GHS208-05 Fall 2019 China and the Islamic Middle East

This will be a relatively short post, but I spent some of last night and this morning trying to find digital copies of our textbook (the information within it) so I could help out Dr. McGrath with his creation of an online book so his future students are saved from the massive amounts of textbooks we had in this class! I was assigned to find the poetry by Rumi that we read in our GHS reader on pages 227-236. I found two of the digital copies of the texts these poems come from relatively quickly and was thrilled that I had collected such good information. However, the last text which held 4 of Rumi’s poems, could not be found digitally. I spent a little over 3 hours looking for this text, and couldn’t even find a credible source that had these poems outside of our class reader! I would have to have access to the actual book and scan it into a PDF in order to create a digital copy, and all of the copies were out from the Butler Library. Ugh! This was frustrating, but hopefully Dr. McGrath understood. There seems to be a good amount of people contributing to the new class reader so hopefully it turns out well!

I would say that this ICR experience this semester was interesting. I did enjoy getting out into the community, as a junior I have surprisingly not gotten out in Indianapolis as much as I should have. That was something I was hoping to do in this course. I definitely got out in the community more than I have in the past just connecting with the members in the IACA made me feel like I was an active member. Personally, my favorite experience I had was volunteering at the International Festival. I particularly enjoyed being in the lion dance performance, it’s that same feeling that I was talking about earlier with being part of the community. Another part of the festival that I really enjoyed was being able to walk around during the and talk to other booths at the event. This allowed me to broaden my horizons past just the IACA and connect with other people in the community. I actually had a very unique experience when I was talking to the people at the German booth. We were just having a normal conversation when they gave me a pamphlet for the Christkindlmarkt, which is a German themed Christmas festival. Weeks after this encounter I attended Christkindlmarkt and actually ran into the people from the International Festival at the event it was very cool, and everything came full circle. Again, I did enjoy my ICR experience as it gave me and, opportunity to get active in Indianapolis. If there was one thing that wasn’t great about it that would be limited opportunities. I understand this a new program mixing the GHS and ICR, but it was difficult to complete my hours with the amount of opportunities we were given. I do understand it’s a work in progress. I would like to finish this off by saying thank you to the members of the IACA, the ICR people at Butler and Prof. McGrath for trying their best working the logistics on this course.

Last week, I went about searching for an authentic Chinese restaurant where I could order some traditional Chinese food and review it and discuss my experience for some extra credit. My mom and I went to Tian Fu Chinese Bistro on 86th street, right off of Michigan road. Before I continue, I must say this has to be some of the best Chinese food I have ever had. It was absolutely fantastic and the menu had plenty of traditional dishes as well as more general Asian dishes.

Moving on to the meal. Before going to the restaurant, I did some research on what dishes where actually authentic dishes served in Chinese culture. We see a lot of different “Chinese” dishes today with restaurants such as Panda Express serving a very popular orange chicken, which actually isn’t a traditional way of preparing chicken in China. I am a big fan of chicken in Chinese dishes, and sweet and sour chicken was one of the most traditional way of preparing chicken in china from the research I found. Other popular dishes include duck and different forms of noodles such as Lo Mein and Chow Mein.

One of my favorite appetizers at any restaurant are pot stickers. It was interesting to learn, upon asking the waiter, that pot stickers are categorized as a dumpling of sort in Chinese culture and are a traditional food! So naturally I had to order some of those as well.

So for my meal, I ordered sweet and sour chicken with another dish of chicken lo mein, both of which the waiter said were authentic in Chinese culture. All of the meals came with white rice (both rice and rice noodles are traditional sides) as well. My mother ordered a different chicken dish that was cooked in a mango sauce. We asked the waiter again if this was a traditional way of preparing chicken in China and she said no as mangos were not usually used to cook with. She did note that this was becoming popular in the modernization of Chinese food though and said at some point it could be viewed as an authentic accustomed dish!

I also used my luxury of being 21 and ordered a Tsingtao which is a Chinese beer that my mom recommended to me and my dad also mentioned he drank often while in China on business. It was a very different taste to the American beers. It was very light and had a little sweetness to it, I really enjoyed it as well!

Overall, this restaurant was fantastic. My mom and I basically talked the waiters ear off with all of our questions regarding what was traditional and what wasn’t so I could make sure that I was fulfilling this extra credit to the fullest! But the food was fantastic and I learned a lot about what isn’t authentic Chinese food (which is basically all of Panda Express’ entrees with a few exceptions which I thought was very funny). It was nice to have some real authentic food and be able to learn about the different foods as well. I am posting pictures from the meal below so you guys can be jealous of how fantastic this food was! I unfortunately ate all the pot stickers before I remembered to take a picture of them but I’m sure you guys have seen them before. I hope you enjoy and you should definitely check this restaurant out!

 

For some extra credit in our GHS course, I interviewed my father on his experience doing business in primarily China and over the past 10 years. A brief background on my father: he graduated from Purdue University majoring in Aerospace and Aeronautical Engineering and then went on to work on ballistic missile rocket motor development in Salt Lake City Utah. He then worked for NASA at Marshall Space Flight center before moving to Tampa, FL where my brother and I were born. Here he worked on small aircraft modifications before working for LiveTV and JetBlue in Orlando. While in Indiana, he was the CEO of Comlux which is a VIP completion center (customization of VIP aircraft) where he was constantly out of the country for business.

I thought it was very fitting to interview my dad on some of his experiences while working specifically in China when it comes to cultural differences in business strategy. Unfortunately, my dad has taken a new job which causes him to be living in St. Louis while the rest of my family is here in Indiana so I could not interview him face to face. However, I spent a little over an hour on the phone with him discussing the subject to learn of his experiences. I would try to summarize all of the points he made, but I found it fitting to actually get that information first hand from him so I could share directly his experience with you guys. He sent me an email with the main points we discussed on the phone which I am going to attach below. I think it is very important to take note of some of what he says if you are considering working in the international business field because becoming accustomed to other cultures and countries is crucial to success. I hope you guys enjoy his thoughts and please comment if you have any questions! A big thanks to my dad for taking some time out of his day to share his experiences with me. Without further ado, below is his experience:

“Conducting business in China or any country outside of the US presents an obligation to the individual to become acquainted with local customs, beliefs, business practices, holidays and national interests as well as present national sentiments towards the US so that one can navigate successfully an international relationship. The worst start is a impression that is unintendedly negative that brings the need to reconcile before progressing the intended interests.  The general feeling internationally is that the US is a self-centered, self-interested, introverted culture that has little genuine concern, care or knowledge for anything outside of the US…so more often than not the perception is negative from the beginning unless you are dealing with a very pro US region (Israel, UK, etc.) which today are truly very few.  Though business is the universal language, the underlying true sentiments of your client will influence any opportunity for you to progress and be successful.

 

In China, the nation is very non aggressive, direct, and strong eye contact can be seen as threatening or intimidating and I have made this mistake and had clients leave the table.  Further, there is a culture of politeness in a professional setting that is beyond US convention ensuring for the comfort of your client, how they are feeling, and getting acquainted by soft gestures is very beneficial before jumping right into the business at hand.  You will lose the client if you get right to it.  Further, there is a great deal of concern and risk by their conduct and how it will be viewed by the government who has firmly and relentlessly pursued business people for corrupt business practices or viewed as counter to national interests.  Therefore no discussion of immediate transaction or transfer of monies is done formally.  These are made under separate secure means and typically the contract is not adhered to and the Chinese do not feel a contract binding.  Having leverage to ensure for payment is very difficult and payment terms and methods are very unconventional….trust and flexibility is key as well as patience since getting money out of the country is extremely challenging.

 

The key is to be tolerant and aware of this fact and not to over leverage you position of investment that will drive you to be more aggressive when it comes to collection of payment or recovery of your investment.  Stay cash positive, establish the risk you can tolerate, and always build in assumptions that payment will be delayed, made in installments, or come from different entities at different times.

 

Sensitive communications will occur outside of normal formal means. I have negotiated full contracts exclusively using WeChat so that my client felt safe from governmental oversight.

 

US business practices are traditionally direct, concise, succinct, efficient and to the point with formal means of documentation and none of these are effective in working with your Chinese clientele.  However, if you can overcome this and build a framework that works to their needs, the Chinese client is very reliable and loyal.  The Chinese love exchanging gifts with sentiment, meaning or symbolism….these do not have to be expensive, but shows a level of thoughtfulness they find very appealing.  I wish for anyone doing business in China to enjoy the journey and learning the culture, but to be prepared properly so you can stay the course they will dictate….the reward is often very strong if you can.   Never over leverage yourself in pursuing business in the region…risk should only be taken as a strong track record of success with the client.  On the front end, be ready to cut your losses.”

-Scott Meyer

As my prior blog post indicated, I was a new student at Butler University this semester. I had previously changed my major and had to change it again so I was able to compete for the baseball team under eligibility and compliance rules. Registering for classes and finding houses was all done three days before classes started and this semester was overall just very hectic for me. Our GHS course was a very unique experience in my eyes. I can truly say I have never had a class structured in the way that this one was, and it posed to be very challenging for me. First, I have no prior experience of any religious courses, or history courses in college for that matter. Being an engineer for half of my college career, courses were full of math and physics and not a whole lot else. The topics religion and culture are very foreign to me and something I definitely have a hard time engaging with. As I spoke about one on one with Dr. McGrath, it was really hard for me to express that I had done the reading daily in class. We are all college students and have other courses so we know how difficult reading every word of every assignment is. Yet I did my best to have a solid grasp on the material everyday for class. My struggle came more when we discussed in class. Since this course handled topics I wasn’t really knowledgeable with, I found it more beneficial for myself to listen to the discussions and follow along in the text we were diving into for that day. This helped me retain what others were saying and connect it directly back to what we were reading, yet this was very ineffective in showing Dr. McGrath that I was actually participating and doing what we were supposed to be doing for class.

Moving on to the structure of the class, this posed a whole different challenge for me. I hate to continue living in the past, but I just truly had never had a class structured from a game-like style Dr. McGrath used. I was so used to strict deadlines for all homework and assignments that I really found myself slacking when it came to blogging, and this ultimately hurt me long term. I always had the thought that I could just do it all next week, or the week after, and this just lead to constant procrastination and now fighting to raise my blog score over the past month of the semester, which with finals and all was way more stressful than if I would just have kept up.

Luckily, through communication with Dr. McGrath, I feel I was able to demonstrate the issues I was having with this class and all things outside of class such as finding a job as I’m a fourth year student and not having an academic advisor etc; the list goes on and on. Although I am hopefully going to come out with the grade I desired in this course, I had to rely on frequent make up work and the built in extra credit option Dr. McGrath structured into the course to do so. My one recommendation for anyone taking this course is just to stay on top of blogs and be as communicative as you possibly can be, in class and with Dr. McGrath.

Outside of my struggle, this course definitely expanded my knowledge in a way a lot of my prior courses weren’t able to. I now view the world a bit differently and am coming to understand it is crucial to life and business to understand different societies and cultures if you wish to be successful. The ICR component of this course, which I also highly recommend, facilitated engaging in the community and different cultures outside the classroom which also adds to the individuality as this course as a whole. I struggled way more than I should have, but I think this course was a great learning experience, one which hopefully I am not punished too harshly by. I really enjoyed reading all of your posts and the discussions we had in class and wish you all the best and a wonderful holiday!

This semester, I chose to volunteer for the IACA for the Butler ICR program that was instated within Professor McGrath’s GHS course. As of the beginning of this academic year, I was new to Butler University and really didn’t know the different core requirements within the university. Upon talking to Dr. McGrath and some classmates, I found that taking the ICR could be very beneficial to me both academically and culturally.
Prior to my IACA involvement, I had never been engaged with any type of cultural organization. I was definitely a bit intimidated at the thought of 20 hours of work throughout an already busy semester, but found the whole experience of working with the IACA to be extremely pleasant and beneficial. First off, culture and religious studies are something I am very unfamiliar with, so this was a daunting challenge both being in a class and organization tied very closely to both subjects. Immediately, working with the IACA changed this perspective. We worked with both Benny and Kwan who made us feel comfortable and welcomed into the IACA from the very beginning. Benny took us to the IMA as our first experience with the IACA and this was such a fun experience. We were able to learn about the cultures that surround China and Chinese culture itself amongst the different exhibits and I found this to be very enjoyable. I think the most fun and beneficial event was working the International Festival where we were able to explore all the different cultures brought together under one roof and see different performances, taste different foods, and represent the IACA and Chinese culture at the festival. I learned so much from this experience and seeing all of the different countries and culture represented at this festival, something I definitely wouldn’t have known about or stepped into without the help of the IACA.
I also enjoyed the freedom that this experience provided. All of the events were fascinating and fun to attend and it always provided a great break from our studies. Going to Master Ling’s martial arts studio towards the end of the semester was by far some of the most fun I have had here at Butler so far. We were able to handle a sword and learn one of the many Tai Chi practices they taught and it was such an enjoyable time.
Overall, my experience with the IACA was about as perfect as it could have been. I definitely got out of my comfort zone and this proved to be very beneficial with the knowledge and experience I gained through working with the IACA. I would highly recommend working with the IACA for anyone interested in Chinese culture and taking an ICR option through this course. The benefits of being involved outside of class are monumental, and it provides a perfect distraction from normal classwork and busy work. I want to thank everyone from the IACA, Benny, Kwan, Hanako, and Victoria for making this experience so wonderful here in my first semester at Butler!

Yesterday evening, Kylie and I met with Benny in JH170 to discuss some of the current happenings in Hong Kong. Benny is one of our leaders for our IACA ICR credit and is the one who took us to the IMA earlier this fall. Benny offered to meet with us this week as one of the final events for our ICR, and he came bearing a very interesting conversation regarding his recent trip to Hong Kong where there have been many riots and lots of civil unrest.

I really don’t know much about Hong Kong, aside from the fact it is one of the more modern cities of the east. Benny gave Kylie and I a nice history of the country and its geography to bring us up to speed. We learned about the British ties Hong Kong had/and still currently maintains to an extent. It was the last remaining British colony (words of Benny) and remained this way until the 1970’s. Hong Kong is located off of the southeast coast of China and poses a relatively rough landscape that made any sort of agriculture difficult. It was very rocky and relatively uninhabited besides a few fishing villages when it was first discovered to be used as a trade port.

Hong Kong has endured many conflicts prior to the one currently happening. Benny mentioned the Opium Wars (which was more tied to India and Europe as well as China) and the base of the conflict today which is essentially a struggle for independence, from a governing perspective, from China.

Elaborating on this ongoing struggle, Benny shared with us the experience he had while in Hong Kong just a few weeks ago. He was present for a district election, which was a bit confusing, but basically was just electing small governing bodies for Hong Kong. This created a massive turnout from the people of Hong Kong, as he said the streets were almost unusable from the masses of people. Hong Kong is currently battling the Communist ways of China taking influence in their country. Benny talked briefly about an imposed system by China where anyone accused of a crime in Hong Kong could be tried in China, which ultimately created rage from the people of Hong Kong as they would essentially just be thrown in jail for being from Hong Kong due to the Communist ways of the Chinese governing body.

It was really interesting to learn about Hong Kong. It is a very western society that battles with one of the worlds most powerful Communist nations. Its modernization competes with that of the U.S. as it has tunnels connecting it to the mainland which I thought was very fascinating from an engineering perspective. Benny talked about how it is a melting pot of cultures with anyone from the U.K. to the U.S. to Japan residing in Hong Kong. After learning about some of the history and the conflicts, I am definitely more interested in following Hong Kong’s political and economic climate over the next few years. In my opinion, it really does seem to be it’s own independent nation. Yet the constant Chinese presence makes this very difficult as I saw through Benny’s teaching. Overall, I learned a lot about this growing country and now hold new information and a new perspective on Hong Kong.

The end of the semester for our GHS 208 course meant the final project of creating a website, something that I’m sure the majority of the class (besides Gerry) had not had much experience with. Being an engineering student prior to switching to business, I dealt with a lot of different forms of coding, computer aided design (CAD), manufacturing systems, and many others that all required computer work and computer skills. But, I had never built my own website prior to this project.

My group decided to do our project on the subject of health and wellness in China since all of us had an interest in a different subcategory of health and wellness. We ended up collecting information on healthy foods and diets, mental health, China’s healthcare systems, and Tai Chi. Gathering the information for this project proved to be the easier portion for our group however. Building the physical website was a bit tedious. Two of our groupmates had used Wix, an online website builder that we saw a lot of our other classmates use, prior to this project so it seemed like an easy route to take. Wix was relatively straight forward in how to use it, but was very complex when it came to the simple things. For example, unlike a Google doc, only one person (one account) could work on the website at a time. So, we all signed in using the same account to modify our website, and this ultimately caused some information to be lost or be not saved properly and just gave us all a headache. Personally, when I was writing paragraphs on the information I gathered, I had an issue where after I would click off of a textbox, I would not be able to click back into it to modify any of the text I had already entered. I learned this the hard way the very first time and eventually had to delete the whole text box and begin again. Over the remainder of the project, I constantly had to click back to the website when I was searching for info or pictures to make sure my textbox was still highlighted so I could continue to type which just became really annoying. Also, it was difficult to just copy and paste pictures. I finally found how to insert them through the Wix menu, and then struggled with proper sizing of the image as another group mentioned in their presentation.

The biggest headache came the morning of our presentation. We all logged in Thursday morning before our presentation and found 2 of our 4 pages missing for whatever reason. We all had a brief panic attack, but then somehow came across a feature (I believe under the “saved” tab) that allowed us to restore our website from the last time it was saved. This luckily brought our website back to what we wanted it to be, but not before a nice Thursday morning freak out.

For the purpose of our project, Wix did the job it needed to do for us. But I definitely think in the future if I needed to create a bigger website or a website for a company, I would pay some money to really get a professional website builder or just hire someone to do it for me. It was quite a mess, even for the relatively short length of this project. I did enjoy the process of website building besides all the weird quirks of Wix though. If I have to build another website in school, I feel like I will be able to create a similar website in a shorter amount of time. Our overall presentation went well and I thought our group, as well as the others that presented, really got a good grasp on website building.

Way earlier this fall, Professor McGrath told us about two terracotta warriors which would be in Jordan Hall for us to visit and take a selfie with for extra credit! I honestly totally forgot that I had gone to see the warriors earlier this fall and looking back I have a photo from when I had really short hair which made me laugh. Anyways, it was really cool to see such history on campus. The warriors were created to replicate the army of Qin Shi Huang who was the first emperor of China. Upon his death, the warriors were buried with the emperor in aims to protect him during the afterlife. This took place around 210 BCE which is quite a long time ago. I was very impressed with the detail of these sculptures and was even more fascinated with the history behind them and that I was able to see them in Jordan. It was an awesome experience to see something that belongs in a museum right in front of me!

This past Friday, myself with along with a few other classmates participating in the IACA ICR component of our course went to Noblesville to participate in a Taiji Sword Class hosted by Master Ling. None of us really had expectations. Personally, I have had no prior experience with any type of martial arts so this was all new to me. I was very surprised when, upon our arrival, Master Ling handed us real swords to work with in our practice. I don’t know why, but I never really imagined they would trust us with their swords since this was a new practice for almost all of us, but it was a very pleasant surprise. We rehearsed a practice called Yang 32, or Yang style 32, which was a practice of a bunch of very elegant movements that was extremely lengthy. Master Ling lectured us prior to practicing about the fluidity of the movements and how a lot of this practice could be used in combat as a defensive tactic. Tai Chi, in modern day practice however, is used commonly for joint health and stress relief. Now back to the practice, it was definitely a very different experience for me. I consider myself relatively athletic and all, but going through the Yang 32 practice, I definitely was not as coordinate as I thought. Obviously this is a very tough practice to master in a short amount of time as Christine, a lady who practices at Master Lings, said it took her over a year of almost daily practice to master Yang style 32. So yes, I often times found myself looking like an idiot. But as we went on, all of us seemed to capture the idea of the flow in the different movements and it ended up looking not half bad towards the end of our time. It took us our full hour slot to just rehearse half of the Yang style 32 which was amazing to me. At the end, Master Ling just had to show us all up and rehearsed the whole Yang style 32 practice perfectly. It was an artful demonstration of movements and was very impressive. I overall really enjoyed this experience. Doing something very unfamiliar and being able to have a lot of fun and learn on top of that made for a wonderful experience. Thank you to Master Ling for having us!