August | 2015 | SIBC International Internships

*Sorry for the delay of the blogs due to the internet blockage in China.

7 June 2015

Hi, everyone! My name is Dongyi Xia and I’m from Hangzhou, China. I’m going to be a sophomore and I am a Business (undecided) and History double-major. This summer, I got the internship opportunity at the Notre Dame Asia office in Beijing, China. This internship was sponsored by SIBC. Although I am from China, my hometown Hangzhou is located at the Southeast coast of China, while Beijing is at the north. The differences between the northern and southern China are great, and I was excited to have the chance to lived and worked for six weeks at the capital and to experience a different culture.

My partner and I were housed in a guest house of PBCSF, Tshinghua University. Our office in Zhongguancun was close to our housing, so we were not too worried about commuting. For the first two weeks of work, we focused on the Business and Culture Program (BCG) which were going to spend two weeks in Beijing. We updated a booklet for the students who were in this program. The booklet was meant to make the students’ lives easier and get to know Beijing better- it contained comprehensive information about transportation, nearby restaurants, cultural sites in Beijing etc.

We also planned a cultural scavenger hunt for the group of students! My partner and I got the chance to visit all the famous places in Beijing: the Summer Palace, the Old Summer Palace, the Olympic Park and the campus of Tshinghua University. We designed questions afterwards for the BCG students to find out the answers. My personal favorite is the Old Summer Palace. It was stunning in my eyes.

The Old Summer Palace

The Bird’s Nest

Candy Art by street artist (It is a pig, not a scorpion like my partner thought.)

Peking duck- Best food ever!

28 June 2015

It’s already the end of my fifth week of internship. Last three weeks had been busy but fun. On June 7^th morning, we went to the train station and picked up the BCG group. During our third and fourth week of internship, the BCG group was in Beijing and they also lived at the guesthouse of PBCSF. Therefore, one job for me and my partner was to be the RAs of the students. Since the group arrived, our work was divided between office work (marketing materials, translation of “What Would You Fight For” series etc) and accompanying the students on their field trips. My partner and I split the field trips: she went to sightseeing with the students while I went to company visits.

For the company visits, we had been to several interesting companies: a real estate company named Savills, the US Embassy, newspaper agents like Caixin Media and Reuters. During the visits, students got to see the office space and hear from speakers of the company. Students got to know more about different industries and how business operated in China.

On the fifth week, right after the BCG group left Beijing, we were busy moving the office. The new office was in Chaoyang District and was near to the US embassy. The new office was more spacious but also further from where we lived. Now we’re spending two hours on subway commuting everyday, which is actually a quite interesting experience.

Left to right: my partner Teresa, our supervisor Miranda, and me

Visit to Reuters

Talk by the company speaker

12 July 2015

How time flies! It’s already the end of the internship. The last week has been super busy. During the last week of office we were working on new projects. I was mostly working on an academic trip to Hangzhou (my hometown!) and Shanghai for the Chinese Language Summer Program. We made a booklet containing the background information of the sites and companies they are going to visit.

At the end of the very last week came the fun part: I was going to go to Hangzhou and Shanghai with the group! We took an overnight train to Hangzhou. When we were there we visited a company named Westfield, whose CEO actually sponsored this academic trip. It was a company focusing on outdoor equipments. We got to visit the factory which was really cool. After that the group had dinner at one of the most famous restaurants in Hangzhou- Louwailou, which located right next to the famous West Lake.

The next morning we took a high-speed train to Shanghai and visited the illy Caffee company that day. The students got to enjoy the freshly made coffee and actually learned how to make coffee themselves. Later that night, the group joined the annual alumni picnic in Shanghai. The second day in Shanghai was scheduled for sightseeing: the Yu Gardern, the Yufo Temple and the Shanghai Museum. All of us were very impressed by the beauty of the ancient garden.

On my train back home, I could not help but wonder how fast the past six weeks went by. Reflecting back on my experience, I found it extremely rewarding: I’ve learned a great deal about how to collect information and compile marketing materials. I also improved on my problem-solving skill and learned to solve problems that may come up unexpectedly. Other than that, I got to really explore Beijing: visit the cultural sites, commute like a lot of people in Beijing do and try out different kinds of food there. It really had been a great summer. Thank you SIBC for this amazing opportunity!

illy Caffee visit

Yu Garden

Alumni Picnic in Shanghai

It has been a week since my Ecuador trip ended, and I cannot believe how quickly the 12 days passed. At the end of the trip, my group recapped and reflected on the journey. During this meeting, we were asked to compare our expectations prior to the trip with our realizations during the trip.

At this moment, I realized I did not actually have expectations prior to my arrival. My expectations only started once I was walking to my host family’s house in Cuenca.

When I was walking back, my host mom described the streets and store solely in Spanish. I kept nodding as she spoke to pretend I was understanding.. In this moment, I felt fear and disappointment creep in. The fear developed due to my inability to comprehend the information she was telling me, but the feeling of disappointment was worse as I felt guilty for not using the resources provided in my past to develop fluency in Spanish. When dinner was served and the conversation started to flow, my host family quickly realized my Spanish was quite rudimentary. Nonetheless, they showed no frustration with me as I struggled to responded to questions and asked them to repeat themselves. I was confused how the family could honest appreciate my effort and have no frustration with my ability. By the time I left Cuenca, my Spanish had improved tremendously, and I could understand about 50% of the conversation.
I was finally able to understand my host family’s genuine appreciation for my feeble effort to speak Spanish the day after we arrived in Saraguro. On this night, we visited my host mom’s brother and his family. When I walked in the front door, my host mom’s sister-in-law greeted me in English. Her pronunciation of hello sounded like “Hi low,” but I did not care about her mispronunciation. Over dinner, she went on to tell me that she was being taught English for her job, and she had been working on learning the language for about a year. When I saw the genuine appreciation she had for the help I provided with her pronunciation, I realized how my first host family showed no frustration as I struggled speak in the first night of conversation. A genuine interest and effort to accept a foreign culture is greatly appreciated even when the effort is inaccurate. The night of speaking English around the table ended with the entire family joining in as they tried to pronounce the word “car” while eating cuy (guinea pig). There was a chorus of unique pronunciations from the family members that left everyone laughing for minutes in mutual appreciation for the opportunity my host family and myself provided for each other to join in our respective cultures.