A home away from home

My personal story during my stay in China is really sounding, I came across every day many things needed to be mentioned, and met lot of friends and business partners who shared with me many good and little bad stories in China.

Tahir Mohammed Yessuf [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

I came to Guangzhou City in Octorber 2009 and I came to work for a wholly foreign owned enterprise based in Guangzhou as a Vice G. Manager. As I am from Ethiopia, the third largest populated country in Africa and in fact a beautiful country with very talented and educated people, but still trying its best to make its fortune.

For anyone who visited China, particularly those who has spent some part of their life here like me and came from Africa and other poor nations, will feel a very huge change in their mind, it is not only the beautiful and sky rocketing buildings that look amazing, but more importantly how the Chinese government and its people joined together to make such tremendous transformation in just less than 30 years, notably the infrastructure.

During my stay in China I rarely go back home and I spent most of the time in Guangzhou, during this time I spend a lot of time travelling lot of provinces and cities in China. I have visited Tianjin and travelled with the Tianjin- Beijing bullet train, which was only 27 minutes that I arrived Beijing, finished my work and come back to my Guangzhou work on the same day.

It is not only the advanced railway transportation and air transportation which makes a meaning, but also the land transportation. I was in Linyi, a small city in Shandong province and wanted to go to Jinan - the capital city in Shandong,  and I took the bus to reach Jinan just four hours and there was a bus from Linyi to Jinan in every 15 minutes, no matter how many persons have a ticket. My Chinese friend told me that Linyi bus station is the biggest bus station in north China and probably in Asia. I can say Linyi bus station is very clean and well managed compared with more international airports in Sub-Saharan African countries and even in some Asian countries.

Lots of my friends back home are very pessimistic about China, such as the Chinese food and the culture, but my response always is, China is a home away from home. Chinese people are excellent in hospitality and are very respectful and kind. One of the reasons that I think Chinese business is prosperous is because of their very advanced hospitality. I have read an article that an Iraqi Business man who used to have business with some American companies, has shifted his business to China after Sep-11, in his article he mentioned that his bills, his hotel and his car is paid by the Chinese companies, he said they welcome him as a king.

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