Shàng Zhōu: From Bubble Tea to Khazakstanian Hockey

Note: I know there is no media in this post currently. I am writing it from a rural area of China, where I am not able to airdrop photo’s or access internet easily. I will add photo’s upon arrival to Shenzhen!

Nihao ma to all! Welcome to my first content-heavy blog post, which, like all my blog posts, is behind schedule. I’ve been in Shenzhen for almost 3 weeks now (whaaat?) and yet here I am, writing my first week blog post.

My first week in Shenzhen was a whirlwind! Yes, a lot of it was paper work, and medical visits, and tears shed from stress, but there was also some real gems in that first week as well. Particularly, my first weekend was full of new experiences.

Friday

Let’s start with Friday night. On Friday night, Chinese University of Hong Kong Shenzhen (CUHK SZ) put on a welcome dinner for the GSCLM students and the Global Business Innovation (GBI) cohorts. This is where I feel a liiiittle guilty. You see, CBS organized a full on trip to Hamburg for us, multiple company visits including companies such as Maersk and Amazon, and also had a full week of welcome activities. CUHK SZ has not only been extremely helpful in getting life in China set up, they also coordinated a weekend trip to HK for us and on top of it all, they organized this welcome dinner. Now what did UBC do when everyone was all at UBC? A $25 gift card to Cactus Club and one “welcome event” in CPA hall. (cue the cricket noises). Nonetheless, I felt a little guilty at such an extravagant welcome dinner when UBC gave us sub-par sushi in CPA hall.

I digress. Back to the welcome dinner, which was held at a 5-star hotel in down town Shenzhen. This place was extravagant, so extravagant we felt the need to take multiple photos to prove that we had stepped into an establishment so pristine. See below.

After this dinner, our cohort was feeling pretty happy and full. Why stop the night there? We decided, to bond as a cohort of course, that we should all go out. We headed to Villa, a popular night club/pub that is close to campus. Deep, Spencer and I shared a 2 L of rum and coke. Here’s the thing: we didn’t expect it to be very strong. Like at home, we expected 90% rum and 10% Coke. We were very very wrong. In fact, if anything it was 90% rum and 10% coke. I nearly spat out my first sip. Needless to stay, we did not finish the 2L. We headed out early because the school had organized a city tour for us the next morning at 8:00 AM.

Saturday

Rise and shine baby! We met at the central bus station (main campus) bright and early to begin our city tour. 7-11 pastry in hand, I was ready to conquer the day. The itinerary was as follows: old town, 2 museums on both China’s history and Shenzhen’s and then a market. First stop: old town. This was the longest portion of the tour by far. We started with a walking tour, where our guide Rita took us through some of the history of the city. Check out some of the photo’s:

We stopped for lunch at a traditional restaurant in the old town. This was a true hunger games. Imagine roughly 60 students, all starved, 20 in each room. The food was arriving in sporadic bursts, and each time the students would literally jump from table to table to get their hands on what was out. I’ve been working on that whole “trust the process” thing I referenced in my last blog post, so I stayed seated for the most part, since I could see them setting up a long table for lunch outside. I should do this “trust the process” thing more often, because half an hour later, lunch was outside waiting for us. The best part about the lunch, was there was a live saxophone player having the absolute time of his life. His happiness was contagious, and soon we were all dancing along! Check out the video below:

Next stop: museums. The first museum about Chinese history was quite interesting. I strayed away from the group, and our tour guide Rita, because there was signs in English and I’m a nerd who likes reading the explanations. It was really interesting to learn more about China’s history! Next, was a museum specifically about the development in Shenzhen. Unfortunately, this museum was in only Chinese. I lost the group, and like a child with a picture book, tried to make meaning out of the different exhibits. Lastly, we headed to a street market. By this time, our group was pretty tired. After walking the market I got the most interesting bubble tea I’ve had yet – look at the bubbles!

Sunday

Sunday morning we headed to Loahu Commercial Mall, otherwise known as the fakes mall. We were on a mission. We also had a couple strategies going in:

1. Travel in partners through the mall. When you want something, have the other person criticize it. Don’t take the criticism to heart, this is the classic “good cop bad cop” of bargaining.
2. Know your willingness to pay (WTP) and start substantially below – even if they laugh at you, which happened more frequently than I was expecting. 
3. Never ask the price. That gives them the starting point. Instead start them with your super low, fraction of your WTP. A seller will never sell at below cost, so if they truly turn you around after a haggle battle, your WTP may need to be adjusted. 
4. Use other vendors prices to bargain. Spencer liked saying “I was offered this for 100, why are you charging 300”. Most the time, there was no one offering it for 100. 

We started by just browsing the 5 floor mall, then we all went on our separate missions. Spencer and I were unsuccessful in getting airpods for our WTP. However, I did get a pair of prescription “Rayban” sunglasses and a “Daniel Wellington” watch. A big shout out to Deep, who helped me haggle.

Sunday evening we headed to Karaoke Rooms for Kamil’s birthday. This was hands down one of the funnest experiences I’ve had in Shenzhen so far. Essentially, you just go into soundproofed rooms with alcohol and food and sing Kareoke. It sounds less fun than it is in reality, I swear. I absolutely jammed to High School Musical, Shawn Mendes, and some old style Justin Bieber. You can really tell I am a Gen Z… Check out the video below:

Monday (not weekend)

On Monday evening, we had the opportunity to watch a KHL game. The KHL is the second best hockey league (to the NHL). The teams playing, despite being Asian teams, were full of Canadians! In fact, one of the players was even from Maple Ridge.

On our way to the game, we were told to go through the back. We however, entered through a bizarre corridor that led us underground. We continued to walk by countless security. It wasn’t until about 15 minutes through that we realized, we were at ground level. We were not where we were supposed to be. With all this security, how did we get away with this?

Our theory is that they thought we were with the team, and Chelsea, our friend was our translator. When Chelsea went up to the security and asked in fragmented Mandarin how to get into the stands, they realized that she was in fact not. We were pretty quickly escorted out to the proper entrance. The walk out did include a walk past the dressing rooms, and a brief hello to the Khazakstaniazn coach.

That’s a wrap on my first weekend-isa in Shenzhen! It was quite eventful! The weekends following have also been quite busy, with both a visit to Shanghai and a visit to Beijing blog post coming your way soon!