Gap year: A way to discover clues about your future

David Zhu addresses the Heart2Heart's fifth annual fundraising banquet in Vancouver,May, 2011.[Photo provided to Chinadaily.com.cn]

Below, I list the milestones of the past eight months to demonstrate that, no, I did not just waste time in China to goof around. I did many things that I would've never been able to do without spending those eight months in Beijing.

- October 2010 - Began working at Bain & Co. as a part-time assistant.

- November 2010 - Finished settling down in Beijing and began helping out GCC (Global China Connection) China Affairs Division. Arranged a series of meetings with potential partners/sponsors for GCC in Beijing. (www.gccglobal.org).

- December 2010 - Embarked on a fourth trip to Guizhou, China on behalf of Heart2Heart Society (www.h2hsociety.org), filming a short documentary on H2H's donations in Guizhou.

- March 2011 - Spoke and presented GCC's third annual Conference and Convention in New York City.

- April 2011 - Initiated and spearheaded a joint delegation between GCC and the MBA class of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. The two-week delegation visited Baidu, Lenovo, Innovation Works, SAP, Monitor Group, KPMG, Freshfields, Da Cheng Law Offices, Jun He Law Offices, Huiyuan Juice, Tudou.com, and the Wall Street Journal.

- May 2011 - Attended Heart2Heart's fifth annual fundraising banquet. This year's banquet committee invited JJ Lin as the event's special guest performer. The event attracted more than 300 guests and raised more than C$100,000.

The author is now the CEO of Ci Xiang Mao,an Internet company in Beijing which helps elderly consumers.