Yi-what

Today we woke up in Yiwu, China after a short night. We traveled by train south from Shanghai. Yiwu is where we will be spending the majority of our time while we are here, as it is the location of our host school, the Yiwu Industrial and Commercial College, and the Yiwu Market, where our internship experiences will be taking place. We started the day by meeting some students and professors at the school, and then had our first official day of classes where we learned some basic information about the city. We concluded the lesson by learning a few key phrases in Chinese, and let me tell you, this will be a very slow process. The language seems nothing like English, but I guess thats what I get for being a foreigner.

We visited the Yiwu Market in the afternoon, the World's Largest Wholesale Market! I had no idea what to expect, but after hearing that it would take nearly a year and a half to visit all the vendors if you spent 3 minutes at each, I realized this was no Mall of America. This place had everything you could ever imagine, and I only saw about 2 hours of the place... tomorrow is when our internship begins, so I will be getting a more in depth look as to how the market is operated.

We ended the night by celebrating the 'Dragon Boat Festival.' "The Dragon Boat Festival is believed to have originated in ancient China. A number of theories exist about its origins as a number of folk traditions and explanatory myths are connected to its observance. Today the best known of these relates to the suicide in 278 BCE of Qu Yuan, poet and statesman of the Chu Kingdom during the Warring States period." -(Wikipedia) None of us really knew anything about this festivity, but for us the night was full of food and fun, and then more food. I do not understand how the people of this culture stay so fit after eating so much so often, but maybe after seeing how much walking we do, it makes more sense. The food is quite good I must say, much more natural than in the states; lots of rice and noodle dishes, and then many forms of meat/fish. I must say when they brought out the duck head I was a bit skeptical, and in my opinion it did not quite match up to mom's home cooking.

-Zaijian