Skinny Chinese Girls

Why Chinese girls are so skinny?  I think because they eat a lot of vegetables and rice that are healier than western fast food, and they always drink tea with or after meal to dissolve fattening oils. I also think because they tend to be far more physically active in their daily lives, even from just basic activities like walking, bicycling, or running errands, so they burn off far more calories than the typical American couch potato. More importantly, I think because they are pressured by peers, men, media and trend to stay skinny.  There seem to be an underlying obsession, leading to deep-rooted fear, of gaining weight in Asian communities.

As a Chinese girl who has been living in the States for over ten years, I found that all my friends in China have been constantly on diet.  They take diet pills and eat very little to lose weight. At first I couldn’t understand why they keep complaining about how fat they are when they look skinny to me already.  Then I was told that generally girls weight over 50kg are considered to be FAT in China nowadays.  Being skinny is the very basic standard to be considered being pretty. The social stigmatization of girls who are “fat” is brutal.  For that reason, I am kind of glad that I live in the States, and I am not really considered to be fat in the States.

However,  shopping for clothes becomes the most frustrating thing everytime I come back to China. Lots of local markets sell cute clothes that are only made in one size.  The size is comparable with size XS in the States.  If you want to wear them, guess what you need to do? Right! lose weight!  When I was shopping at the local market across street from our hotel,  I felt like a fat alien walking in between all those skinny girls. There were so many cute clothes that I like. However those sellers don’t even want to talk to me because they knew I can’t fit their clothes. So sad!

Confucian and Family Values to Chinese

Today is the only free day we have in Beijing. I finally got chance to spend a little more time with my dad. We had lunch at his favorite restaurant. Then he took me to see my grandparents. It’s always feel good to come back home and to be with my family. I enjoy every moment of the gathering with my family. And I think it is a good time to talk about  value of family to Chinese a little bit.

More and more families are adapting to western culture by incorporating certain western values into their lifestyles while maintain core traditional Chinese beliefs that they believe are extremely important. Chinese parents nowadays are giving children more freedom, as opposed to strictly supervising children as ancient Chinese families did.  We are becoming more individualistic and less dependent on the family, again very different from the historical Chinese family.  While family members are becoming more individualistic, the Chinese family still retains the value that family is an important part of a person’s life.

In Confucian thought, family values, familial relationships, ancestor worship, and filial piety are the primary basis of the philosophical system, and these concepts are seen as virtues to be cultivated.

Filial piety is considered the first virtue in Chinese culture. While China has always had a diversity of religious beliefs, filial piety has been common to almost all of them; for example, Historian Hugh D. R. Baker calls respect for the family the only element common to almost all Chinese believers. These traditions were sometimes enforced by law; during parts of the Han Dynasty, for example, those who neglected ancestor worship could even be subject to corporal punishment.

The term “filial”, meaning “of a child”, denotes the respect and obedience that a child, originally a son, should show to his parents, especially to his father. This relationship was extended by analogy to a series of five relationships or five cardinal relationships (五倫 Wǔlún): 1.ruler and subject (君臣), 2.father and son (父子), 3.husband and wife (夫婦), 4.elder and younger brother (兄弟), 5.friend and friend (朋友)

Specific duties were prescribed to each of the participants in these sets of relationships. Such duties were also extended to the dead, where the living stood as sons to their deceased family. This led to the veneration of ancestors. In time, filial piety was also built into the Chinese legal system: a criminal would be punished more harshly if the culprit had committed the crime against a parent, while fathers exercised enormous power over their children. Much the same was true of other unequal relationships.

This theme consistently manifests itself in many aspects of Chinese culture even to this day, with extensive filial duties on the part of children toward parents and elders, and greater concern of parents toward their children than found in modern American or European cultures. (Family Value, Wikipedia)

Back to Beijing

I’m so excited that I’m back to my home town Beijing today. I can’t wait to see my dad, my grandparents, my cousins, and other relatives and friends. I miss them so much. One week is just too short, unfortunately, I won’t be able to spend much time with them. Beijing has changed so much in the past several years. The city is getting crowded, therefore, traffic is getting worse and air is getting more polluted. But I am loving it. Not only because it is my hometown, but also because it is so big. There are just so many different interesting places to go and so many fun things to do. 

After about one hour driving from the airport, we arrived to the joy city hotel. I am very familiar with the area since I shop around quite often. Finally I met my dad in the evening. He was very happy to see me. However he had to cancel the dinner reservation because my plan changed for tomorrow morning. I can’t go see my grandparents tomorrow morning but go to tian an men square and forbidden city with the group. Therefore, me and my dad decided to drive to my grandparents’ place at night. We drove for about two hours to Hebei, where my grandparents’ country house is. They were so excited. We stayed together for about half an hour then had to head back home.  My grandma was holding my hands, didn’t want to let me go.  So sad that I couldn’t stay longer. It took longer to drive back home because my dad was nervous to drive at night with all the huge trucks that are only permitted to go in the city after 10pm. I got back to the hotel after midnight. I guess I will be very busy in the next a few days. I probably need more coffee and energy drinks to keep myself functioning well.

YRC Logistic and Hisense Visits

We visited YRC Logistic in Qingdao this morning. The company name is displayed as JHJ, which is a joint venture held by Jin Jiang International Investment Ltd. and YRC Worldwide Inc. Mei, the vice president of JHJ Qingdao office, welcomed us and gave us an overview of the company. As a first-class international freight forwarder, JHJ experienced opportunities, successes as well as challenges throughout the years. The company established excellent partnership with Qingdao Airport terminal and was appointed by Qingdao customs to be the Olympic Games broker. Some of its main clients include Wal-Mart, Home Depot, LG, Haier, and Hisense. When talking about competitions, Mei emphasized that European logistic companies are more mature than Chinese ones. However, they have a lot of problems when they come to China because they have limited access to a lot of resources, they don’t have local government supports, and they don’t know how to build up relationships with clients and government. Building up good relationship with the government is very important. JHJ gains great support from the government so it can get the best deals for its clients. Also, Mei mentioned the competition between Qingdao port and Tianjin port. She has to work so hard on getting businesses from Tianjin port to Qingdao. She was very proud of the company’s networks and functions, such as its solution design, bonded logistics, purchase order management, value-added service, and most importantly, its top quality teamwork. She also mentioned JHJ’s potential market, western China, since there are five rail lines building toward Xinjiang province. Overall, I feel that she is so knowledgeable about the company and passionate about what she’s doing. However, it seems like JHJ has its own operation strategies that does not interact much with YRC.

In the afternoon, we went to Hisense, a 100% state owned company that are expanding overseas. Hisense was founded in 1969. It was a radio company, later expanded its production lines to other electronics, such as TVs, ACs, refrigerators and cell phones. As China now has the largest single LCD TV market in the world, the company invests heavily in the domestic marketing. At the same time, Hisense is expanding internationally. It has 19 factories worldwide and launched global joint ventures with Whirlpool, IBM, Hitachi, and AMD. Its overseas sales revenue for 2010 was $1.2 billion. It was very interesting to see how Hisense marketing its brand in Israel. Big posters with red color, dragons, and Kong Fu, were made to promote its brand that has high quality. The concept is to change the world’s perspective of Chinese companies that produce cheap and low quality products. Also, Hisense is still at early stage of becoming a mature international company. I feel that a lot of questions we asked were not quite adequate so the answer we got was “They are not there yet!” In addition, the culture of decision making of few people from top management could slow down its development in expansion because people who have great ideas are not able to interact effectively. Last, we visited the showroom. It was a very interesting visit.

I was tired after we got back from Hisense. Then something terrible happened. Somehow I broke my room card key in half when I insert it. Half of the card was left inside the lock. Great! In the next coming four hours or so, more than seven Chinese guys, lock opening guys and hotel managers, came back and forth. They worked so hard and kept apologizing to me. I couldn’t get frustrated because I knew it was my fault. Thanks for everyone who passed by and offered their rooms for me to stay. And thank god that I got some Qingdao beer at late night. What a fun day!

Ford and Continuum Innovation- April 11th

Ford & Continuum Innovation Visits – April 11^th 2011

Today is the first day of our official visits in Shanghai. We traveled to Putong financial center area to visit Ford Moters in the morning, then we went to the Franch concession area to visit Continuum Innovation.  Putong district is very new and modernized. And the fiancial center area is full of tall buildings with all the big companies’ headquaters located inside.  It is quite different than the residential are where our hotal is.  By seeing the difference, we could get the sense of the development of the city Shanghai.

The presenter of Ford gave us a general view of how Ford operates in its China market. He talked about China’s economic growth, risks and opportunities for Ford. Two main concerns stood out throughout his presentation to us. One was the importance of keeping raw material costs under control. He mentioned that out of the total costs, 60-80% is raw material parts costs. Suppliers of those raw material parts often handle packaging and logistics for Ford. They make larger margins by raising the prices of those parts. Therefore Ford now is working on maximize the lifetime value of a service part to reduce material costs. Another concern was the importance of keeping information flow. He talked about when bring people from different countries to work together, communication effectively becomes crucial. He also mentioned that because information does not flow through all departments in different locations, it is time and costs consuming to get parts to the right place. Therefore, Ford is working on communicating more effectively and operating more efficiently to bring down the costs. We were a little surprised that as a representative international company, Ford is still having trouble connecting all departments to work together efficiently.

We visited Continuum Innovation in the afternoon. The company is a global design consultancy that does projects in many industries, such as financial services, retail, transportation, insurance, health and beauty, consumer packaging and hospitality, etc.  The diversity of the industry sectors the company reaches was quite impressive to us. Also, we recognized that so many well known products, such as P&G’s Swiffer’s and Reebok’s Pump shoes, were innovated and designed by Continuum.  We feel that they really care about consumers. Throughout their presentations, they constantly repeating “People” is the core of their innovation and design.  It was impressive that they actually follow people to observe their behaviors.  As a small company comparing to Ford and as a company that we never even heart of,  yet they are doing so much and have designed and innovated so many success products. We were very pleased with all the information and knowledge with this visit.