the Silk Street markets. The markets are home to some of the best bargains in China. We are hoping to get some tailored suits made, and buy lots of souvenirs. 

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Day 3, Huawei and the future of tech. Later that day, we left the hotel for Huawei in our suits about 4pm, and arrived about 5. We couldn’t get over the beauty of the building. Huge tall ceilings and marble everywhere. It was amazing and looked like something out of a movie.

We had some group photos then were taken through to a space to see some of the new tech Huawei is working on, like the P9 smartphone with two cameras and their smart watches. We then heard about key areas Huawei is focusing on. One of them is ensuring all customers have fast internet. 

We learnt that NZ actually has some of the fastest in the world and we are already much faster than Huawei’s benchmark. Another one of their focuses is to stop calls from having intermittent drop outs. That’s where you find yourself saying “hello, hello, can you hear me?”

That’s becoming a growing problem for all network providers because of the strain on the infrastructure with so many people wanting to be connected. Its third focus is connectivity and getting more people connected to the internet. 

They also talked to us about how internet will soon play an even bigger role in our homes and will work as a remote control of sorts. For example, we will be able to turn our heating on while we are driving home, switch lights on etc. 

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Day 3, AUT team visits Huawei Today we went to one of Huawei’s main buildings in Beijing for the opening ceremony for the ‘Seeds of the Future’ programme. We have culture lessons and tourist attractions this week, and then next week we go to Huawei HQ in Shenzhen and have classes taught by some of their top experts. 

There are two other countries on this programme at the moment, Romania and Japan. We learnt tonight that 10-thousand students from 35 countries have done the programme so far, and lots have scored jobs at Huawei!