Profile: Rick Vranish
LINC Hong Kong Blog
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| Rick Vranish, Business Administration |
Blog 5
April 3, 2009 (Friday), Los Angeles
It's been almost two weeks since we left Beijing. My preconceptions about China have been completely erased, and I feel like I have a much better perspective on business in China and what it's like to work in an international business. We have all been exchanging e-mails with the students from Tsinghua University and I put together a Facebook group so we can all stay in touch. Going through all the pictures that everyone took on our trip makes me wish we had stayed longer. Hopefully I will be able to return there soon.
I want to thank USC, Marshall and all of the USC staff who helped for creating such an incredible opportunity for us. Not only did we learn a lot about business and China, we also made great connections with Chinese university students and developed close bonds with our GLP classmates. It might be years before I find out just how valuable the experience was, but I can tell that I have come away with something priceless.
I have included a picture of some of the Tsinghua students with our team the day we went to the Hutongs, one of the most memorable evenings of the trip. We taught them what 'Fight On!' means - and from how great these kids are and how hard they work, I feel like they were able to relate pretty easily.
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Blog 4
March 22, 2009 (Sunday) Beijing
We did a lot of amazing things on the last leg of the trip. We saw the Great Wall of China, the Temple of Heaven, visited Ogilvy and two fantastic factories, Beijing Hyundai and Yanjing Beer. We also ate a lot of great food! However, the part of the trip that had by far the greatest impact on me was our time with the Tsinghua University students. On Thursday, we had the opportunity to meet up with some of the students we met earlier and let them lead us around Beijing. Our friends took us through the Hutongs, which are working class neighborhoods several hundred years old. Most of the buildings facing the alleyway had been converted into shops, but it was clear than many people still lived there. After passing on an American style restaurant (too expensive), we found an average Chinese restaurant and sat down for dinner. We didn't expect to spend two and a half hours here, immersed in conversation with the Tsinghua students. Asking questions about their lives (and answering their questions) was beyond fascinating. Some of the conversations went like this:
"So have you ever voted?"
"Um, for student government."
"I voted for Barack Obama."
"Whoa."
"Do you have any religions here?"
"No, not really. I saw Christians when I went to Hong Kong, but I don't get it."
"So you have guns in America?"
"Some people do."
"How do you get them?"
"You just go to the store."
"What?! How!?"
Still, we found that we had far more similarities than differences. We listened to a lot of the same music, watched the same movies, and had even seen the same YouTube videos. We had similar passions and dreams. Sixth
wants to work for one of the Big Four accounting firms. Candy wants to be a CFO. Nicky wants to travel the world and start her own business. Near the end of the dinner, they gave us small gifts. I received a pin that says "Tsinghua University". It's a small token, but I will cherish it.
Today, on our free day, we asked the students to join us again for a final night. They took us to a KTV - a karaoke center - where we spent the evening singing, eating, and sometimes just talking. I discovered that one of our new friends, Chelsea, is in the Tsinghua Band, just like I am in the USC Band. We promised to send each other pictures of our uniforms. We were all stunned by how closely their rivalry with Beijing University mirrors our rivalry with UCLA! We departed with hugs, a few gifts, and a few more hugs. We promised to stay in touch, and it's a promise I intend to keep. Now in just a few hours, we'll be headed back to the United States... I'm not ready to leave!
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Blog 3
March 19, 2009
The last few days have been absolutely unbelievable. I suppose I will pick up where I left off - talking about the Olympic Village. The architecture downtown is all incredibly innovative; another reminder of how quickly this city has grown. Whereas major US cities add a skyscraper every few years, Beijing's towers have gone up mostly in the last decade and they have had all the advantages of the most modern engineering and design. The Olympic structures are some of the most fantastic of all. But what might be more staggering than the bird's nest or the water cube, is the length and breadth of the village and the knowledge that the government destroyed countless existing buildings to construct it. It is one of the few indicators of the more oppressive side of the Chinese government, which is surprisingly invisible in a city where there is not only very little crime, but also almost no police presence.
Visiting the businesses - Lenovo Computers, Wal-Mart, and Possibility Space - was more interesting. I was surprised by my ability to apply concepts from Marshall courses to real-world scenarios. When the Lenovo speaker discussed how the company changed the way bosses interact with their employees, I recognized it as a change in power distance - a concept from our Leading Organizations class. I also recognized that my Marketing professor would approve of Lenovo's decision to stop putting the IBM name on their computers; a strategy that will enable them to create a corporate image that can emerge from the shadow of its competitors. At Possibility Space, we discussed how even skilled workers in China are paid in a month what most American workers would demand for a single day's work, and how cultural differences make Americans very effective managers and attractive hires in China.
We also met with Tsinghua University students, first formally on their campus, then in a social setting at a restaurant later that evening. Although they come from one of China's most elite universities, they were very humble and had a lot of fun with us. We exchanged e-mails with many of them and hopefully will get to know them better later in the week. One other memorable experience was at a food market in Wanfujing. I had a running bet with three people on how many different species of animal I could eat in one day. One person bet I couldn't eat over 15, one bet I couldn't eat over 16, and Richard Wei bet that he could eat more animals than I could. I quit after 16: chicken, pork, lamb, scallop, prawn, beef, krill, caterpillar, centipede, lizard, grasshopper, scorpion, starfish, beetle, duck, and seahorse. I tied with Richard, so I lost one bet, won one, and tied another. Not too bad.
Never eat caterpillar.
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Blog 2
March 16, 2009
When we stepped off the plane and out of the airport, the first sign that we were really in Beijing was all around us - the sky here is thick with smog, almost more brown than white. It wasn't hard to believe that we were driving into a city of 17 million people, but the sheer size and density of it is hard to comprehend. The traffic is insane; not so much for the number of cars, but for the way they dart in and out of lanes and through intersections with what appears to be no regard for human life. The locals don’t bat an eye at what looks like absolute madness to us. I guess that’s only natural.
Beijing is - for lack of a better word - more “Chinese” than I expected. They told us before we left that cities like Shanghai and Hong Kong feel like any other major financial center, like New York or London. Beijing does not. Here we are aware at every moment that we are in China. Today we visited Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, two places that, beyond their scale and beauty, are hugely important and symbolic cultural sites. When we all gathered for a group picture in Tiananmen, crowds of Chinese people gathered to take pictures of us! The idea that the Chinese are still not entirely used to seeing foreigners in their country is an indicator of how relatively recent China's rise to economic power has been. The immense size of the Forbidden City is a reminder that China has always had the potential to be one of the world's greatest powers.
We ended our first day with a traditional Peking duck dinner. Ian, a former student of Professor Voigt who works and lives in Beijing, talked a bit with some of us about what life is like for an ex-patriate. I found it interesting that even though the cost of most goods in China is very low, housing in Beijing is more expensive than it is in most American cities. We asked Ian if he went to the Olympics - he laughed and responded that he and his girlfriend took a two-week vacation; the Olympics turned the city into a madhouse. I am excited to visit the Olympic Village tomorrow, and to make our first visit to a Beijing company.
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Blog 1
March 6, 2009 (Friday), Los Angeles
Wait a minute. We're going to China in a week? You're kidding, right? China. Like... the Dalai Lama, Tiananmen Square, Kung Fu, Yao Ming, the Great Wall? That China? In a week? It doesn't seem real. It probably won't set in that I'm actually going to Beijing until we get on the plane.
My name is Rick Vranish and I am a freshman Business Administration (BCA) from Portland, Oregon. China will be the sixth foreign country I have visited in my life and the first in Asia. My mindset seven days before we leave is somewhere between excitement and total incomprehension that I am actually traveling to Beijing with the USC Marshall School of Business. I am looking forward to so many things: meeting the successful business leaders at the Chinese and multi-national companies, touring their businesses, seeing the great cultural sites like the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, seeing the fantastic modern architecture and meeting Chinese college students. But most of all I am excited to just walk the streets of the city and get a feel for what life in Beijing is like. The little adventures like visiting shops and restaurants that you don't recognize and eating food that you would normally not look at sideways are sometimes the most rewarding experiences of visiting a new culture. One of the things I hate the most is looking and feeling like a tourist, but sometimes you just have to go with it.
The things I'm most expecting to see: urban chaos on the streets and sidewalks as 17 million people try to live together in a single city, quirky food vendors on the streets and the Great Wall! The things I think might shock me the most: the pollution, trying to communicate, and the process of buying things on the street. I am starting to get very excited for this trip, and I am very grateful for USC and Marshall for creating this opportunity. I know I wouldn't get to do this anywhere else.
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