At 8 o'clock in the morning we boarded the buses and made our way back over to the Pudong district of Shanghai for our meeting at the Shanghai International Convention Center. The day's list of speakers included Bryan Stiles from HSB, Mark Lavalle (ND alum) from KPMG, Michael Askew from the Chinese bank UCB and Thorsten Giehler from the German Development Cooperation. The four speakers covered a range of topics from banking in China to micro financing as a means for poverty alleviation and providing loans. The major themes of the discussions included the unique structure of China's national banks, which dominate the banking market, the growing presence of international banks, even though they only have roughly 2% market share in the country and the unique challenges of implementing micro financing solutions for much of China's population. Having just finished a banking course at ND, I was interested in seeing much of the same criteria for issuing loans being used in China. However, I was a little surprise by many of the speaker's uncertainty of the Chinese banking markets, stating that when implementing new branches there are a lot of unknowns when penetrating into new markets. It was interesting to learn that the Chinese government has a lot of say with the international banks that are in China, where the government limits the number of new cities the international banks are able to expand to each year. Many times, the government allows the international banks to pick one city and then the government chooses the other city that the bank is allowed to expand into.

After a morning session of financial speakers, we had the entire afternoon and evening to ourselves. Some students stayed on the Pudong side of Shanghai to explore more of the city, including taking up the elevator into the Pearl Tower.

About ten of us decided we wanted to see Suzhou, China, which is known as the Venice of China. So we hired a driver for the day and made our hour and a half journey to this region of the country, joined by one of our guides from Shanghai. On our way we could see how China is growing, with new construction being built along the highway for many miles.

Once in Suzhou, we went to the Suzhou Gardens which are famous in China. Many of the typical Chinese buildings could be found in this garden, along with ponds and lotus plants. It was peaceful to walk around the grounds and take pictures.

After our journey through the gardens, we walked toward the canals and hired two boats to take us through the canal system of Suzhou. What started off to be a peaceful journey down the canal changed when two Chinese school children thought it would be funny to throw rocks and splash our boat. I took a picture of these kids and posted it on the blog's picture section. If you visit Suzhou, be sure to stay away from these two because they are trouble!

We then walked through the streets of Suzhou and admired the developed parts of the city. During many of our presentations, we have heard about Tier 2 cities, which are those that are smaller than the Beijing/ Shanghai cities of China. Suzhou falls under this Tier 2 category, therefore is listed as one of the smaller cities, but the amazing thing is the city is still home to over 6 million people!

The day ended with our ride back to the hotel, where we split up for various dinners and excursions around Shanghai.