While most of my fellow SYs at Darden will soon begin studying for Q1 exams, I feel like I just barely got settled this last week into the rhythm of being back at school.  After a wonderful internship at Celanese this summer, I spent about a week traveling to visit family in nearby Arkansas before jumping on a plane to Beijing.  Many of my classmates have discovered (especially after my part as President of the International Business Society in this last week’s advertisement for our upcoming International Food Festival) that I am away at Peking University taking part in an exchange program at Peking Unviersity’s (PKU) Guanghua School of Management. (Yes, the picture above is really what the campus looks like!)

This last month has been quite an adventure—my wife and son deserve a medal for tagging along with me—and I feel like I have been through enough setbacks and frustrations to last a whole year!  Despite trying to spend the summer brushing up on my Chinese and trying to remember what I learned in Mandarin classes during university (about seven years ago), I quickly discovered that my ability to effectively communicate and understand is much more limited than it once was.  While I have been given compliments on my accent, generally it just gets me into trouble as I can clearly ask questions, but my vocabulary has been reduced the point where I can understand less than half of the response.  Somehow though (i.e. with lots of help from friends and friends of friends) we’ve been able to rent a decent apartment, hire a nanny to watch our son while my wife and I study (she’s starting to learn Chinese), and generally survive.

While I definitely miss Darden’s very dynamic and engaging case-method classes, my mostly lecture-based courses at PKU have been largely interesting (despite being three hours long), and I have still gotten a chance to do some great cases.  One of the great things about taking classes here is that every course has a very real China-focus to it.  I have already learned a lot about the ever-evolving business culture here, and how things have changed since the economic reforms pioneered by Deng Xiaoping more than 30 years ago. Along with two business-specific language courses (and private language classes) I am taking China-focused courses on personal and corporate taxation, business and investment strategy, international trade, economic transition, and cross-cultural management.

The context of our cases and lectures have been very specific to operating both within China and internationally from the viewpoint of Chinese businesses who must deal with a wide range of concerns including global partnerships, foreign capital, dealing with the Chinese government, and cultural barriers.  While I always seek to maintain informed opinions about all issues in life—I tend to keep my opinions to myself on any particular issue until I feel that I have informed myself enough to opine—this China-focused flavor to discussions and lectures has really cleared-up some misunderstandings regarding the culture and business of China that had previously crept into my thinking (mostly based on my limited previous exposure).  My two business language courses have also been culturally enlightening as I learn the underlying significance of why spoken and written Chinese has evolved the way it has. By the end of the year I hope to be much more proficient with the language, and be better equipped to work with companies who do or desire to do business in China.

P.S. My family and I have also had the chance to visit some wonderful cultural places… keep checking back every couple of weeks to see new pictures!