7-10-2009

Worked on presentations again all day. Wrote the script and practiced….happy to be under 7 minutes for the English version. This means Qiong will have a little more wiggle room for the Chinese version.

Tonite we took our translators to Pizza Hut. It was a very fun experience. I assumed the Hut would be very similar to the US, but it was so much nicer and offered lots of interesting menu items. We were all really excited as we poured over the menu to decide what to order. We tried seafood supreme, teriyaki chicken, Hawaiian, and sausage roll pizzas. Of course we looked like a bunch of wierdos taking photos of all of our pizzas. Mike kept taking selfies…then proceeded to teach our translators how to take selfies. This was hilarious, and yes, there is video. We all really had a lot of fun.

We also saw a show going on with actors from the show Xian Jian Qi Xia Zhan. I’m hoping to find some episodes of this when I get back to the US so I can practice my Mandarin. Qiong said this was one of her favorite shows. Since I’ve been here, it has made me really want to practice my Mandarin more and become fluent. I cannot wait to come back here to live! My only worry is that my first impression, being of Kunming, will be completely different from life in Beijing. We’ll see soon enough!

After dinner, we were back to the hotel. I think we’re all starting to experience a little burnout. Or maybe it could be that we are still working on the translations at 1130pm!

7-9-2009

Today we spent all day working on our presentation and data analysis. I’m starting to get nervous about getting everything finished in time. We have to finish the English version, then write the script, then translate both to Chinese. I think being away from home is starting to wear….as well as eating the same food everyday. We are at least being somewhat adventurous and trying different places everyday. For dinner tonite we went to a really cool restaurant near the hotel called Bluebird. I love hearing Qiong say “fuwuyuan” to the waitresses. I’m going to have to learn how to say it.

7-8-09 Dynamic Yunnan

Advice to future students: Do not plan anything for early morning the day after the banquet. Or maybe just don’t drink too much at the banquet….and definitely do not go out somewhere else afterwards. We made a special trip to McDonald's to cure our hangover. most interesting thing of the day was our visit to the cultural show Dynamic Yunnan. It was so amazing! I almost felt emotional watching the show because I felt I was experiencing a rich culture with lots of deep meaning. I also kept thinking about how proud I would be to bring my family to something like that if I get to move here. There was an amazing dancer that did the “Moonlight dance”…I have officially put learning to do this dance on my list of things to do once I move to China.You can see parts of the show here on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ko3Ax6L9A8 I heard they have also traveled around the world.

Those Chinese folks really like to 干杯！

We had a great day today of interviewing and surveying customers at the store. We are really making great progress! I was quite nervous about this project in the beginning, but I’m pleased to see how things are coming together.

Surveying customers is tough work! I felt pretty helpless since I could not speak Mandarin well enough to survey the customers myself. Instead, our translators did most of the talking. We found that a lot of times the housewives did not want to talk to us.

In the evening all of the students, faculty, and Min Sheng employees gathered at the hotel for the banquet. The purpose of the banquet was to build “guanxi” (relationships). We had been warned about how this usually works, but were not in any way prepared for what ensued. Toast after toast after toast was made, and if someone said 干杯! (ganbei) it meant you had to drain your glass. Needless to say it got ugly fast. Everyone was singing karaoke and having a great time. I was a bit shy about talking to people first, but by the end of the nite it seemed we were all friends.

Our biggest mistake was going out after the banquet. It should have ended there. But we were having such a great time, we didn’t want it to end. Several of us went to a nearby expat bar where I was able to practice my Mandarin. It was so awesome! We also went to a karaoke (KTV) bar where I learned how to buy a bottle of vodka in Mandarin and also encountered my first妓女(jinu – prostitute, or as Mike would say prostie). She was the one that waited on us, but when she got off her shift, she stopped back by our room and left her phone number with us. Maybe that’s why she’d been so helpful!

Found out I had some pretty cool teammates…

Gettin' to Bizness - 7/6/09

Today we started the real work. We started in the morning by gathering together in the “War Room” at the hotel. We met the translators that would be helping us, then we listened to an introductory presentation from the Min Sheng grocery management. We had the opportunity to meet Mr. Liu, one of the top managers for the stores in Yunnan. He is responsible for helping our group, along with 9 others! He will be very busy this week with all of us! Luckily, we also have Mr. Chen, who is an assistant manager to Mr. Liu. We actually were able to speak quite a bit with Mr. Chen prior to coming to Kunming, which was very helpful. We met with Ms. Mu, a general manager at one of the 2 stores in Kunming. She gave us quite a bit of detail about the issues at Min Sheng and told us about their customer segmentation and loyalty program. We found that the biggest issue is customer retention. Part of the problem is that customers are not willing to give information like their name, address, or phone number, because they feel it is too personal. This makes it very difficult to retain the customers because they are not able to contact them and get feedback from them. Part of our job will be to find ways to help the stores get this vital information. This makes me surprised at how loose we are in America sometimes with our personal information. We were able to learn some very key things today...I think we might be on the right track! The photo below is of part of our team with the translator and Mr. Chen. LtoR: Annie, me, Hu, Qiong

Later in the afternoon, our group took a trip to the local Walmart to see how it compares to the Min Sheng stores. There is a major difference!! Wal-mart does an amazing job in localizing their products (Min Sheng has no problem with this since they are local already). The store is huge. It seems most younger people prefer to shop at Wal-mart because they have larger selection, and they seem to have more happening music and décor. Most of the stores, including Wal-mart and Min Sheng also rent our space to retailers to sell their own items. For example, there are cosmetic counters and hair stylists placed strategically around Wal-mart. We discovered Wal-mart has their own brand of beer. Why can’t we get this in America?! (found out later it tastes like Natty Lite = yuck) I was surprised to see they were having a wine tasting at Wal-mart. I tried the Yunnan Red. Also was amazed to see live frogs, huge live fish, and other animals in the fresh food part of the market.

For dinner, we made an excursion to KFC. Being from Kentucky, you know I had to check it out. Again, the products are all localized. You do not see anything you would find in the US KFCs. They have a Chinese soup, Beijing chicken rolls (this is what I tried), corn salad, fish sticks, and all sorts of other items. But you could still get your good ol’ bucket-o-chicken too.

(Teamwork: Me, Mike, and Annie)

Finally, we had a meeting with all of the groups from IUPUI and Hong Kong City Univeristy to discuss what we had all done and learned during the course of the day. This went from 9-1130, and it was exhausting! Yet I still came back to the room to read an article on customer loyalty programs from a book I picked up at the airport in Newark. It had a lot of good information I was able to summarize for the team.

Tuesday will be lots more interviewing and maybe some customer surveys too. I think we already have some ideas up our sleeves…

Made it! - 7/5/2009

Today was my first day in Kunming. After many hours of traveling, I am glad to finally be here. The trip over was pretty uneventful. I was on of the lucky ones who arrived with my luggage. About half of our group lost theirs. Some is still even in the US!

My arrival in Shanghai was a bit interesting. I have to admit I was nervous about the possibility of being quarantined. This nervousness was not helped at all when the flight attendant announced we would all have to stay on the plane until everyone's temperature was taken and we were all cleared to leave. About 8 people entered the airplane with their white protective suits and masks and took everone's temperature. All of the passengers were taking photos because it was so unreal! Thankfully, no one was identified as being with a fever.

I was a bit surprised at the Shanghai airport. I really expected it to be extremely crowded and big...it was pretty large, but not nearly as many people as I had imagined. I was happy to see some of my classmates there when I arrived. We were on the same flight from Shanghai to Kunming, which helped ease some of the anxiety about getting a taxi to the hotel once we arrived. I was also very happy to see our professor waiting for us at the airport with Que, one of our Chinese students, to help us get our taxi. I made the mistake of saying a few words in Mandarin, because then our driver just kept talking to us. All I could say after that was 我不懂 （pronounced 'wo bu dong'), which means "I don't know".

Today we took a bus tour out to the stone forest (森林石). On the way there our tour guide told us a lot about Kunming. There are 26 minority groups, and 13 of them are only in Kunming. On the way, we saw a large cow on the sidewalk that had just been killed. It was a bit shocking to see it with all the blood pouring out.

While at stone forest, we took many photos and some of the girls dressed up in the traditional dress. We learned that you can tell whether a woman is married by looking at her hat. If there are two triangles, they are single. One triangle means they are engaged, and the black hat means they are married. Mostly we saw single ladies and a few dancers were married. Muna, a classmate jumped right in and started dancing with the musicians and dancers. The state apparently pays a salary for these people to come and sing and dance every day at the stone forest.

After we got back, we had a meeting with our entire group. Que gave each of us a China mug made of eggshell with our names and the date of our trip. Very pretty! Qiong also brought some delicious fruit to us from her hometown of Wenzhou. The fruit is called yangmei and is a delicious berry!

Most of us pretty much crashed after the meeting. Jet lag is a real drag....

gettin' ready....

Welcome to my awesome blog. 太好了！is one of my favorite Chinese phrases....kinda like "Awesome!" and you have to say it with the same vigorrrrr. Hopefully I will have time to blog and share pictures every day while I'm in China. I am going to China for 2 weeks as part of one of my MBA courses at IUPUI. The class is called China in Transition, and we will be in Kunming (Yunnan province) for several days working as consultants at a grocery store called Min Sheng. My team will be focusing on customer relationship management, and other teams will look at branding, store layout, employee performance measurement, pricing structure, etc. There are 3 teams of about 4 or 5 students each from IUPUI, along with many more teams from Hong Kong City U. I fly out at 6:45am on Friday, and will be meeting my classmates in Kunming Saturday night, July 4. Happy Independence Day! Then Sunday we are touring Kunming....Monday will be spent listening to all of the managers give presentations. Should be an intersting morning as we all sit and listen to the translators. Then Monday afternoon we meet w/our managers and get to start asking questions.

Really looking forward to the trip....just a little anxious about getting there. This will be my first trip to Asia, and I just hope everything goes smoothly.

Talk to you soon!
Blurdizz.