It is Good to be in Beijing

^The launch of the Boao Review, with Secretary-General Zhouwenzhong giving a speech

Man it is good to be in Beijing!  My work at the US-China Business Council has offered me unthinkable opportunities, such as attending a CEO-Dialogue between top American and Chinese business leaders.  I got to see the launch of a new magazine called the Boao Review, published by the Boao Forum, the leading organization that facilitates high-level exchanges between government leaders, business leaders, and academia in Asia.  My Chinese friends have introduced me to politicians, business leaders, and highly influential people in the Chinese community.  I’ve been to grand openings, such as the opening of the restaurant Q-Mex in Sanlitun, which even has a Mexican staff in the kitchen cranking out awesome guacamole.  While in Beijing, I’ve also had the chance to meet with a few teachers and fellow classmates from last summer’s Middlebury program.  Seeing them brings back great memories.  Plus I have one more friend there right now who has been sending me messages and updates on the Twilight Zone, better know as 明德大学 (Middlebury).

^Meet-up with Jin Ha in Beijing.  My friend Fran in the middle made a pig by blowing caramel.

It all seems sort of surreal.  When I think of all of the people that I’ve been introduced to in China, I ask myself, could I offer the same caliber of introductions to people back in the US?  To answer honestly, I still have some work to do.

This leads me to the next thing that I’ve given a lot of thought to and has been sort of the result of the previous situations.  My Chinese is good, but when I go to dinner with the Chief Representative of the Economist Magazine for China and the Head of International Programs at Qinghua University, and they discuss in-vitro fertilization, I’m sort of at a loss for words.  I’ve already invested so much in China, but I think every language learner will have days that they feel that they will never catch up on a lifetime’s worth of interactions and speaking.  So where will I be after graduation?

^The Beijing Office of the US-China Business Council.  We are one big family.

I flip back to my aspirations of becoming a consultant in China, and the necessity of speaking fluent Chinese, and it sort of complicates my first move.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to discuss all of China’s intricacies at length by the time I graduate from undergrad, in which case, that makes me far less employable by a consulting firm in China.  However, my resolve is still strong.  In fact, Chinese has posed a challenge since day one.  But I have always looked at this seemingly impossible feat of learning Chinese with a sort of delusional Steve Job’s distortion field and surprisingly I’ve come a long way in a year and a half of learning Chinese.  When you start looking at the impossible as realities waiting to be pursued, a lot of opportunities become very clear.  As Deng Xiaoping famously said at the start of China’s Economic Reforms, “There is no turning back now.” (不走回头路)