Jersey Kid Takes on Shanghai Gets Free Apartment Throws Parties

7/6/2010 - Daniel Tedesco's second TCBN interview during his summer as a USA Pavilion student ambassador at the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.  About the view from the rooftop, who he meets in the elevator, and the three events he and other Global China Connection kids host in Shanghai, every week, all summer.






THE CHINA BUSINESS NETWORK: Welcome, Daniel Tedesco, live from Shanghai – again. Working your – shall we say, vocal cords – to the bone, introducing the USA Pavilion to 400,000 visitors a day. How long has it been?

DANIEL TEDESCO: Two months now.

TCBN: Two months, so whatever you say about the USA Pavilion, you probably can do it in your sleep.

DT: And have been.

TCBN: Welcome back. It’s just been July 4th. What did the USA Pavilion at the World Expo do to celebrate Independence Day in Shanghai?

DT: Well, there was actually a staff party on the night of July 4th, which was a lot of fun. There were a lot of USA Pavilion staff, and some people brought guests from other pavilions. It was a nice mingling thing.

TCBN: Were there fireworks?

DT: No, I don’t think that would have flown with the Expo Bureau.

TCBN: Otherwise, how’s life? You’re living in the Expo Village – the Donghu Expo Village – tell us what it’s like living there, and who else lives there with you. What’s it for?

DT: The Shanghai government, in preparation for the Expo, built these brand new, gigantic apartment complexes that make up the Expo Village. They are completely brand new, furnished apartment hotels. There’s enough room for – I’ve heard – 10,000 people. They expected tons of foreigners to flock in to work at the pavilions, representing their countries. But not that many ended up coming, so only about 3,000 people are here, from what I’ve heard. 

But it is an interesting mix. I live on the tenth floor of one building, and the floor above me are all Australians and the floor below me are all Kazakhstanis. Just walking around, you see people from all over the place – from Angola, Saudi Arabia, all over the world. So it is interesting in that regard, and all of these apartments are brand new, they’re really, really big, and they’re going to sell for tons of money as soon as the Expo’s over.

TCBN: Do you have roommates, or do you end up having the apartment all to yourself, if there’s only 3,000 people?

DT: The student ambassadors live in three-bedroom apartments – most of us – with six people. Two people per bedroom. But there’s a big living room and there’s a kitchen, and most of the rooms have balconies and two bathrooms.

TCBN: If the balcony faces the right way, do you overlook the pavilions?

DT: Yeah, actually it was really beautiful in the spring, because we could go out on the balcony, and we would have a clear view right to the China Pavilion, and we could see over the entire Expo, and see a lot of the river too. At some of the buildings, you can sneak up onto the roof, and during the opening ceremony, one of my roommates and I snuck up to one of the buildings. The first roof we went to actually had CCTV cameramen and kicked us out, but the second building we went to – there was nobody there – but we could still see all across the river, we could see both bridges, and the crazy light and fireworks show that was the opening ceremony.

TCBN: That alone is worth the grinding day-in and day-out of telling 400,000 people, in Chinese, about life in America. It’s a good memory. There are Chinese volunteers, just like at the Beijing Olympics. You were telling me that you made friends with some of the Chinese students who have a job similar to yours, working with the many, many guests arriving at the Expo every day. But they stand outside in the crushing heat and humidity rather than in a pavilion and in the air conditioning. What motivates these souls to give up their summers and stand the heat and the crowds?

DT: The Expo volunteer program, just like the Beijing Olympics volunteer program, is pretty prestigious here for students to get involved in. It’s a really great thing to put on your resume, and basically all Chinese firms or whoever’s looking to hire, they look at this on a resume and they’ll be really impressed, because – I don’t know the numbers, but it’s a very selective group of students that get to participate in the Expo.

I think they work for about two weeks, but they’re standing outside in the sun – some of them will have umbrellas but some don’t, nobody has chairs – and all day, they’re just being barraged with the same questions about how to get to the same pavilions, where the bathrooms are, all kinds of things like that. But you know, they deal with it with a smile, and I think it’s a really interesting experience. It’s similar to the experience that a lot of us have at the USA pavilion, but we’re not in the heat all the time.

TCBN: So that’s the kind of crowd and heat and commuting to work every day aspect of it. What are some of the more fun or intelligent things that you get to do as part of GCC, in addition to being a student ambassador? What kind of outreach have you been able to do for the GCC with the business community in Shanghai?

DT: GCC Shanghai committee – like I said before, we’re all students, it’s a completely student-run organization – this summer we’re trying to hold about three events a week.

TCBN: Three events a week? That’s a lot.

DT: Two of them are normally social events to bring people out to meet each other, because there are people from all over the world here in Shanghai this summer. So a lot of the events might be playing pool or going out to a restaurant, something like that. But every week we try to have at least one professional development event, which might be taking a group of students to visit a company. A few weeks ago we went to visit 瑞安房地产, which is a really innovative real-estate developer in Shanghai, and we met with their director of projects, Chris Chan, and had a nice little discussion about the kinds of things that they’re doing. And then two weeks ago, we had an event in collaboration with the USA pavilion and with AmCham Shanghai, the Shanghai American Chamber of Commerce. We actually held it at one of their conference rooms. It was a student roundtable. We brought one of the former vice presidents of business development for KFC China, Warren Liu, to come speak to a small group of students about his experiences at KFC, and then had a little discussion and he answered some questions.

TCBN: We’ve got a link here, in the transcript of this interview with Daniel Tedesco, for the Global China Connection Shanghai newsletter. Any of you who are in Shanghai, and particularly if you are a student, can get connected with other students from all over the world in Shanghai this summer. 

DT: Anybody can sign up and come to the events – the more the merrier, really.

TCBN: And we’ve got the link to Warren Liu’s profile on the China Speaker’s Bureau, so if you’re wondering who Warren is and why he is interesting to the people at the Global China Connection, you can check out his profile. He did business development for KFC very early, right?

DT: Yeah.

TCBN: And is KFC one of the sponsors of the USA pavilion?

DT: Actually their parent company, Yum! Brands, is. But that wasn’t how we got the speaker.

TCBN: What did you learn from Warren Liu’s student roundtable? 

DT: That localization is really key for bringing in an established brand to a new cultural context.

TCBN: That is the standard read for pretty much everyone who wonders how it is that KFC has been really outperforming McDonald’s in China all along, is the localization of the supply chain. We have an interview with Maiyo Hood on The China Business Network, who ran Yum’s supply chain. My voice is going – it’s very kind of you to take the time. I know it’s 10:30 at night in Shanghai, and you’ve got to get busy doing your Shanghai nightlife thing. So thanks for checking in with us, enjoy your very steamy Shanghai summer, and for those of us who can’t get to the USA pavilion, thanks for bringing a little bit of the life and color of the experience to us.

DT: Thanks so much Janet.



Daniel Tedesco is an undergraduate student at Drexel University studying International Studies, Finance and Chinese. He has 3 years of experience holding executive board positions within a number of student organizations on campus. He co-founded Drexel University's GCC chapter, and has since begun working with GCC’s Central Management.  See more on his profile.