Study Trip Reflection: Visiting Bordeaux

As the capital of the Nouvelle-Acquitaine region and the sixth-largest city in France, Bordeaux has attracted hundreds of thousands of tourists because of its high-quality wine, strong cultural atmosphere and historical sceneries every year. Thanks to the general support of CUHK Chung Chi College, our group, which consisted of 19 students and 2 professors, was able to visit the Bordeaux and discover the extraordinary wine, history and living style in Bordeaux.

Impressive Wine Production in Bordeaux

Wine production in Bordeaux follows the principle of “Making the wine extraordinary and unique every year” which was clearly visible from the facilities and environment in the chateau. In Bordeaux, we were surprised to find a lot of special utilities for wine production in every corner. Red wines are produced using the grape peels and residuals, while white wines are without them, every individual type of wine are produced differently, the host said. This core philosophy has been imbibed and executed by every manager of Bordeaux wine production and motivates its employees to work with great care. In fact, as far as I am concerned, the main reason of Bordeaux great success in wine has always been its strict production procedures and hard-working attitude. The first impressive lesson I learnt from Bordeaux wine production is: Prestige is not proprietary for nobilities, it is achieved by long-term practice and strict attitude towards perfection. However, most of the enterprises in the world, including a number of large ones, has mistaken the meaning of success for rewarding of revenues. Typically, Asian entrepreneurs, set a great deal of requirements and goals for high profits, which barely increases the efficiency of employees effectively. Bordeaux, as far as I am concerned, embodies in the company culture the careful consideration for excellent wine quality and takes it as one of the central organization thought, which turns out to be a great management philosophy. In fact, as I always believe, the best practice of entrepreneurship is to eliminate the feeling of pure profit-gaining and bring the team together with a goal in both physical and mental state.

Historical Spots and Cultural Deposits

During our visiting, we are also pleased to visit the historical spots and get to know their historical significance and cultural meaning. For instance, Roquetaillade Castle used to be a military castle for defending against invasion. Built in a wide grassland, the castle cuts off the passage towards the inner continent, shielding the citizens and nobilities in France in old times. What impressed me a lot is their engineering insights of the architectural structure. The castle atrium roof adopts a two-way string structure, and the draw-bridge connects the main tower in a rigid manner. In this way, the castle is under careful protection because enemies cannot enter the castle when the suspension bridge is pulled up. From my engineering attitude (since I am an engineering student), the designer of Roquetaillade Castle clearly followed the principles of cask effect and put large attention on the weakest point — drawbridge.

Also, comparing to China, we also got to realize that ancient French people, have always taking care of preservation of cultural deposit, even if they suffered the damage of the French Revolution. Over the past hundreds of years, the French barely made any changes to their historical buildings and relics, leaving us an authentic place to visit and discover. Open-culture and harmonious environment Bordeaux is a fascinating place where all kinds of cultures are merging, exchanging and their differences are tolerated. Our kind host, Mr. Bertrand, is friendly and considerate with us and shows us with famous places all around Bordeaux. For example, on the very first day we arrived at Bordeaux, he introduced us with his beautiful house and shared with us a lot of his life stories without reservation. Then we went to Mirror D’eau together and viewed the beautiful scenery in Bordeaux. It is the first time we walked along French-style street and we tasted the delicious French dessert: Macaron. Mr. Bertrand is such a great host that he did laundry for us every day and made tasty French-style dishes for us every evening. In order to express our big thanks to him, I as well as my roommate decided to cook for him during the weekend. We invited our friends to our house and went shopping to buy some raw materials of Chinese food. We prepared dishes together and cooked the dinner jointly to please our host. It turns out to be an amazing evening because we worked together as a group to achieve something meaningful and deepened the friendship with our dear host.

Well-known as a friendly and open-minded city in the world, Bordeaux has always tried to build good relationships with the others worldwide. For example, my hometown, Wuhan has always been the twin-city with Bordeaux for almost 30 years and established many collaborative programs. It’s also common to find people from my hometown go to Bordeaux Universities to learn wine tasting and there are slogans Welcoming Wuhan in the metros. During the weekend, we went to the Bordeaux garden, where the symbolic statues of all Bordeaux twins cities site on. We saw the ancient chimes from Chu State, Japanese temple from Fukuoka, Berlin friendship statues and so on. Even though I am old, I can travel to different places in the world, Bordeaux is becoming international! Isn’t it! Said Mr. Bertrand proudly. Encouraged by our friendly host, we sang the old French song La vie en rose together in the temple during the sunset. Facing the charming garden with endless grassland and beautiful flowers, it suddenly came to me that Bordeaux is such a tolerant and harmonious place that cultures from all over the world can join and merge together, just as small rivers join the sea. The true meaning of this trip is not just to encourage us to explore the city or the country, but to show us the power of this cultural tolerance and merging, hoping that one day we can bring it back to Hong Kong and make it a better place.