On our final day in Shanghai we had a free morning (finally!), so I decided to go to a market with a few friends to do some shopping.  The market was really fun, it had 5 levels of stalls filled with vendors pushing their fake sweaters, watches, purses, iphones etc on us.  We decided to buy fake Rolexes (why that would ever seem like a good idea is beyond me), so we did a lot of recon and some heavy duty negotiating before picking our vendor.  When we asked her to show us the good watches, she used a remote to open a fake wall which led into a room filled with counterfeit purses, and then opened yet another fake wall to get us to the watches.  We ended up all getting watches for about $15, and by the end of the night one of them had stopped working.  Oh well, it was all for the experience.  I also bought a sweater which was a huge lifesaver in the freezing cold of beijing.

The fake rooms where we bought our watches

We did not identify watch truth

That afternoon, we went to an entrepreneurs panel with a bunch of Haas alums who were entrepreneurs and VCs in China.  They all had interesting stories and talked a lot about the challenges and opportunities of doing business in China.  One of them had a great quote which was “There are three things you need to know about China 1) Anything is possible in China, 2) Nothing is easy in China, 3) When someone says there is no problem, you have a big problem”.  (This last one was echoed the next day when our bus tire blew out on the highway and instead of changing it, the driver said “It’s no problem, not an important tire” and continued to drive on it all day.)  All of the panelists talked about the growth and how many opportunities there were, but none of them said anything about the work being rewarding or wanting to stay in China.  It sounded very stressful, having to deal with the government and all of the cultural differences as an outsider.  They also said Mandarin is a must, one told me if you are willing to dedicate a year in China to studying Mandarin full time then within 3-5 years your career will be way ahead of where it would be in the states.

After the panel we went on a 4 hour karaoke binge, which was my first ever karaoke experience.  They take their karaoke very seriously there.  The place could only be described as a karaoke palace with hundreds of individual rooms (that fit up to 25 ppl).  It was massive, and on more than one occasion we had to wait for a room to be available!  They bring cases of beer to your room, and there is even a free buffet after 11pm.

Chinese Duet

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