From June 21st through July 3rd of 2008, I spent time in China as part of my MBA program at the University of Wisconsin. Most of the stay was in Beijing, but also traveled to Xi'an and Tianjin. I was a bit uncertain about traveling to what I expected to be a fairly undeveloped and oppressed land. Was I wrong. The people seemed to speak very freely and the infrastructure was on par with most large cities in the US.