Doing business at SEU

by Matt Dela Peña

BA-355: Doing Business in China was more a spontaneous endeavor for me than a well-thought-out decision. The moment I heard that there was going to be a contingent of students from my school going to China over the summer, I needed to be a part of it. Ultimately, I managed to convince my parents that this trip was highly pivotal for my major, and I was able to go.^^ So here's a broad description of what we did.

Zhouzhuang

by Matt Dela Peña

Cultural preservation seems to be the norm in China these days perhaps to serve as a reminder for how much of a terrible idea the Cultural Revolution really was (way to go, Mao). It seriously feels like every street corner in every Chinese city is adorned with either a temple, museum, or cultural center, just to ballyhoo to unknowing passersby the complete and utter badassery that is Chinese history.

But just when you think you've exceeded your fair share of culture for one day, you suddenly find yourself in a town that is in and of itself an entire cultural exhibit. Welcome to Zhouzhuang.

Suzhou, China's paradise on Earth

by Matt Dela Peña

Not a lot of Portlandians (myself included) know that the city of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province is one of the nine sister cities of Portland (as listed by the ever so factful Wikipedia). Heck, why would we? We are, after all, Americans. We quiver at the sight of a map.

Yet, Portlandians would be pleased to know that the city they share some sort of citified sorority with is actually the fastest growing industrial center in the fastest growing province in all of China. Talk about having connections.

Nanjing Massacre Museum

by Matt Dela Peña

Just in case the message wasn't clear...

Among all of the places we visited in our first week, none struck me more than The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders. For all intensive purposes, I prefer to call it the Nanjing Massacre Museum. But for a city whose wounds are still raw from a long and catastrophic war, it's understandable why a generic, three-letter name simply does not suffice.

Nanjing City Wall

by Matt Dela Peña

In order to consolidate his authority shortly after the proclamation of the Great Ming Dynasty (大明), in 1368, the Hongwu Emperor transferred the imperial capital to the mountainous region of Nanjing (南: "south", 京: "capital") and commissioned what would 600 years later be one of the best preserved city walls ever built.

Chinese college life

by Matt Dela Peña

东南大学

Last Friday, Southeast University threw us a welcome banquet! We were pretty stoked since it was the first meal we would be having outside of the canteen which, by that point, some of us were already dreading. Interestingly, the university also assigned a handful of their own students to attend the dinner in an attempt to facilitate an interaction between us and our direct Chinese counterparts, something I personally was looking forward to when I decided to take this course.

China: Shocks of culture

by Matt Dela Peña

I call myself a 'wanderer-in-training' simply because I really haven't been to that many places throughout the world. I want to be a certified wanderer, but I haven't had the means or drive to do it. And although I was born in the Philippines and lived in different parts of the West Coast, I can't really say that I've experienced what you would call a real "culture shock". That is, until I went to China.