Jamie BettlesHey everyone,
my name is Lisa and I started an Internship with InternChina this week. I’m here with a group of 37 German students from “Hochscule Fresenius” in Germany, but we are all from different Campuses. InternChina offered us a special program, which is slightly different from any other. On the 17th of July until the 22nd of July we had a culture trip to Shanghai and Beijing. After that we flew to Qingdao where we firstly had 3 weeks University and the following 4 weeks we are going to have our internships at different companies.
In the last few weeks we constantly get asked which city we would recommend as the best: Shanghai or Beijing. Actually there is no answer! Both of them are special in their own way, you have to find it out for yourself!But I can report what we liked most about both of them: We arrived at the 17th of July in Shanghai; Jamie, Leo, Ben and Joyce from InternChina were picking us up from the airport. Everyone was tired but excited at the same time. After the check-in at the hotel we went to have our first Chinese roundtable dinner, and the idea of the roundtable is that you order different dishes for the table and everyone shares.
One of our highlights in Shanghai – except the fact that one of us had to buy panda shoes on a street market, because his were stolen – was the Pearl Tower. There was this huge platform around the tower build up in the sky with glass, so on one hand you can have a wide view all over Shanghai and on the other hand you can look right underneath yourself and see how damn high it is!
One thing I would definitely recommend is the boat trip. It was a nice way to travel and we got to see loads of nice buildings. Having time to relax and enjoy the wind blowing in our faces was just what we needed. The day passed us so quickly, that we didn’t even realize that it was time for dinner again. Because we just had 3 days in Shanghai everything had to be well organized; Intern China did a pretty good job on that. In the evenings we did activities like massage, acrobatic show or parties. Most impressing was the Acrobatic show; this is pretty unique in Shanghai. The acrobats showed Diablo, unicycle, summersault and different kinds of contorted movements.
Although it may have been very different from Shanghai, Beijing did not disappoint us in the slightest. As we all know, Beijing is more historical than Shanghai, so there were many tourists. First stop was the TiananMen Square, a huge square with 1000 tourists on it. It was extremely hot and I think we all came closer to the Chinese culture, especially with seeing Chinese guys lifting up their shirts and showing us their tummies. “This is a place which has been seen by every important Business man or politician!” That’s what our Business teacher told us later in Qingdao when we were talking about the Great Wall.
Sadly it was a rainy Day when we arrived there, but nevertheless we had a good time. A very special place in Beijing was the ‘Snack-street’ where some of us tried scorpion, snake and sea horse. As a special Chinese experience, some took part at tea tasting. They showed different types of tea and their conditioning. Afterwards we were allowed to try the taste of the tea. Even Marcel´s Birthday Party was traditionally Chinese. We started with street barbeque and ended up with a Birthday-Cake-fight. This night was our first real ‘jietou shaokao’ (街頭燒烤) and everyone enjoyed it.
Reconsidering the question from the beginning I can say we did a lot in these few days. Our program was tough, but manageable. We saw a lot, we ate a lot and there was still some time to check out some party locations.