An enigma that is China

Dear loved ones back home (That's my patented greetings!!)
Its been precisely a month since I arrived in HK. A lot has been going on since then. The classes are finally heating up.There is a lot of presentation and studies to catch up with. There is a lot of group work which is part of any MBA Dynamics. Honestly it is not as busy as it sounds !! There is still time to play badminton or go for swimming.There is enough time for some worthless conversation with room mates and of course time to mail all you dear people.
Hong Kong/China
For a lot of us, Chinese dynamics is actually an enigma ! many people are wonder struck by its recent successes considering its culture of nepotism, corruption and seclusion from the outside world (not that India lacks any of these characters!). Now don't expect me to unravel any of this for you, but it is true that it is arguably the most intriguing of societies. At the outset, they seem to have a strong sense of nationalism... one such discussion in the class on whether an Australian Iron ore company should increase the Iron ore price of exports to china considering that it has a short term demand that cant be met by any body else lead to a heated discussion on how other countries exploit china, the environment turned out to be a little vicious before the prof. wisely doused the fire. Some other interesting facts - In Shanghai, the women are the bread winners of the house. Men typically manage shops or do part time work. That is why there are no Shanghai men in our class all of them are Shanghai women !! China is culturally divided by the Yangtze river... People in the north of the river are traditional and conservative - Beijing for eg. People in the south are far more modern and entrepreneurial - Shanghai for eg. Even in our class they are grouped in to Shanghai ppl and Beijing Junta. Even the hostel rooms are carefully allocated so that Beijing folks get to stay in the same room. The dinner time for Chinese is 5: 30 -6:00 PM !! and when they see us having food at 11:00 PM they are shocked and flabbergasted !!
Eating out remains a huge problem as most of the restaurants are pure non vegetarian... this is another reason for a huge barrier as we cant sit together and have food. So that is a lost opportunity to communicate and know other ppl. This can be a little frustrating at times.
HKU MBA
I am in the middle of Accounting and Economics class. I am enjoying the classes immensely. The prof's have a lot of stories to tell and often get carried away from there main subject of discussion. Class room discussions are usually passionate. Unfortunately though just listening to classes wont help you pass the subject as the exams are strictly academic. When we questioned the profs, they were obviously annoyed, their Logic " If you just had to learn what the books say why don't you do a correspondence MBA " we cant argue with that Can we.
Though I have made some very good Chinese/American friends I still find myself herded with the Indian junta... That's probably my comfort zone, probably I prefer it that way! but nevertheless I am still trying. I have realized that my spoken English skills are not up to Intnl' standards. many intnl students have to hear me twice to understand me... Probably because our rate of speech is fast, I tend to mumble some words or use synonyms which are not comprehensible to others(for instance when I say " have you covered lesson 3, they wouldnt understand, because the right word is chapter 3. "!!!.There is a need to collect my thoughts and then organize it my head before I pronounce them, as you can see this can be a huge barrier for easy and free communication. I am still working on it though.
There are elections happening in the class. As expected chinese are not standing (I attribute that to there communist and closed culture). Again as expected the Italians and Americans have already filed nominations, so have some of the Indians. Election demographics are interesting though.... Chinese consider the Indians as aggressive people. They are usually uncomfortable with some of the Indians. They hate the guts of the Europeans and the cockiness of the Americans. But together Indians and Chinese constitute 50 % of the class are hence a big vote bank for the contenders, It will be interesting to see how they woo us in the coming weeks.


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