beijing blog 6 months in asia

So how was Shanghai? It was a blast! Of course three and a half days was way too short to really discover the city, but still. It all started at saturday night with a 14 hours train trip. We (Leon and I) had booked the “hard sleepers” - which is actually much more comfortable than it sounds - and as the lights in the train were turned off at 10:00 pm already, we ended up sleeping most of the trip (almost 12 hours)! So we arrived in shanghai very relaxed, but this feeling should be wiped away emediately after hopping on to the bus towards the house of David (an AIESECer from Shanghai, who was kind enough to host us for the time there). I thought that driving bus in Beijing is already quite an experience: One can regularly wittness that about twice as many people as one would expect can actually fit on a bus (it’s just a matter of how hard the people still wanting to get inside can push to make their way). I also knew from Beijing that traffic in China is organised in a rather darvinistic manner - survival of the fittest. The bigger your vehicle, the bigger your right of way - leaving pedestrians at the very end of the food chain. I am really surprised, that I havent seen anyone getting killed yet. Especially after those busrides in Shanghai! Trucks, cars, motorcycles, cycles, pedestrians fly by within less than an arms reach, during constant lane changes, slaloms through construction sites and repeating slams on the brake. Other vehicles will honk in desperation while the bus is about to squeeze them and pedestrians will jump asside in the last second!
As I spent a lot of time in the bus during the stay, I had no choice but to get used to this. But on the busrides I also got the chance to see quite a bit of the city, which basically is one major construction site. New builings are evolving from the ground almost everywhere and in the city center fancy skyscrapers compete in the race to the sky. This skyline might be familiar to some of you (thx to Nils):

Overall the city seems really modern and quite western, with huge shopping malls along long shopping streets. I couldn’t resist visiting the famous fake market where heaps of fake clothes wait to be sold to hordes of tourists. One of the main attractions is Yu garden, a district with only traditional chinese style buildings (of which most are tourist shops). It is quite a nice place though for picking up some traditional food (we had food at a very famous dumpling place, where you have to line up to get in) and definately for souveniers!
The foto shows one of the entrances to Yu garden:

Away from the buzzing main streets and tourist areas, Shanghai can also be quite idyllic. In a small park in the middle of a residential area I could wittness people hanging out and chilling in the sun while listening to the chanting of birds.

If you look closely, you will be able to see the birds cages in the trees!

I really enjoyed staying at David’s home, as a little insight of Chinese family life, but also treasuring the comfort of taking nice hot showers and using their western style toilet Appart from traveling on the bus, shopping and sight seeing we spent most of the time on meetings with local AIESECers (and one company meeting with Alcatel). I also met up with Nils, an old friend of mine from Germany who currently studies in Shanghai and together we invited all the Shanghai people for a great cultural experience: trying some real German beer

I really had a great time, and I think I will definately have to visit Shanghai again! But for this time we had to say goodbye before hoping in to the transrapid and leaving Shanghai behind us at a speed of more than 400 km/h.

As already mentioned, I am working here a so called CEEDer for AIESEC. So what does that actually mean? CEED is one of those acronyms within AIESEC that noone really knows the original meaning of anymore. But basically what it means is to work fulltime in a foreign AIESEC Committee, most of the times without any pay, but free accomodation. I am working with the so called member committee (MC), which coordinates all the AIESEC work in the country. For now there are 4 local committees (LCs) in Beijing (+ 1 extension) and 1 in Shanghai (+ 1 extension) and extensions to other cities in planning. The MC consists of two fulltime positions and originally 6 parttime positions. One of the parttime people - the responsible for outgoing exchange (OGX) - has quit though, and I am kind of filling his position now. Apparantly the guy hadn’t done much work before quitting anyway, thats why there is lots to catch up and why I never run out of work. But before I get into more details I want to give you some impression of our office life:

From left to right you see Alice (will be responsible for finance next year), Flic (1st flatmate: fulltime responsible for people developement from Australia), Leon (will be president next year and is already in the office almost every day), Philly (partime responsible for IS), Chris (2nd flatmate: she is fulltime president and will be member of AIESEC International next year), the other Ralph (3rd flatmate: from Australia, he is CEEDer just like me, but for external relations; because of him it was decided that I shall have the nickname “Delfy”).
The Office is not allways that busy, as the parttime people hardly show up and usually work from home. So most of the time it’s just the people that live here and Leon. This week actually has been rather quiet, because Chris and Flic are away for a conference and will come back beginning of next month.

My responsibility is mostly to coordinate the work of the LCs in the area of OGX. This includes tasks like provide trainings and documentation, define and supervise processes, organise regional events and communicate with other countries. When I first got here I joined all the info sessions at the different universities. As AIESEC is rather popular it can happen that far more than a hundred people attend such events:

Another thing happening roughly at the same time was LC election. Newly elected executive board members are welcomed to their new position the same way as in Germany:

Right now LCs are thorouly selecting new members and soon we will have a student review board(SRB) with those that want to go abroad. We expect roughly 100 applicants in Beijing alone, and it will be a big event, as all these students shall be reviewed within two days. Actually I just had a meeting with some people from the different LCs to discuss how we will organize this. Other things I am working on at the moment include setting up a new student contract, inquire the demand for Chinese trainees from other countries, cleanup the matching database (which is in really bad condition), prepare for the SRB and prepare for the conference at the beginning of april. On saturday we will have a full day of LC simulation with most of the new members and at night I be leaving to Shanghai Me an Leon are going to meet up with the LCs there and we will also have a meeting with Alcatel who wants to take about 10 Chinese Trainees. I am really looking forward to that and I hope to be able to upload some nice pictures next wednesday!

Jippie, after inumarable trials, I finally managed to upload some of my pictures - I already added one to the last post
After your encouraging comments - thanx! - I can’t wait to show you more, so I’ll start right away with some impressions of my new home:

I live in a 16 storie building not far from the third highway ring of beijing (green arrow).

Our flat is on the 14th floor (see orange arrow) in a little side street.

Fortunately our building has an elevator - even with its own elevator operator, who just sits in the elevator and presses the buttons 6 hours a day (3 shifts). The bad thing about this is, that after 12 pm the elevator cannot be used anymore and whenever you come home late you have to climb the stairs. As some of the lights in the stairway don’t work, this usually turns out to be quite an adventure

I am sharing the flat with three people - so there is four of us. The problem is: the flat has only three rooms. That means one room is shared by two. Lucky enough I dont have to share “my” room with anyone else - at night at least - because throughout the day it actually serves as the office. Basically this means that I am sleeping in the office, but it also means that I am never late for work So take a look at the office/my room, where most of my life takes places:

As you can imagine, it was not very easy to adjust from my 23sqm room at home to just 2sqm of private space. Not less challanging is our bathroom. Ok, the shower is not exactly luxurious, but it’s alright if you don’t shower too long (cause the water doesn’t run off). I must say though, that I really miss western toilets, but I guess you can get used to almost everything (be prepared for my thighs having probably twice the sice by the time I come back). You get the picture …

The thing that I am struggeling the most with though at the moment is the temperature. Spring is yet to come and untill now there was only few days above 10° C but steady temperatures below freezing point at night. Good thing, that we have a central heating system. If only it wouldn’t be controlled by the government, cause they decided to switch it off for this year at the beginning of last week. As I couldn’t really feel it was on before that either, it doesn’t really make a big difference. I just continue to wear multiple layers of clothes and sometimes I sit in the office with my jacket on. As right now, for example. All this may sound rather depressing to you, and I have to admit that especially at night I would sometimes rather be in my own, warm and comfortable bed (my bed here doesn’t even have a real matrace).
But then again I would be missing out so much!
Stay tuned to see what I mean …