Day 9 – Today, we were allowed to sleep in from our very packed “free” day yesterday. We had a lesson on Chinese economics. The man who was speaking kept coughing and was describing the economics in ways that were way over our heads for understanding. Most of the group stopped listening after a while. I was enjoying my tea.
After our lesson, Dr. Gao told us about the restaurants in the hotel and we decided to try one. We went to the Japanese restaurant and ordered (guess what?) coke to drink. I ordered cheese stuffed chicken. It was so good. We also got rice and a variety of other cold food. There were potatoes on the tray and I was expecting them to be hot. They were still pretty god even though they were cold.
We had to go change into our business casual clothes to go to Tsinghua Solar. The building we went to had a finger scanner to get into the room. Dr.Gao thought this was cool and put his finger on and then the screen denied him. We went into a very dark conference room and got bottles of water. At first we had booklets about Tsinghua Solar in Russian, but this was quickly exchanged. The presentation was very fast and I couldn’t really follow because the guy giving the presentation kept jumping from a powerpoint and another file. Basically, Tsinghua Solar has created personal water heaters for homes using a tank, and a series of glass tubes. After the presentation we went to talk with the people who worked there Their English was very good and we talked about traveling, their college experience, and what they did for fun.
After Tsinghua Solar we had a free evening. We decided to eat at a place called grandma’s kitchen with American food. This restaurant was expensive compared to other restaurants with Chinese food, but we were willing to pay for familiar food. I had a club sammich and it was delicious. It came with onion rings. Then we got some more familiar dessert after, Dairy Queen. At Dairy Queens in China they are very adamant about showing that the blizzards will not fall out of the cups. If they don’t turn your cup upside down, it’s free. For the rest of the night I just relaxed in the hotel.
fawcettplus3china2012 