Studytrip China November 2012

Beijing & Shanghai

Hi there,

This is the first year that the minor China is given. During the classes this minor con-tains, we learned a lot about Chinese habitants and their habits. As an extra learning process, we were able to visit China and actually see what we have learned in the past weeks. This report will tell you briefly about our stories dur-ing the 10 days trip to China. First, we have visited the capital Beijing. Over there, we viewed some cultural aspects of this city. Later on, we have visited some companies and one university. After a four days stay at the capital, we flew to another major city: Shanghai. The days in Shang-hai were filled by more company visits of international, Chinese and Dutch companies and two more universities. During the evenings, we had time off, most of the evenings, we ate together with the whole group. Later on, some of us went out and even visited a real Chinese Karaoke club (a.k.a. KTV). Our last day in Shanghai we spent it the way we liked it. Most of us went shopping for presents for our beloved ones at home. Others spent their day sightseeing. Overall, the visit in China was marvellous! It’s definitely highly recommended! Enjoy reading about our journey! Yours, Shisei Holwerda

Middle picture left to right, back to front: Ivar van der Lugt, Ralph Hofstede, Tim Versteeg, Niels Feeleus, Vincent van Driel, Luc van der Sar, Coco van Alphen, Shisei Holwerda, Lars Taffijn, Roos Bloedjes, Henk Chin & Marjolein Moonen

Sunday 4 November 2012: Beijing

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Ivar van der Lugt

Ralph Hofstede

Date: 4 November 2012 Authors: Ralph & Ivar

Great Wall & Temple of Heaven

Great Wall of China On Sunday we woke up to discover the whole city to be white of snow. This promised to be a beautiful view on the Great Wall so we were all very ex-cited to go. Our guide picked us up with a van and told us it would be an hour drive to the part of the wall we were going to visit. We were going to ‘Mutianyu Great Wall’, which is in the eyes of many Chinese the best pre-served part of the wall. After the inevitable photographic session, a few of us decided to try and walk as big a part as possible in the time we were given on the wall. The rest of the group stayed at the entry point and agreed to meet at the bottom of the wall. After an hour or so on the wall, we all met at the van to go to the next place. Originally, we would be visit-ing the Ming tombs, but due to the heavy snowfall in the mountains, our guide told us it was too dangerous to drive over the mountain roads. We therefore decided to go to the Temple of Heaven in downtown Beijing. On the way to the Temple, we stopped at the Olympic Park in Beijing to make some pictures and have a quick look around. After which we continued our way to the Temple of Heaven.

Temple of Heaven After we visited the Great Wall Of China we went to the Temple of Heaven, located in Beijing. This impressive complex of temples and religious build-ings showing us the rich cultural history of China’s capital, Beijing. This com-plex is listed at the UNESCO World Heritage Site, a list with special cultural or physical significance. The Temple of Heaven has been built in 1406 – 1420 during the Ming Dynasty. The Temple of Heaven showed us the rich cultural history of China. We vis-ited the Temple of Heaven during the second day after our arrival. After we visited the Temple, we knew more about the culture of China and that made the different way of doing business in China more obvious. Even in China today, the cultural history of China is still important.

Monday 5 November 2012 - Beijing

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Ivar van der Lugt

Ralph Hofstede

Date: 5 November 2012 Authors: Ralph & Ivar

AGCO & The Dutch Embassy

AGCO On Monday we had our first appointment at a company called AGCO, where we were welcomed by the director of the office in Beijing, Linn Warzelhan. AGCO is a company specialized in selling different brands of tractors and other agricultural equipment. The company is originated in the USA in 1990 and opened an office in China since 2012. The company has several factories in China in which they do light assembly and full fabrication of the products AGCO sells. AGCO is also building a brand new factory in which they’ll be making products for the Chinese market as well as for the export, something that is not happening yet. This new factory is due to open early 2013 and will be completely taking over the work of the existing factory in that city. AGCO is operating in over 140 countries all over the world, and has the Bei-jing office as headquarters for the Asia/Pacific part of the company. The company has a net sales figure of about $10 billion. Also AGCO has in-vested about 300 to 350 million $ in China annually over the last few years. With this big investment, the company hopes to get a solid base from which they can expand their activities in East Asia. To help achieve this goal, AGCO has a policy to employ as much Chinese people as possible eventually also in the management. Nowadays about 75% of the manage-ment consist of non-Chinese employees but this is due to change in the next 2 to 3 years. Keeping the Chinese employees indoors however proves to be quite a challenge as the average well educated Chinese person tends to change jobs every 2 to 3 years. AGCO tries to invest in their employees by offering them all sorts of training in order to bind them to the com-pany. This is also why AGCO is involved in Corporate Social Responsibility. AGCO has the goal to be the most important distributor of agricultural equipment in China and indeed all of Asia/Pacific. In order to do so, AGCO has a vision: “High tech solutions for professional farmers feeding the

world.”, this vision is supported by a mission: “Profitable growth through

superior customer service, innovation, quality and commitment.”.

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Ivar van der Lugt

Ralph Hofstede

The Dutch Embassy We were welcomed at the Dutch Embassy by Jeroen Lamers. Jeroen Lam-ers is a dutch citizen and head of the economic business part of the Dutch embassy in Beijing. He focussed the Dutch-spoken presentation on the economic development of China. In order to give us a good perspective he started far in the past with the Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty was the most developed empire in the world in ± 1100. This impressive empire has still consequences for the atti-tude of the Chinese people today (for example: the Chinese world map with China in the middle). In order to explain the rapid economic develop-ment in China today, we compared China with other East Asian countries (for example; Korea, Japan and India) and not with Western countries. Besides, we focussed on the relationship within China and with foreign countries. In the Chinese culture, relationships are very important and will definitely affect doing business in China today. A very interesting point which will be discussed during the presentation is the relationship with Japan. Unfortunately, Jeroen Lamers had to leave during his presentation, so he couldn’t finish the presentation. That’s why the most important part of the presentation (the post-history of China and economic growth in the past years) wasn’t discussed so far. But, so far the presentation was very interesting and a real highlight of the trip to China. I really hope that the students from the minor in 2013 will see the final part of the presentation from Jeroen Lamers.

Tuesday 6 November 2012: Beijing – Tangshang ,Hebei provincie

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Niels Feeleus

Luc van der Sar

Date: 6 November 2012 Authors: Luc & Niels

United University Hebei – Tangshang Departure to Beijing Central Station, the only train station in the city. But, just like everything else in China, it’s unsurprisingly huge. Despite the typically hasty atmosphere, there are still some amazed glazes towards the "huge" Western people. Once in a while, there even appears a hidden Chinese cell phone to capture this rare moment. “They won’t belie-ve this at home”, they probably will think. I’m still surprised by the amount of people staring and photographing us shamelessly. I think I know how a beginning celebrity feels like. Very nice experience, for once! After a long trip by train, we arrive at Tangshan station. There, we got warmly welcomed by the staff of the United University Hebei. The warm visit continues in a very official visit in a very fancy restaurant. The “Delegation of The Hague University of Aplied science”, that’s us, has arri-ved. From this point, our skills in Chinese etiquette are putting to the test Everything went well, accept for one small piece of meat, who knew to escape from my chopsticks and landed on the clean, white silk table cloth. Despite that incident, the official lunch was a great succes. After the luch, we’re brought to the university. One big land, with many sport fields, a library and a few buildings where lessons are held. We’re gui-ded towards an old building, which was in a doubtfull shape; old toilettes which were old, ugly and clogged whith cigarettes. Against all odds, the meeting room where we had to participate a presentation, was very over-whelming. Lovely directorchairs were waiting for us to sit down. A highran-king teacher spoke. He told about the university and many numbers which were all linked to the magnitude of the university. There were many diffe-rences in the numbers called, this was really remarkable. The website of the university shows that the university contains 20.000 students, while the guide who picked us up from the traintstation talked about 50.000 stu-dents and there was another teacher who had the floor and talked during his presentation even about 60.000 students! The actual amount of stu-dents of this university isn’t clear for us. However, it was really obvious how proud they are at the magnitude of the universities. After the presentations, our guide had a surprise for the Chine-se students, who joined us in the mean time. We, the students of The Ha-gue University of Applied Sciences, knew a Chinese song, and according to our guide, we wanted to sang this song for the Chinese students. This was very fun, namely because we didn’t know the text of the song very well and even when we are handed the lines, we couldn’t pronounce what we

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Niels Feeleus Luc van der Sar

read. Luckily, the Chinese students helped us through it and at least they thought it was very brave that we’ve tried. The students whom we had spoken to, were elected to communicate with us, since they were the best speaking English students of the university. This was very pleasant for us and therefore we could have a good conver-sation with most of them. The female student with whom I had a conver-

stion with, is calles NingZhand. She studies gong shang guan li, 行政管理,

i.e. administrative management. We exchanged our e-mailadresses and even now, after two weeks, we still have some contact by e-mail.

Wednesday 7 November 2012 - Shanghai

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Lars Taffijn

Coco van Alphen

Roos Bloedjes

Vincent van Driel

Date: 5 november 2012

Date: 7 November 2012 Authors: Lars, Coco, Roos en Vincent

Van Oord Marine Ingenuity During the second half of our trip to China we´ve visited Shanghai. On Wednesday we visited Van Oord Marine Ingenuity in Shanghai. Van Oord is a leading international contractor specializing in dredging, marine engi-neering and offshore projects (oil, gas and wind). Van Oord is Dutch-based, independent family business, which is characterized by visible lead-ership, long-term vision and a sound financial position. Van Oord is operat-ing in Shanghai since 2006. Cor van Oord invited us to their office in Shang-hai at Pujian Road. Van Oord and three of his employees provided us a three-hours presentation about the projects they are working on, finished projects (‘World’ in Dubai i.e.), procurement, equipment, challenges, logis-tics, human resources and finances. Although it was a long presentation, it was very interesting and we could see that they invested a lot of time to provide us a clear overview of what Van Oord is about. After the presenta-tion Cor invited us to have dinner with him and two of his employees at a restaurant located in the building next to Van Oord’s office. During the meal we had the opportunity to ask more about Van Oord or any other things we would like to ask. After dinner half of the group went to a kara-oke bar across the street and this was an interesting experience as well.

Thursday 8 November 2012 - Shanghai

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Lars Taffijn

Coco van Alphen

Roos Bloedjes

Vincent van Driel

Date: 8 November 2012 Authors: Lars, Coco, Roos en Vincent

Maritime University On the Thursday of this stay we travelled to the Maritime University. This was a one hour drive from our hotel threw the congested traffic of Shang-hai. We were picked up by our hotel at 08.30 in the morning. Because of some problems, not the entire group was present at the set time, so we left with half of our group. At the University they showed us a blueprint of the university and all of its buildings. With what we’re used to we thought the seize of the University was pretty huge. After this we were shown a maritime simulator. This way the students can practice how to control a huge containership. It was pretty awesome to see all the equipment, that’s an exact copy of the real ships, and to practice what it’s like to be at the wheel of a big containership. 10 minutes later we were taken to a big meet-ing room with nice leather chairs were we were given a presentation about the university. After this we had the opportunity to have a chat with groups of Chinese students. This was very interesting because the Chinese stu-dents are very eager to learn more about the European (and Dutch!) cul-ture and behavior. Obviously, we are very eager to learn more about China! After another half hour or so, we were invited to have a meal with the tour guide of the day. This was also very nice and very well arranged. Because of our time schedule we had to leave short after this meal and we were driven back to Shanghai Centrum.

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Tim Versteeg

Date: 9 November 2012 Author: Tim

Shanghai Ocean University & AVG group Ltd.

On Friday of this studytrip, there were some nice and less nice activities held. Early in the morning we depart to an university, called The Shanghai Ocean University. This university had a big campus with students who were very interested in our Western culture and were also eager to answer our questions. The way they showed us their university was very unique. In contrast with the way the previous universities led us around the campus, we were guided towards an class which was given to Chinese students. Also, they took us to the most beautiful building at campus, were students actually weren’t aloud . We’ve walked a lot and have seen pretty much the whole campus, as the building was pretty high. As a closure they invited us for lunch in the canteen of the students and over there we had our lunch together with the Chinese students. At the end of this visit, there was a Group picture taken with both Chinese lecturers and students and our group.

The second part of the program contained an business visit at AVP Group Ltd.. There, we were given a presentation by three Chinese ladies. They told us everything concerning their business. Unfortunately, it was more a standard presentation than a presentation especially made for us (with our knowhow about doing business in China). Afterwards, there was an oppor-tunity to ask questions, which was a very clarifying moment. During this time, they acknowledged that Chinese people really care for a long lasting business relationship instead of a short and snappy business deal. even kort maar krachtig zaken doen. Afterwards, there was a grouppicture taken and with this picture, our program for today had come to an end.

Friday 9 November 2012