Seeds For The Future 2018, My Journey
I just came back from China as I was selected to take part in Huawei’s Seeds For the Future Program. For those who aren’t familiar with the program, it is an all expenses paid trip for two weeks to China. It is mainly an internship offered for students from all over the world to get a taste of the Chinese culture and to learn about Huawei’s latest technologies.
We spent the first week in Beijing. The weather there was extremely hot. We noticed that Chinese women use their umbrellas at all times to cover not only from the sun, but also from the rain, as it could suddenly rain cats and dogs. The first day, we went to visit the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. They were both marvelous. I felt great to finally see a wonder of the world’s seven wonders. We met with a lot of people there. The majority didn’t know Tunisia. And whenever we explained that we were from Africa, they wondered how would that be possible with our light-colored skins. It was clear they didn’t know much about Africa.
In Beijing, we were amazed by the number of bicycles there. Everybody knew how to drive and would rent one on a regular basis. For someone who doesn’t know how to ride a bike, I felt a little bit frustrated. Another thing we discovered there, is to what extend WeChat and QRCode were used in China. In fact, WeChat is a mobile application that we were instructed to install before our travel. I thought it was just like messenger, but I was mistaken as it was a necessity for a Chinese person. It offers a variety of services such as audio and video calls, photos exchanging, payment and geolocalisation services and most importantly QRCode detection. The use of QRCode is extremely popular in china. We found QRCodes litteraly everywhere. You just need to scan the QRCode with your phone to pay for an item, to rent a bike, to pay the taxi,….
Sadly, I didn’t have much chance to explore the WeChat functionality as my account was blocked because I used a VPN. It is known that a lot of websites like Google, Facebook, … are blocked in China. In fact, you can only access them by using a VPN, but, since the use of VPNs is prohibited in China, whenever you do so, your WeChat account is immediately blocked and you are unable to recover it.
An important part of our trip was the opening ceremony. It took place in an old traditional Chinese House that Huawei reserves for its guests. I loved the house architecture. We learned many things about the ancient China: the statues in front of houses indicate the social rank of the house and marriages could only happen between families of the same rank, the daughters were prohibited and their rooms were always in the back, all families desired many children and planted trees inside for this purpose, ..
During this ceremony, we had the pleasure to assist to the Many Faced Man performance. This performance is greatly known in China. We also had the opportunity to try the Chinese cuisine. The first thing we noticed is that Chinese people love to eat together. In all the restaurants we visited, there were big round tables with a round mirror in the middle. The plates were put on the rolling mirror and everybody shared the dishes. Chinese people also loved to drink hot water and tea.
We spent our mornings in class, we had mainly Chinese lessons, but we also had painting and calligraphy lessons. We learned the basics of the Chinese writing and how to hold the brush.
The teachers were extremely friendly and were very open about their culture. They told us very interesting things about their beliefs. Chinese people are afraid of death and they all wish to live longer. They hate the number four, because its pronunciation is very close to the word ‘death’ in Chinese. They also have lucky numbers like nine and eight. The teachers also told us about the Chinese medicine, which is completely different from ours. It is based more on massages.
In the evenings, we generally go out. On one of our tours, we were pleased to find some Chinese people dancing in the street. It is very frequent in China to find these kinds of groups practicing and dancing in the streets. They were extremely nice and they invited us to join them. They taught us the steps and took pictures with us.
Before we left the city, we went shopping. We went to the Silk Market, greatly reputed in Beijing. There, we had the chance to pargen a lot. It seems like pargening is a common habit with Chinese people. We only stopped by one or two fixed-price shops in our stay. In all the others, we had to pargen.
For our graduation ceremony, we sat for a language test then we sang a nice Chinese song we learned and some Tunisian songs. It was a lot of fun.
After that, we took the plane to Shenzen. Shenzen is quite different from Beijing. They are way fewer bicycles and more skycrapers. For the first couple of days, we went sightseeing, we visited Shenzen’s best places like Hakka Village, and it’s famous museum. We learned the history of Shenzen and admired the amount of work accomplished in just thirty years.
During our visit the Hakka village, we had a glimpse to China’s most interesting monuments in just a half an hour, as we took a ride on the train. We then attended a beautiful clothes show of the different Chinese ethnicities.
We also went shopping, we went to the local market to buy clothes and suitcases and to the electronics market to buy devices. There were a lot of fake and low-quality products there, but you can get really good stuff from some brands. Just remember to always test something before you buy it.
After the short break, we started our training lessons. They took place in Huawei training center. It was indeed a lovely place. We were with three other groups from Brazil, Portugal and Vietnam. We learned about 2G,3G,4G and 5G technologies. We also went to Huawei’s Labs to configure in practice our own 4G base stations.
The first day of the training, we had a lecture about Huawei’s management process. I found extremely interesting, especially Huawei’s 2012 labs. In fact, Huawei’s put in place these research centers to prepare for the worst and be ahead of the disasters. I also learned that Huawei rotates CEO’s every four years and that it does a re-evaluation and a re-assessment for all employees every four years as well. I always wondered about how big companies are run, so I really enjoyed the lecture. It was my second favorite thing of the trip.
As for my first favorite thing about the trip, it was the Exhibition Hall. I was amazed to see that the next inventions and products weren’t that out of the box. They were based on the simple idea of how to make life better? The Smart City, the Smart Hospital, the Smart Government, the Smart RailWay and many other Huawei’s solutions were all just daily-life smart solutions based on IOT and Cloud Computing.
One last thing that made our stay really pleasant is the warm welcome we received from Huawei’s staff. We lived in the Amber Plaza Hotel, which is a Huawei’s private Hotel and we were treated like true VIPs.
During our stay in Shenzen, we had limited time for shopping so we decided to order some souvenirs. The guide was really nice and agreed to accord us this favor. We ordered some souvenirs online and we were extremely pleased that they arrived in less than 24 hours. We have already heard about the Speed of these services, like Ali Baba and GD.com and experiencing them was a great delight.
For our closing ceremony, we sang some traditional Tunisian songs as well. I had the opportunity to take an interview, which a great experience for me.
We spent our last day in China in Hongkong. We realized at once that HongKong is different from the rest of China, as it has its different currency and different visa. HongKong is full of skyscrapers and very expensive. We visited Victoria Heights were we could enjoy a marvelous sight of the whole city. Then we went to the local market to buy some souvenirs.
Now that I am back home, I would like to thank Huawei for this unique experience that has changed my vision.
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Note: This article was originally published on my linkedin
