We also visited the Oriental Pearl TV Tower in the Pudong New Developing Area. Also located along the Huangpu River, Pudong has emerged as China’s financial and commercial hub. Pudong used to be mainly farmland and countryside until 1990, when the Chinese government decided to set up a special economic zone, encouraging the growth of multinational and financial services organizations in the area.
SHENZHEN
While the city is only 25 years old, Shenzhen has the highest wage rate in China’s mainland. Yet the average age of those who live in the city is only 24 years. The development of the city was made possible through the establishment of special economic zones after the country’s economic reform in 1978. A fishing village at that time, Shenzhen was chosen because of its strategic location, which permitted easy travel to and from Hong Kong.
By 2005, Shenzhen accounted for 15 percent of total Chinese income. Some statistics have revealed that its imports and exports have ranked number one in the country for almost a decade.
The Chinese government wants Shenzhen to become “the Silicon Valley” of China, and because of that, many information technology (IT) experts are flowing into this area.
While in Shenzhen, we visited the big electronics production plants. One of these, the Konka Group, exports its products, such as refrigerators, mobile phones, televisions and DVD players, to Western countries, including the United States. We saw many Chinese people carrying Konka’s phones.
HONG KONG
Our group spent only one night in Hong Kong, but it was wonderful. We visited Victoria Peak, the most famous tourist attraction with around seven million visitors a year. I have seen Hong Kong quite often in movies, so it was very exciting for me personally to stand in the same place where my favorite actor, Andy Lau, once stood. [Lau has been one of Hong Kong’s most commercially successful actors since the 1990s.]
We visited one of the most famous jewelry companies in Hong Kong, and we became aware that jewelry from Hong Kong is quite well known because of its glyptography [engraving of gemstones].
I have learned so many things through sightseeing, company visits and lectures at the universities. The most important thing is my growing awareness of the complexity of people from different parts of the world, the way they do business and insight into how to survive in this competitive world.
We left Hong Kong for home shortly after sunrise the next day. During the flight back, while everybody rested, I spent 15 hours on the plane watching movies. Of course most of them starred Andy Lau, and it made me hope that I will return to China some day soon.