Alex in China

We’ve got internships! I’ve been meaning to write up a post about this since we got back from Xi’an but somehow I always mange to get distracted by…well, by China.

But yes, I have been working these last two weeks. Where? Well, let me answer that question with the name of a place that I am not working at.

Hisense.

As you may (or may not, if you didn’t read the "about me" section) know, my original plan upon coming to China was to be working for a company called Hisense. Hisense is considered by many to be the second biggest electronic distributor in China. Hisense has plans to go abroad and needs to start preparing it’s employees for the American market.

-And that was where I was supposed to come in-

My job, along with four others, was to take in groups of employees on a weekly basis and train them in American business English. We were pretty prepared and excited for the challenge, but unfortunately things did not go to plan. Upon arriving at Hisense we immediately had a meeting with our Director to discuss what exactly we would be doing at Hisense.

But wait! Didn’t Hisense already tell us what we would be doing before we left for China? Apparently not!

During the meeting we were split up from each other and assigned different departments to work for. I managed to get into import/exports while the others ended up in areas such as "legal", "domestic market", and "customer relations". At this point I wasn’t too concerned with the changes since "import/export" had sounded pretty interesting to me. I started to daydream about making connections and heading up big deals as I was walked to my department. Upon arriving, however, I was sorely disappointed to discover this wasn’t what they had in mind.

I was put in a small empty cubicle where I sat for several hours with nothing to do. In between intense sessions of counting roof tiles and thinking of words that rhymed with Alex (there aren’t many) I was only given one assignment. One of my superiors, James, came to me and told me he needed me to explain something about American culture. I perked up at hearing this and prepared myself for a series of intense cultural questions.

"What percent is used to decide how many replacement parts of a product should be stored in warehouses…in America?"

….really?

I told James I had no clue but he wouldn’t take no for an answer and pointed out that I was a finance major which meant I should know this stuff. I quickly countered that argument by explaining that I had just entered upper level finance and hadn’t "studied that subject yet". In the end we compromised and I said I’d bring my laptop the next day and google it for him.After that I went back to my cubicle, thought about what I wanted for dinner (for an hour), and called it a day.

Upon returning to the University I was relieved to hear that I wasn’t the only Hisense person who had had a less than thrilling day. We were all disappointed at our new positions as "office interns" and decided as a group that we would not be going back to work tomorrow…it was an American labor strike! (sorta…not really)

*This is the part of the story where things get better and Texas A&M saves the day*

After relating all our stories and concerns to Tio and Carmen Suen (who flew up for the week just in case something like this happened) they were extremely understanding and immediately got to work. Within twelve hours the duo had called all their Chinese connections, pulled some favors, and managed to come up with a list of new interships for all the Hisense people. A few hours after finding out my new internship I found myself in a taxi, on my way to start work at the Qingdao Olympics call center!

I can’t even begin to explain how amazing this internship is. First off, I never thought I’d find myself involved with the Olympics so I’m pretty grateful for the chance. Second off, the call center is much better than any internship with Hisense would have been. Aaron, Trey and I are in charge of training and testing call center volunteers on how to handle Americans and other English speaking nations. The call center has been set up as a place where all the incoming foreigners can call to have their answers questioned about the games, the city, or just about China. There are volunteers who speak over eight different languages and starting this week they are on call 24 hours a day. We’ve made lots of friends so far and really enjoy working with all the people. Whenever there isn’t much to do, our boss (Sunny) sets up meetings for us with influential people around the city so that we can build connections in China.

We’ve also been given a second job of sorts while we’re in China. The three of us are putting together promo material for the Asia Pacific Institute to use for advertising the trip next year. There wasn’t really much material out this last year so we’re hoping the stuff we come up with can be used to expand the trip over the next few years. Right now I’m working on a promo video and it’s coming along quite nicely. I’ll make sure to post it when it’s done.

As much as I enjoyed flying and traveling all around China, I must admit it’s nice to be settled into one location now. The weather has been getting warmer lately we’ve had a lot of time to explore and plan our own mini adventures (like playing Chinese hackysack in the middle of the city!…pic below)
-a