My students have now been safely dropped at the airport having travelled to Nanjing and Shanghai. In Nanjing they enjoyed learning about some of the former glory and tragedy of the city as well as mingling informally with some Nanjing University Business School students. In Shanghai, we had some informative seminars, an alumni event and the students enjoyed soaking up the vibe of this energetic city.Nanjing is one of my (perhaps, the) favourite cities in China. Its big, but not too big and its modern without having erased all of its history. The city was the Ming, Taiping and Republican capital, and remnants of this past can still be seen. It was also the site of a massacre by the Japanese and there is a memorial to that (which is closed for renovations at the moment).

A nice event in Nanjing was mingling with some of the Nanjing University students. They treated us to a tour of campus, including the Nanjing University museum. In the photo below you can see some of the Nottingham students chatting to the Nanjing students as they walk through the university campus.

As part of your tour we saw the original Nanjing University building (of which I have an early panorama here). We stopped for a photo, which was taken by the man below, who is, apparently, a local identity). I suspect he enjoys the nice weather and gardens and enjoys taking photos of visitors together. He certainly had the 1-2-3 smile down pat.

Shanghai is another city altogether. It has a vibrance and energy that is matched only by other great 24-hour cities (Tokyo, New York). My students loved it as they spent (literally) the last of the travel-money.

We travelled to Shanghai in more style than we travelled to Nanjing, going ‘soft seat’ rather than hard. The seats were not only less cramped but there the isles were clear.

In Shanghai we had three seminars all of which provided valuable information about business in China. The first was from a successful Shanghai-born, Hong Kong based business man who outlined China’s key centres of growth and provided valuable context to the observations made on the trip. Other two seminars were from the consulate and the the China Britain Business Council, together providing an overview of the types of support available to British business in China as well as some general advice on doing business in China.

The rest of the time, the students seem to have spent soaking up the atmosphere. I joined some for lunch and we were amused to watch a young model being photographed. Well, we struggled to work out why she was being photographed because it didn’t seem that much effort had been put into setting up the shoot (so we don’t think it was to prepare an advertisement for the restaurant.

We were, though, also amused by the attire, but then I’ve never claimed to know much (or anything, actually) about fashion.