Ni Hao,

I'm back in the UK and would like to say sorry to everyone that was following my blogs that I was unable to blog during my final 3 weeks in China. It was difficult to find time and an internet connection that worked. I will try to summarise my final 3 weeks for you.

My last blog was of the first week with the company. We spent two weeks there in total and so I will continue by recording the rest of my time here. The final week within the company was beginning to drag slightly as the variety of jobs were becoming limited but I was still getting a sense of how the global company worked.

The importance for me was stressed of the diversity of the workers. What makes the company work is the employees that work there. They were a recruitment agency and so had to have a specialism in the area in which they were to recruit. They needed to understand the job role and promote it effectively.

I had the chance to make job advertisements and also try to speak to people that may have been suitable for the job through cold calling. The way that the Chinese work in relation to Hays is very different to that in the UK. As there are so many jobs available this gives the candidates choice of which job they want - whereas in the UK it is the opposite, it is the employers that pick the employees as there are a limited number of jobs.Another quality that was greatly desired was the ability to speak more than one language. It opens many doors for you to enter a global community.

One of the phrases that I had heard pop up a lot whilst I was there was that "China is a developing country" which seems to open many opportunities such as, a chance for a company to establish their name there before other big names and also the fact that there are many jobs available due to the fact that many people are still working hard at getting a good education and specialising in their areas of interest. However, this is also seen as a disadvantage because there are still areas where people are poor, areas with little opportunity and places where an effective system has still not been established. China is an extremely big country which makes it a difficult place to manage.

My next week was spent with my host family which wasn't really a family but a teenage girl and her mother. I had such a lovely time with her. I used to call her Rayne which was her English name. In China, they are given English names to make it easier for foreigners to remember. This is how clued up China is on being incorporated into the global community. They incorporate the English language into their curriculum in order to make sure their citizens have a chance at becoming global citizens.

We went to the world expo 2010 which was held in Shanghai. A once in a lifetime opportunity as it is not hosted often. People from all around the world come especially to see it. It is a place that displays world exposition galleries of human inspirations and thoughts an exchange of economic, environmental, cultural, scientific and technological aspects of different countries as each one has it's own chance to show what they believe their country represents. It was an interesting 2 day trip. I wish we could have spent longer there.

Me and Rayne also went to restaurants together, had late night talks, went to an amusement park, went to the supermarket and spent time with each others friends. I ate some great breakfasts the highlight being something called Bao Zi being my favourite. It is a stuffed steamed bun with different flavours in the middle. That is something I will definitely miss. mmmmm..... Yummy!

Some of the things I noticed whilst staying in a Chinese home was that they like to keep to a schedule whilst we liked to be slightly flexible. Nearly everyone lives in apartment blocks with one floor because the city is so densely populated. Public transport and bicycles were a popular form of getting around. They liked to make sure that you are ok so whenever you were with them they would take good care of you no matter what maybe that was just because they thought it was their duty but whatever the reason it was definitely done. I felt that I was looked after very well.

Whilst in Shanghai I had interacted with many different teenagers from a number of different schools as we were mixed with "Chinese fellows" chosen to help us around the city and to create a type of cultural exchange. What I found about these teenagers is that they were all so different. They were all a mix of individual personalities just like a group of teenagers that could be found in the UK. I couldn't group them all into one category because they were all different.

I think we have this preconception of Chinese people and what they will be like. They wear traditional clothes and they all practice Kung Fu - but they are not like that at all in Shanghai, and I'm sure in a majority of China.

I did find that western culture was a big influence within their society though. I was watching the news once and saw a story on the growing rates of obesity in children due to the changing diets and also noticed how materialistic some of the people were there. They were interested in brands and cared about how they looked. Many women wore heels a lot in order to look taller, many had their hair styled and those who could afford to be wore fashionable clothing. Clothing that you could see people in the west wearing but with a twist of Shanghainese.

Some women are that conscious about how they look they get their eyes widened through surgery because they believe it to be more beautiful and some carry around umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun in order to stop their skin from getting darker.

The music they listen to is also western influenced, rap, indie, rock, pop. I think there is a growing trend that being more western is cool.

There are some people however that think differently, they are proud of the Shanghainese culture but then again this culture is infused with a western culture and a mixed identity from what I had seen but maybe the Shanghainese find a place within the midst of it all.

I don't want this post to be too long so I'll end it here and I will talk about the last week in my next blog.

We are living in an increasingly globalising world with changing societies but where is Britain's place in all of this and how are we to deal with this within in UK?

Thanks for reading my thoughts and experiences in this Blog.

Pooja x