Whom I met today: Oppressed Pakistani Slaves

Don't take the title lightly: the Pakistan pavilion has become a prison/deathbed for many of their people. I won't mention the name of my informant (because I fear for his safety) but what follows has been proven to me with pictures and the feeling in his voice and eyes. Every one of my coworkers and friends should pay heed to how lucky we all are.

My new friend from Pakistan is a slave in Shanghai, with no hope of redemption or freedom. He and his countrymen are resigned to work from before the Expo opens until after it closes, every single day. There are no labor laws in his country, so there is no such thing as violating them. If this were the worst part of it, it would be only slightly worse than the plight of their neighbors in the India pavilion; unfortunately, it is far from the end.

They are the only staff members I have heard about who do not get paid; that is, until they return to Pakistan in November. Upon their return, they will hopefully be paid 800 RMB for every month that they worked, which will add up to my monthly salary which I am paid one fourth of every week. But wait, it gets worse.

Imagine you had such terrible conditions, and were unable to escape! Their passports were taken from them by their boss so that, even if they had the money to leave, they would be unable to. They cannot call their friends or family, because their phones were taken from them by the same supervisor. So the obvious answer is: complain to the police. The non-caring police redirected them to the Pakistan embassy which, after they were also paid a special visit by their supervisor himself, decided that there was no problem and that the staff should behave themselves.

So let's recap: no money, no communication, no phone, no empathy, and no escape. Is that all? Alas, it is not.

What happens when 6 men are assigned to sleep in a room with no beds? Back pain and illnesses develop. When there is no sympathetic ear to complain to, illnesses go untreated and become worse. One man has developed a heart condition, which was unheeded until the supervisor prescribed some random medicine that has no effect except to worsen the problem. When at last the repeated entreaties for help broke down his resistance to allowing a hospital visit, they discovered that the man was not expected to survive, given his extreme heart degradation and abnormal condition.

Perhaps one of the lesser crimes against them, though still extremely unpleasant, is that they must share two bathrooms with 20 People!

So before you complain about having to work 40 hours per week, think about how you have the freedom to quit your job and escape oppression. Think about how there are people to complain to, laws to protect us, and at the very least, sympathetic ears to listen to their plight.

The Expo Passport

Back in 1967, the Expo passport was created for the World Fair that year. The details are: designed like a regular passport, space to be stamped for each of the represented countries. It has been somewhat popular in the past, yet at far less crowded World's Fairs, they have been fairly easy to fill and acquire. Not so at the Shanghai World Expo 2010.
In the beginning, maybe 50,000 were sold per day because the demand was vastly underestimated. If you have 350,000-500,000 people in one place with a 30 RMB passport that can become a pretty souvenir with intricate stamps from many of over 200 pavilions (handed out for free) would you imagine that 50,000 would be enough? Exactly, it wasn't.
The next item to consider is the wait line for some pavilions:
Saudi Arabia pavilion (largest IMAX screen in the world showing a 10 minute movie): >4 hours on average day, close to 8 on busy day;

Japan pavilion (violin-playing robot, Japanese-Chinese cross cultural opera, new technological advances in touchscreen technology and big screen tv, etc): >6 hours every day, always full line;

China pavilion (movie about Chinese history, display of changing nature of Chinese home through the decades, gigantic computer-animated Chinese scroll with intricate scenes that change as you walk, etc.): reservations for one of 50,000 entries disappear within 45 minutes of park opening

USA pavilion (3 movies about our country): 1.5-2.5 hours

Several other countries have very long wait times, such as Germany, Italy, etc.
The point of this is that you must wait in line several hours to get stamps for your passport, and many of them limit stamps to 2-5 per person.
What need would they have to limit the number of stamps, you ask? Several reasons:
Everyone has a friend, relative, classmate, etc. who could not afford the time or money to come to the Expo, it takes a lot of effort and persistence to wait in line/fight your way through it to achieve the stamps, and they can be sold for money.
That's right, a complete passport can be sold for tons of money: most recently, I heard they go for 6,000 RMB ($880.75)!
Here's the problem: the stamp is a big hassle for no reward. The expo bureau makes 30 RMB per passport, but they do not reimburse pavilions for their ink expenditures; people rarely care for their exhibits and go straight to the stamp line; it is so coveted that fights can break out between people who don't want to wait so lines to the stamping stations must sometimes be guided and roped off. Some staff members from countries like Mexico and Slovenia have personally expressed desires to return home rather than stamp passports every day for hours. I can't say I blame them.

Expense reports

One of my tasks here is to compile receipts from various sources and produce expense reports that might result in reimbursement. This makes me a very popular finance intern, because I often tell people that they should file expense reports and everyone likes to receive money back.
The first expense report I filed was for a man who performed consultant work for our pavilion with the aim of recruiting sponsors. I was nervous and confused, because I had never filed an expense report before; . I've delivered pizzas to guys who were doing expense reports, but never firsthand. Anyway, he bought a plane ticket for the trip, stayed in a hotel, ate at restaurants, drank coffee, saw something entertaining, and took numerous taxi rides. I arranged the receipts by date and category, then I glued them to sheets of paper for easier viewing. After that, I filled out the expense report spreadsheet that summarizes, itemizes, and describes each of the charges. The rightmost columns contain the totals cells, the first in RMB (Chinese currency, stands for RenMinBi, "People's Currency") and USD. After all of the amounts in his expense report were entered, converted, and totaled, one of my colleagues (Jing or Carol) reviewed and double-checked the work, signed the printed copy, and then placed it into the "To Be Approved" expense folder. Upon the approval signature of our Chief Operating Officer, the money was refunded in RMB notes.
I had an interesting expense report situation last month: a woman was fired for various reasons, and the pavilion staff wanted me to complete her expense report as soon as possible. Although I had been advising her for several weeks to begin collecting and arranging her receipts, she waited until 2 days after being fired to begin work. It was a painful situation, especially considering I could not contact her to ask any questions (was this latte business related?). So I was taken off of my ongoing Value in Kind goods assignment to complete her expense report. In the end, it was such a large amount that my supervisor decided to verify some of the charges himself.

We have an IT department, for which several miscellaneous cords, connectors, routers, and other hardware must be purchased, so when receipts for those items come to my desk (assuming they were not prepaid), I must process those as well as the cost of transporting the pieces.
Our sponsorship department deals with the state, city, and corporate entities that made donations to support our pavilion. They often have to wake up very early to attend special meetings or conferences, pick up people from the airport/hotel, etc., at which point the metro stations have not yet begun to transport. It is for this reason that they must ride taxis that can get to be quite expensive depending on where they live. The reverse is also true: sometimes they have to attend late meetings or dinners, take care of sponsors, drop them off at the hotel, and return home. Metro stations usually close at 23:00, and taxis are more expensive at night, so staff members are especially eager to be reimbursed for those.
Next in the list of expenses the sponsorship department staff incurs is phone bills. Many of them have long been using their own personal phones to talk to sponsors, which can get very expensive given the frequency of sponsor calls and visits. They give me their phone card receipts and I note the purpose, time, and amount in their expense reports.
Last in the types of expense reports I have processed is the hospital bill reimbursement. Until recently, when we straightened out the communication with insurance company process, I had to process these reimbursements for students who had unexpected, emergency visits to the hospital. One of these was for a student ambassador who was bitten on the arm by a disgruntled Chinese woman who was tired from waiting in line for 2 hours to visit our pavilion!

So once again, I'm pretty popular for two reasons: I hand out student stipends and I reimburse people for their out of pocket expenses.

Progress Report

Description
My responsibilities as a member of the Finance department team include paying students their weekly stipends, calculating and verifying expense reports, researching and recording the value of goods donated to the USA pavilion by corporations, and conducting inventory searches to locate the donated goods. Staff members and their tasks involved in stipend distribution include: examining and verifying totals on payroll sheets given by Peter, receiving a signed and stamped withdrawal slip completed by Emily, riding a taxi with Jing to the bank, returning with the money, counting and distributing stipends to students, and recording the changes and amounts in the ledger to account for the money. Expense reports have multiple steps: collecting, organizing, and examining each receipt to be expensed, pasting each receipt to a sheet of paper, and then filling out the expense report, which I usually do in Excel. I enter the date, category of expense, amount, and then calculate the total in both RMB and USD; I simplify these processes by using various formulas like SUM and IF/THEN statements. Researching and recording amounts donated requires collecting and translating receipts for items purchased for use in the pavilion/by student ambassadors, contacting sponsor companies to retrieve their records of items donated, and searching for market values for each item. I enter all of these into Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, after which I add the totals to a separate spreadsheet. The donated goods must also be tracked to ensure they are being used by intended people, so I have to go to various departments and individuals to ask whether they are using their items and if not, who has the items now. This has been a problem with some donated items which no longer function. My team members Carol and Jing are integral and necessary parts of the finance department; without them, we would fall apart.

Progress/Changes
Some difficulties I have encountered in the completion of my tasks are: reaching contacts within donor companies, translating complex, uncommon characters into inventory data, finding market values for certain donated items which are obsolete or not listed at lowest price on every web site, and locating documentation showing receipt of donated goods. Steps to solve these problems include: asking people from different departments for contact information and searching the internet for specific company contacts, using my Chinese dictionary or passing the translation task onto a native speaker, conducting extensive searches for price savings and bulk discounts to ensure sponsors are ethically recording the correct values in calculating the amount given to us, and repeatedly asking coworkers for documents, respectively. I find that using my communication skills in both English and Chinese to be very interesting, because it can result in a smoother completion of my task and assurance of future assistance in these projects.

Communication with Supervisors
I communicate openly with my direct supervisor, Emily. She and I often talk of the progress of my VIK and other projects, and I can count on her assistance with tasks like talking to employees at banks or mobile phone offices, understanding instructions, making corrections to certain mistakes, and so forth. I feel I am free to talk to her anytime.

Environment of Company and City
The USA pavilion is a vibrant and exciting workplace, full of many different kinds of employees. Inside the administrative office, we have people from many different departments, each with a different set of responsibilities and varying work schedules. We have an open, airy office with plenty of windows, light, and decorations like pictures, plants, and paintings. Shanghai is also very vibrant and bustling, with many different venues, restaurants, activities, museums, and of course the people. This is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, so many varieties of shops and restaurants are required to fill their needs; often there will be street performers or groups of citizens gathering to play drums or perform tai qi boxing together; the public transportation is extremely cheap and very often convenient, though the high demand can make it a challenge to enter or exit.

Adjusting to the Business Environment, Major Problems, and Interesting Stories
I worked in the food service industry from the age of 15 until January of this year, so almost 14 years. The differences between the two workplaces are stark and sometimes hard to adapt to; these include the speed and excitement of the work, demands on physical vs. mental abilities, and payback for time spent. In the worlds of delivering pizzas, waiting tables, and cooking in classy restaurants, most of the day is spent cutting, mixing, carrying glasses, hot food, etc., and when there is no work to be had, it is time to go home. When a deliverer or waiter works hard, he makes more money in tips. This is misleading in that more money is to be made in the short term, but the experience gained from moving into the office and business world is far more valuable given that I want to change my path in life.

Meeting Secretary Clinton

Wow, it's already been over 2 weeks since I got to meet Secretary Clinton! Time is passing very quickly, unfortunately. I have less than 2 months left here :(.

Anyway, it was an honor meeting Secretary Clinton! She went to our pavilion to take the tour, give a special award donation to some kids, meet some staff, and speak to our sponsors at a special dinner.

When it came time for the student ambassadors (ahem) to meet her, we stood in one of our movie theaters and listened to her congratulatory speech. This included "You are the stars of the pavilion! Chinese people love that you speak Mandarin (some speak Shanghainese too!) to them and we are bridging cultural gaps to strengthen Sino-U.S. relations." She asked to briefly say our names and where we were from, asked who came from Chinese backgrounds and who started from scratch, and then we took a group picture with her. I felt very honored and proud.

The real reason I'm here

USA Pavilion at Shanghai Expo Internship

The University of Memphis's International MBA program requires an internship and a study abroad experience in the country you're specializing in. Thanks to Hans and Mark, two of my supervisors, I was given enough documentation to motivate the head of my IMBA program to let me work at the Shanghai World Expo. They gave me a letter to pass on to Dr. Kedia which detailed my duties and said I would be very valuable asset to the USA Pavilion, and that I would get to work for the CFO of Deloitte and Touche Shanghai!

I'm going to begin blogging about my internship now, because Dr. Brain Janz is the advisor for my internship project and has made that my assignment. Here is the introductory page with a summary thus far. Enjoy!

My internship during the summer of 2010 was in Shanghai, China at the Shanghai World Expo; while there, I worked in the finance department of the USA Pavilion (USAP) under CFO Ma Jun and his assistant Emily Huang. The USAP is a unique pavilion at the Expo, in that it is solely sponsored by private corporations (such as FedEx) and a handful of states (such as Tennessee) and cities, whereas many of the other pavilions, many of which represent individual countries, are partially if not totally government sponsored. Representatives from each of these American cities, states, and companies signed contracts detailing their contribution details, and each of these contributions needed to be recorded in financial statements with backup documentation. Some of the pavilion sponsors donated in VIK contributions, which also required documentation proving receipt and showing where primary usage was to take place. My major task during this internship was to locate, translate, organize and record these documents for financial purposes. This also required research and bilingual communication with Mandarin Chinese speaking customer service representatives, supervisors, and other contacts within the various sponsor companies and governments.

Several recurring tasks required work on my part and that of my fellow SAs who worked in finance: calculating and disbursing weekly SA stipends, calculating, organizing, and verifying expense reports submitted by staff members who traveled in search of sponsors and stayed in hotels; used taxis and purchased food items, all documented on receipts in Chinese characters; reviewing contract information in order to verify contribution amounts; itemizing and paying recurring bills such as company phones. All of these assignments required extensive spreadsheet calculations and documentation of receipts, mostly in Chinese characters.

Parties!

The Shanghai World Expo is populated by 2 kinds of people: the customers (mostly Chinese) and the staff (a mixture). The parties that go on after the expo closes are great, and include people from many different countries and regions. The one I have attended most often is that of the Malta pavilion, which is kind of chill and has mostly people who just want to sit and talk with each other. I have met many different people at Malta parties, such as: UN Pavilion staff from Sweden and Colombia who left tours in Africa to work here, Mexican intellectuals who have degrees in philosophy, Lithuanian people who speak Mandarin in addition to their native Lithuanian, formerly mandatory Russian, and optional English, Israelis, Australians, Nigerians, etc.

Then there's Russia's parties, which I have thus far missed, but I will be there this coming Wednesday.

Thursdays are Angola's amazing parties: amateur and professional artists painting pictures, powerful drinks, people from all over, dance music, and other forms of greatness.

I've been to special parties like the Chilean open house which I accidentally showed up at (we heard that Chile pavilion had cheap glasses of wine, so we went after Secretary Clinton left). They asked us at the door "Were you invited to the open house?" (yes, of course!) So we were treated to free wine and great company from intelligent, high class people from many different regions and ethnicities. When the party was dead, many people left for the Colombia pavilion, where there was more free wine and plenty of hot Latin dance music! We danced for hours, drank, and ate free pizza!

Whom I met today: The Govn'r!

Another person I had the honor of meeting was the governor of Tennessee, Phil Bredesen! He is a democrat, as am I, so it was a special honor. The reason why he visited the USA Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo is that Tennessee was one of the official state sponsors of the USA Pavilion! The number of state sponsors, in case you were wondering, is just 3: Tennessee, Texas, and Hawaii. It was especially significant for me, considering I am the only student born and raised in Tennessee.

As a continuance to a discussion I had had with our Commissioner General Jose Villareal, we discussed Memphis's BBQ scene with Governor Bredesen: "Mark claims that Memphis has really good BBQ!" Governor Bredesen replied "It's not just a claim, it fact!" To which CG Villareal was put off and brought up the idea of a BBQ challenge to defend the honor of his home city San Antonio. (Hasn't happened yet)