Today started with a trip to Motorola’s operations in China, and it was our first day in business professional. It also happened to be our first day of 34°C (about 93°F) weather. So, it was quite a scorcher!
Once we got to Motorola, the structure of our visit was a little different. It started off with a short presentation on Motorola China by Dr. Ching Chuang, the director of Motorola’s R&D institute in China. After that, we saw an interesting panel on working for multinational companies, which definitely applies to me and my job this summer in South Africa. After this panel we participated in a case study having to do with communication across departments, nations, and cultures. It was neat to work with engineers and CS majors to come up with some solid recommendations for the communication problem in the case. After all of the presentations we got feedback from the Motorola employees on our ideas supplemented with additional ones based on their experiences with multinationals. The team noted (and I agree) that the presentation was a lot more student-oriented than the other ones we’ve been to so far, and that could be because the Motorola professionals are used to speaking for Chinese students with less exposure to corporate settings.
Lunch was really good (as usual) typical Chinese food. Afterwards we headed to BP China where a PR representative talked to us about BP’s operations both in China and globally. I found it interesting that he very directly addressed the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, especially since it doesn’t directly affect BP in China. On the whole, he was extremely animated and kept us engaged the whole time. He had a really interesting backstory that included part of the “reeducation” from the cultural revolution, and he got his foot in the door by studying Spanish at a Chinese university and learning English on his own. Just the ability and willingness to share this with us was really cool, in my opinion. It definitely made him seem more approachable and added to the great presentation we experience under his watch.
For dinner we had an authentic and traditional dish, Peking Duck. There is a very particular way to eat it that includes really this pancakes and cucumbers, but it is definitely for good reason – it was excellent! They also present the entire duck as a sign of sophistication/exoticness. We sat at table with representatives from Motorola, and we had a really nice chat about life after college in the U.S. versus China (specifically with regards to the job market) and it sounds like prospects are relatively similar for business majors in both.
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