Day 8

Thursday was a very, very long day. Four of us in our group work for Target so we visited Target Sourcing Services where we met with the Director of Import Transportation and a manager in sourcing. It was very interesting to learn about Target’s operations here in China. Afterwards, we had a lecture followed by our welcome dinner. The dinner was originally scheduled for Monday, but moved to Thursday due to the 3 day mourning period for the earthquake. During that time, there could be no entertainment – no music in stores, no karaoke, no bands, etc. The dinner was excellent – our best meals are when our Chinese friends order for us! We definitely learned that they like to drink! We had lots of beer (Tsing Tao), a Chinese wine, and Chinese liquor (incredibly strong – someone read 52% alcohol). They do bombs similar to Irish Car Bombs with beer and the Chinese liquor. Needless to say, we all were a bit tipsy and then had to go attend a conference call with a director from Polaroid. That was interesting given our state, but we made it through.

After that, we all ventured out to try some karaoke. We all (30 or so of us) piled into a small room where we did karaoke from like 11 – 2 AM. It was very fun and an interesting experience. A very late night though followed by a meeting with the VP of Suning (a electronics retailer in China) this morning!

I forgot my camera in the room so I'll try to get some pictures posted tomorrow!