City Exploration in Hangzhou

The Global Entrepreneur Program—Chinese semester begins! On 5^th Jan. 2012, the second day after the arrival of all the GEP students, the School of Management organized the “Hangzhou City Exploration” in order to give some basic ideas and impressions about the Hangzhou city where they are going to spend the next four months.

69 GEPers from all over the world were divided into 13 groups and every group had several destinations to visit and tasks to accomplish. We were asked to take photos of the famous places or architectures and then prepare a presentation to share these experiences in the meeting later on with everybody.

The destinations mostly were around the West Lake and the Wushan Square. In the Hefang Street, foreign students were very interested in the Chinese handicraft and they visited the Hangzhou silk store, chopstick and sculpture shop for a long time. When seeing some people wearing the ancient costume, they were all excited and put on these clothes to took photos . So there were a lot of foreign Kings, Queens, Princess and Generals in the Hefang Street that day.

The GEPers also walked around and enjoyed the beautiful views of the West Lake. The laugh and footprints of all the students were everywhere around the Lake. Some students were interested when they saw some elder people were practicing calligraphy in the ground only using water; some were very active and they joined the dancing team of local people; and some other groups not only took photos of the designated architectures but also the smiling face of Hangzhou local people.

I think through these photos and experiences, all the GEPers had a better understanding of the ordinary Chinese people and their daily lives.