Sunday, October 21, 2007
Zhao pin 招聘
Recruiting (with Chinese characteristics)
I've been doing a lot of zhao pin for work lately. In fact, I'm in Chengdu (Sichuan province) right now recruiting at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. This past weekend/yesterday, I was in Beijing at Tsinghua University (the "MIT" of China) interviewing more candidates.
As always, recruiting is a grueling, but enjoyable process. A colleague described it as "going to battle". I won't go that far, but suffice to say I'll need a serious rest at the end of this week. I'm not used to being "on" all day like you have to be when you have 8 back-to-back-to-back-to... interviews.
A few observations:
- Chinese students are much hungrier for jobs than their American counterparts. Here's a picture of the info session we did to a capacity crowd of 300+ students at Zhejiang University. Keep in mind these are all Masters of Engineering students hoping for a shot at a job with my company. For reference, when I recruit at my alma mater the University of Colorado we're lucky to get 30 students at our info session, and half of them only show up for the free pizza.
- It doesn't take a genius to figure out the major paradigm shift going on in the high tech world. China is simply graduating much more, much hungrier, highly qualified engineering students than the US. Anyone still clutching to that stereotype that Chinese students lack the creativity to compete in the global marketplace isn't paying attention.
- I had the nerve-racking but rewarding opportunity to present - in Chinese - in front of hundreds of people. I think (hope?) they were so blown away to see a foreigner unexpectedly speaking Chinese they didn't notice my horrible grammar and pronunciation.
- It hits home that you're really in China when you see classes like "Principles of Marxist Philosophy" and "A survey of Deng Xiaoping's thoughts" on all the transcripts.
I've been doing a lot of zhao pin for work lately. In fact, I'm in Chengdu (Sichuan province) right now recruiting at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. This past weekend/yesterday, I was in Beijing at Tsinghua University (the "MIT" of China) interviewing more candidates.
As always, recruiting is a grueling, but enjoyable process. A colleague described it as "going to battle". I won't go that far, but suffice to say I'll need a serious rest at the end of this week. I'm not used to being "on" all day like you have to be when you have 8 back-to-back-to-back-to... interviews.
A few observations:
- Chinese students are much hungrier for jobs than their American counterparts. Here's a picture of the info session we did to a capacity crowd of 300+ students at Zhejiang University. Keep in mind these are all Masters of Engineering students hoping for a shot at a job with my company. For reference, when I recruit at my alma mater the University of Colorado we're lucky to get 30 students at our info session, and half of them only show up for the free pizza.
- It doesn't take a genius to figure out the major paradigm shift going on in the high tech world. China is simply graduating much more, much hungrier, highly qualified engineering students than the US. Anyone still clutching to that stereotype that Chinese students lack the creativity to compete in the global marketplace isn't paying attention.
- I had the nerve-racking but rewarding opportunity to present - in Chinese - in front of hundreds of people. I think (hope?) they were so blown away to see a foreigner unexpectedly speaking Chinese they didn't notice my horrible grammar and pronunciation.
- It hits home that you're really in China when you see classes like "Principles of Marxist Philosophy" and "A survey of Deng Xiaoping's thoughts" on all the transcripts.
Xi'An Photos 西安照片
Here are the Xi'An photos to go along with Laurel's post.
As always, all the good stuff is on my Flickr site.
As always, all the good stuff is on my Flickr site.
Beijing Photos 北京照片
Here are the Beijing photos to go along with Laurel's post.
As always, all the good stuff is on my Flickr site.
As always, all the good stuff is on my Flickr site.
Great Wall Photos 长城照片
Here are the Great Wall photos to go along with Laurel's post.
As always, all the good stuff is on my Flickr site.
As always, all the good stuff is on my Flickr site.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Tianqi 天气
Weather.
For once, I cannot complain. Check out that humidity! Dropped by 50% in the past 2 weeks. Ahhh, autumn... What am I doing at work today (well, updating the blog...), I should be out enjoying these last days before winter.
Looking forward to the weekend!
For once, I cannot complain. Check out that humidity! Dropped by 50% in the past 2 weeks. Ahhh, autumn... What am I doing at work today (well, updating the blog...), I should be out enjoying these last days before winter.
Looking forward to the weekend!
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Xi'an 西安
Xi'an - Home of the Terracotta Warriors
After 4 days in Beijing, we boarded a train for Xi'an. We had heard mixed reviews about this city. Some people day there is nothing there. Some people love it for hos laid back it is compared to the metropolises of Beijing and Shanghai. I don't know if our day and a half was enough time to come to a solid conclusion. The weather didn't help.
We stepped off our over night train from Beijing at 6am and boarded a public bus directly for the terracotta warriors. An interesting thing was, it was dark at 6am in Xi'an - partly because winter is coming, partly because of its location 1000 miles west of Shanghai in a country with only one timezone. We got to the site an hour later and got in just as the park opened. For those of you who are not familiar with this attraction, please read about it on Wikipedia, it is pretty fascinating (and kind of crazy): Terracotta Warriors. The site itself was fascinating. This was the highlight of Xi'an.
The rest of the trip was food, Tang Dynasty performance (actually cool), and then rain. We really wanted to get to ride bikes up on the wall that surrounds the city, but were prevented by weather. Next time, I suppose. Maybe, though for Xi'an, there won't be a next time.
Language Notes (since this blog is about Chinese language too!):
Xi'an
Maybe you were wondering about why this city name is divided with the apostrophe. Maybe you were also wondering how the heck to pronounce it. Well, for the first question, if you look at the Chinese, there are two characters, they are the characters for "West" and "Peace". Without the apostrophe, "xian" would only be one character, and could have a multitude of meanings, including line, salty or first (all separate characters). Also, the pronunciation is different with and without the ' : Xi'an (Shee Ahnn) vs. xian (she-en)
Shaanxi and Shanxi
There are 2 provinces in China with the same name. Or so it seems. Xi'an is located in Shaanxi. Next door, you have Shanxi. The characters for these provinces are different, but the pinyin is the same (both should be "shanxi"). I guess to avoid confusion for the western world that only uses a 26-character alphabet, they had to add the extra A. All the reason why China will be on the 30,000-character system for a long time.
Beijing 北京
Beijing - The Capital of China!
We are back from our Guo Qing Jie trip to Beijing. Just like everyone said, it was crowded. But overall, it was a good trip. I can't believe it took us almost 2 years to get there! Beijing has a totally different feel from Shanghai. It's difficult to describe... it felt slower and deeper.
I will spare you all the trip details, since at a thousand words each, I am sure Tim's pictures will tell the whole story. Here are some of the highlights:
We are back from our Guo Qing Jie trip to Beijing. Just like everyone said, it was crowded. But overall, it was a good trip. I can't believe it took us almost 2 years to get there! Beijing has a totally different feel from Shanghai. It's difficult to describe... it felt slower and deeper.
I will spare you all the trip details, since at a thousand words each, I am sure Tim's pictures will tell the whole story. Here are some of the highlights:
- Stepping off the plane to low (40%) humidity and Autumn conditions.
- Introducing my friends to Chinese Beer, Kung Pao Chicken and their favorite, fish-smelling pork.
- Walking the Wall - 10km from Jinshanling to Simatai - under unbelievable blue skies. It was physically challenging, and (mostly) quiet and gorgeous.
- Visiting the site pictured on the back of the 100 kuai note - the Beijing Congressional Building next to Tian'anmen.
- The Temple of Heaven at sunset
- Stumbling upon an opera group in the park of the Summer Palace
- The Beijing Attractions - you've gotta see them, and the highlight is probably having them checked off the list: Forbidden City, eating Beijing Duck, Jingju (Beijing Opera), Tian'anmen Square
We really liked it. I think we might need to go back for another visit. We totally missed the underground grunge rock scene.
Photos on Flickr
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