Week 6

你好！ 怎么样！

This week is the week of midterm presentations! I had the privilege of presenting first on Monday. My presentation was a combination of the Chinese culture, as well as a mix of both of my majors, International Business and Marketing! After some thought, I decided to present on the idea of the corporation McDonald's going abroad into China, and how they had to alter their business structure to make their company succesful when going overseas. Researching this topic brought up a lot of interesting information that I would have otherwise not known about McDonalds. For example, while I understand companies have to change their products to fit the customs and culture of the country they are establishing themselves in, I wasn't familiar with the types of products that McDonald's is offering currently in China. The Filet-O-Shrimp is huge in China, as well as items such as: The green tea and red bean sundae, seaweed shaker fries, the prosperity burger, and many other products. One thing that I found out while interviewing 望老师 was that, KFC was actually a bigger corporation in China and was more succesful. She thought that McDonald's did not offer enough Chinese culture based food and therefore did not enjoy McDonald's as much as KFC. KFC has also dominated the Chicken fast food market, so McDonald's had to reorganize their strategy and they are now pushing their beef products more heavily. In my opinion, that is what corporations struggle the most with when they go abroad. They fail to recognize just how important it is to research the market that you will be entering in to.

Wednesday in class, there were three other presentations that were presented to our class. They were very interesting and I really enjoyed learning more about the culture and customs of China and their people. My favorite presentation of the day was probably the one on the Chinese Superstitions, and realizing how much of an emphasis they place on it. For example, four is an unlucky number in China because it is nearly homophonous to the word "death". So many buildings will skip the fourth floor just as many American buildings do not have a "thirteenth" floor.

Today, Friday, we went over the rap song we have been learning the past week with our class, and we performed that in groups! We also had two more presentations today, one on international business and Chinese, the other on Marketing and Chinese. It was interesting to hear about both of those especially because they pertain to my majors. Lastly, after reviewing some of the past chapters we have learned, I have discovered five particular sentences that have tripped me up when I have done either the check up or the worksheets, those being: 你的同学是谁？， 同学的工程书。，那是我的同学的工程书。，对了，你是那过人？和， 我回说一点中文。

All in all, this week was a nice break! It was really cool to hear about what other students had researched about the Chinese culture, and to be able to see how it affected them in different ways. I liked to see the connections between why other students were studying Chinese, and how it benefitted them in their major. My goal for this upcoming week and the rest of the term would be to really understand the stroke orders, and to improve my memory recognition of the hanzi words!

Zai Jian!!

Ai Ke Ni