By Leah King and Carolina Souza

June 1st:

This was our last day in Kaifeng so we all wanted to make the most of it. First we had the morning and afternoon to work on our projects and present our projects to our peers. The Caramel Macchiatos are researching consumer coffee culture in China, and has the only Starbucks in Kaifeng as their main hangout spot. In fact, they headed there today for lunch and met up with me (Leah King) Ryan, Sarah, and Jenny who were taking a quick break after doing fieldwork. All our hard work researching is paying off so far. We have started working on our thesis as well as organizing our data. After our presentations, some of us went on a run around the area.

Sarah and a Local during our Run

Some of the local people joined in on the fun. After Jadon, Sarah Jenny, and I went to the Donkey restaurants to eat Donkey soup (which was really good)! However, we were still hungry so we went to the Kaifeng nightmarket to eat dumplings, xiao long bao, and tofu. Lastly, we met up with Professor and some other classmates to get a 6 dollar massage!

Us two at the Massage Spot

June 2nd:

We woke up and hopped on a bus heading to Zhengzhou, the capital of the Henan Province and our fourth city as a group. We were very excited to see what a first-tier city would be like in comparison to the provincial-level city of Beijing and the third-tier cities of Kaifeng and Shangqiu we previously visited.

Zhengzhou

Upon arrival we had a traditional Chinese lunch, organized by our tour-guide Johnson. Our group has adhered to the local tradition of giving a speech before a meal, and today I volunteered. I took the opportunity to thank Papa Sheehan, Hao, and my classmates for such an amazing trip which I will remember eternally. Afterwards, we all got the metro to the city center together, conglomerated at Caramel Macchiato’s hangout spot (aka Starbucks) for our afternoon caffeine fix, then each group went out to conduct research. Personally, I was particularly impressed with the enormous high-end luxury malls with stores like as Versace, Moncler, and Armani. Afterwards, we all met up to walk over to an extremely special dinner together; our T.A. Hao was super generous and invited us to the famous Haidilao Hot Pot.

Kyle was very well received at Haidilao

It was delicious – one of my favorite group meals!

We then left directly to the hotel for an early evening before heading to Shanghai. Good night!