Reflections on My Trip to China

After returning home, I had several assignments to complete reflecting on my time in China and the lessons I learned. I was tasked with writing five different reflection pieces, each on a different topic: 1) Major Reading Assignment and Report: 'Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory” by Peter Hessler, 2) Observations from My First Trip to China, 3) Overview of ARC China Visit, 4) Overview of Walmart China Visits, and 5) Overview of GoodMark-Asia and Li & Fung Visits. 

Some of the key lessons that I took away from our retail tour through China included the cultural and regional differences in China that impact the retail market, the supply chain shortcomings throughout China, the financial and consumer opportunities, and the macro retail trends in China and beyond.

Here is an excerpt of my favorite parts from Essay #4: Overview of Walmart China Visits on our time with Walmart China SVP & CFO Mario-Jose Medina: How to be Successful in International Business:

"Mr. Medina provided our group with a different approach to our learning experience at Walmart China and shared with us how to be a successful business person – especially in an increasingly global marketplace and at a multinational company. The first piece of advice that Mr. Medina offered us was to be tridimensional – a combination of head, heart, and gut. He described for us that life’s decisions are a journey of time, mistakes, and personal dilemmas, and even offered a formula for making mistakes: fail fast, often, and cheap.

The CFO also shared a new concept with us of the ‘VUCA’ world. The world is one of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. In order to succeed in this kind of world, we need to be professionals with Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility. Finally, Mr. Medina recommended that we strive to be a combination of IQ (intelligence), EQ (emotional), and CQ (cultural) – in order to accomplish this, we must be open-minded and should attempt to work abroad and stretch ourselves by experiencing ‘culture shocks’ as often as possible. He closed with his adaptation to the popular Charlie ‘Tremendous’ Jones quote, 'You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet, the books you read, and the places you go.'"

As a part of our coursework, we were also assigned an online photo album with detailed explanations of the photos that depict some of the key lessons from our trip. Here is the link to my album: http://photobucket.com/uachina2012_tammy. I should probably warn you that there are more than 500 photos here, but for a smaller album of just the highlights with the 25 key lesson descriptions can be found via this link: http://s1076.photobucket.com/home/uachina2012/tag/Photo Essay Assignment. And if that is still too much for you, haha - here are only a few: 

- Tammy :o)