Muschamp Rd

I was the only white person there

October 29th, 2005
China

Today was wasted, largely spent in bed for my own safety. However tonight I went out to dinner with a number of Tsinghua School of Economics and Management MBA classmates. I was invited by SeungHae Ahn, a Korean classmate. Several classmates went to a park today, but I had opted out to try and get stuff done. I failed miserably.

Ahn called me up at six, and was gracious enough to meet me at the Wei Lun building because I didn’t know where we were going. It was a restaurant in the far back corner of campus. It was in yet another large cafeteria building. When we arrived with his attractive wife and another classmate, there were already almost four full tables of people. I only knew one other person, a Korean girl name Eunjin Song. I was ultimately seated between two Chinese women and two Korean women, so I can’t complain.

Eventually some VIPs arrived. One of the draws, besides meeting some more of my Chinese classmates, was meeting some Executive MBA classmates. A Mr. An Li, was seated at my table. He took a liking to me as my first name had the same character as his ‘An’. Actually my Chinese name is 马士奇 which always goes down well, as it is both Chinese and not Chinese. However that is a story for another blog entry.

I also learned that gambei!, doesn’t mean cheers in China, but bottoms up. So after saying it to Mr. An Li, I became a very popular drinking companion. I had to drink many small glasses of beer. It actually interfered with my enjoyment of the meal. I didn’t eat that much and didn’t get to try all the dishes until some were cold.

I had a good time talking to Lee Hye Mi (Melanie). I even might have won some brownie points knowing the last character of her name is “beautiful”. We got along pretty well, as she is new to China, so her Chinese isn’t so strong so she was happy to speak English. Her English was of course excellent. I never got to talk to her friend much, she was much in demand among older, drunken, Chinese classmates. Lee Hye Mi’s brother is also currently studying mechanical engineering at UBC so we had a few things in common besides our lack of Chinese language ability.

I eventually was pulled away from Lee Hye Mi, by Ahn. We went on a tour of the tables, where I was introduced to many people. The tour consisted of three Koreans and me. My Chinese isn’t so good, but I managed to get a few laughs by saying I was Japanese (in Chinese) once. I also had to drink many glasses of beer and ran out of business cards before I went to all the tables. I gave out a lot more cards than I received.

I hope to add some photos from the evening when Ahn and others email them to me. (I guess that never happened as it is now 2024.) I enjoyed myself and was able to forget my troubles for a while. Of course when I get back, my room mate Nan nan, has noticed things aren’t quite right with me. This despite the fact she thinks I am a dedicated hard worker and a nice guy for going out of my way to help so many people, such as the undergrads.

I also got an email neigh two, from Mr. Steven Keller, whom I was correct in assuming has not read my blog. He spent many an hour reading my postings which he found both funny and disturbing. That’s me, I’m even funny when I’m depressed.

Of course now that Steve has learned a few more things, others will learn a few more things and there are a lot of things to learn. Lord knows I learned some hard, hard, lessons during my MBA.

2024 Update

Now it is many, many years later and I haven’t recovered from things that happened in 2005 and 2006. I did see Hye Mi many years later when we were both living in Shanghai. She had to leave China eventually and I left China eventually and giving it four more years of my life. I completed both my MBA and the last CFA® exam in China but it hasn’t resulted in fame and fortune. Neither has blogging, especially not correcting and improving old forgotten blog posts.

If you have thoughts on blogging or banquets in China you can leave a comment below. In addition to most of the external links busting, it seems like so did the Chinese characters, I fixed my name as I remember that.

6 Comments

  • Muskie says:

    Danna will be so happy to learn someone I don’t know has commented on my blog. Of course given how complicated the registration process is, Darlene couldn’t be bothered to register. The irony is, I already know Darlene’s email address and I don’t think you even need a real email address. I bet if it has an ‘@’ sign it will do.

    Anyway thanks for commenting Jim. I had some problems when I moved here, but they were more to do with the Chinese than China. And when I say the Chinese I don’t necessarily mean the people from China, but rather a very small subset of people of Chinese ancestry in my MBA program who decided, well I don’t know what they decided. But the end result is that I suffer.

    I’ll continue to blog about China as long as I’m here. My blog is only going to get more popular a fact that may forever cause problems for some…

    …cause I’m not getting better and I’m tired of protecting the guilty.

  • Muskie says:

    Danna will be so happy to learn someone I don’t know has commented on my blog. Of course given how complicated the registration process is, Darlene couldn’t be bothered to register. The irony is, I already know Darlene’s email address and I don’t think you even need a real email address. I bet if it has an ‘@’ sign it will do.

    Anyway thanks for commenting Jim. I had some problems when I moved here, but they were more to do with the Chinese than China. And when I say the Chinese I don’t necessarily mean the people from China, but rather a very small subset of people of Chinese ancestry in my MBA program who decided, well I don’t know what they decided. But the end result is that I suffer.

    I’ll continue to blog about China as long as I’m here. My blog is only going to get more popular a fact that may forever cause problems for some…

    …cause I’m not getting better and I’m tired of protecting the guilty.

  • jim says:

    I was intrigued by your comments on your experience in China. My nephew just went to China to teach in Xinzheng/Zhengzhou for the SIAS International University. He has had some wonderful experiences so far and now plans to spend another year there.

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