Project Report on Image of Beijing

Interviewees: Emrah Tuncer & Carlomaria

Interviewers: Carrol, Meat Ball, Yonuger and Ivy

Date: Nov 22^nd

Location: Sculpting in Time Café

Our group is very effective in finishing the project on the whole. We firstly had a small discussion about the topic of our interview. The ideas varied from politics to daily life, but finally we all agreed that our topic shouldn’t be too professional or political, since the interviewee we could only find was the foreign students on campus. So we then agreed on the topic “Beijing in foreigners’ eyes, and the improvement Beijing needs in preparing for the 2008.” When the topic was fixed, the questions just came out naturally. We prepared a long list of questions. It is much longer than we are required to do, but we think we should take precautions, which later proved to be a pretty smart move. The next step is selecting the interviewees. Since we knew no foreign students, the only way to find an interviewee is to accost them on the campus. Although it was a prudent move, it was the only way we could think of and it worked! The foreigners were much friendlier than we expected. After thirty minutes, we found two. One was young and talkative, speaking fluent English. And the other was more mature and silent. So we soon fixed the time and place for the appointment. But then during the following conversation we found the younger was actually an Italian and the other is a Turkish. We were sort of shocked, since the young Italian spoke with little accent. We were thinking of a refusal, but when later he mentioned that he had studied in London for a long time and worked as an interpreter in the Torino winter Olympics, we felt that he should be the right one. So we just said good bye.

During the interview, we were actually divided into two groups; two were responsible for the Turkish and two for the Italian. Because we have already chattered a lot before the interview, when we were doing the interview, the atmosphere is quite relaxing. And the interview goes on smoothly. So on the whole, it is a great experience.

This interview is about what Beijing is like in the eyes of foreigners. We also compared Beijing with other cities like Rome and Istanbul, etc. It consists of four parts: traveling, transportation, environment and Olympics.