Hangzhou

I’ve already been in Hangzhou for about three weeks now, and as you might have noticed from the complete lack of blog posts: I’ve been really busy.  Hangzhou is located in the Zhejiang province of China, and I’m staying and studying at Zhejiang University for the remainder of our trip.  For the study portion of this study abroad trip, I am taking two classes: Physical Chemistry and I’m also getting credit for research I’m doing while abroad.  Physical Chemistry has been challenging to say the least, since we are taking what is usually a 16 week class in 4 weeks.  But the research portion of my studies has been a really cool experience so far.  I’m working in Professor Yu Hongwei’s lab alongside one of his grad students, Guo Fei, and we are working with making mutant proteins and determining their enantioselectivity.  Being involved in the lab is not only cool for the scientific techniques and knowledge I’m learning, but also because I get to really get to know some Chinese graduate students.  Everyone in the lab is so welcoming and friendly.

 One of the first things we did when we got to Hangzhou was buy ourselves bikes.  Here in China almost everyone gets around on either a bike or a moped, and it is a great way to get around the city. Every day I ride my lime green bike about 15 minutes from the campus where we have Physical Chemistry class to the campus where my research lab is located, and we also bike to a lot of places we want to go within the city.  Hangzhou has more than 6 million people in just the urban area of the city, and having the opportunity to really live in a city in China for even just 5 short weeks has already taught me so much.  I feel like I already have so much of a better perspective on China and the rest of the world.

 
Out for an afternoon of playing pool with some of the graduate students from my lab!

Other than studying, being in lab all day, and doing copious amounts of homework, my time spent in Hangzhou so far has made me believe that it is a beautiful city and a great place to live.  On our first weekend in Hangzhou, Dr. Franzen took us to the Green Tea restaurant, and it has since been a favorite and we have already been back multiple times.  I’ve become far more adept at using chopsticks in the past few weeks, and I’ve been trying so many different food dishes that you wouldn’t see in the US, one of the most surprising being bullfrog.  I’ve heard of people eating frog in France, but it wasn’t something that I thought of when I thought of Chinese food.  Verdict on bullfrog: really does taste like chicken, only with a slightly richer taste.  Another interesting dish at Green Tea Restaurant is called ‘Bread Temptation’ in English,  which is basically just a huge cube of bread cut into smaller pieces with ice cream on top.  Sounds weird, tastes delicious. I’ve even grown to like having tea with dinner – here at restaurants they always give you very weak tea as a drink with your meal.  I still haven’t been brave enough to try the spicy fish head soup yet (Dr. Franzen’s favorite), but I’ve definitely been eating my fair share of Chinese culture.

On top of Physical Chemistry and research, we have also been having Chinese tutoring sessions twice a week.  Chinese is definitely difficult because there are four different tones you can use.  The same word can have four different meanings when spoken with a different tone.  But I feel like I’m definitely learning. When we go out to restaurants ordering our food is getting easier because of the Chinese we are learning, and last night I was able to communicate to the taxi cab driver about where we wanted to go in Chinese, which made me feel like the tutoring is starting to pay off.  We also had an additional ‘Cultural Lecture’ this Friday about Chinese calligraphy. One of Dr. Franzen’s friends is an artist, and she taught us all about Chinese painting and calligraphy and even let us try it out ourselves.  While my painting may have not been a work of art, seeing how effortlessly she could paint such beautiful pictures and draw the Chinese characters was amazing.

Tomorrow we are taking a day trip to Shanghai via the bullet train from Hangzhou, and I am so looking forward to it.  I’ll try to write more about Hangzhou and Shanghai soon!

Xian

After Beijing, our next stop in China was Xian.  To get there, we took a 12 hour overnight train from Beijing that set off around 8:40 PM.  Riding the night train was definitely a cool experience.  I was in a cabin that had two bunk beds with 3 others from my study abroad group. Tip: If you ever happen to ride the night train, take the top bunk – the air conditioning is up there.  Being on a train for twelve hours was definitely more enjoyable than the twelve hour plane ride I took from Detroit to Tokyo to get to China.  In a train you have the ability to get up and walk around, meet people from other cabins, and actually lie down to sleep.  Our entire train car was filled mostly with our group and a large group of students from Australia who were traveling in Asia as part of their education to become Travel Agents.  We somehow managed to fit about 10 people in our tiny compartment at one point and we played cards with some of the Australians and talked about what life is like in Australia.

Xian was formerly named Chang’an, and is the ancient capital of China.  Our train arrived around 8 am the next morning, and after a much-needed stop at our hotel, we set out to explore Xian. We first went to the History museum, where there were different exhibits for the different Chinese dynasties. My knowledge of Chinese history is very limited, so it was nice to learn more about some of the dynasties that are referenced at all of the tourist spots we’ve visited.  We went to two more attractions that day: Dayan Pagoda and Xian’s Drum tower, both of which were really cool.  Dayan Pagoda is 7 stories tall and was built in 652, and we got to go inside it – there are awesome views of Xian from the top.  It was incredible that a structure so old was still standing to this day.

Xian has an ancient city wall which is still intact that surrounds the center of the city.  The wall is almost 40 ft tall, and our first activity of the day was renting bicycles and riding on the city wall.  The entire wall is 9 km around, and riding bikes on this wall that is thousands of years old was an awesome experience. From the City wall we could see the park where the ancient palace was once located, so that’s where we decided our next stop was.  The ancient palace itself is now in ruins, but the location where it once was is now a very large park in the middle of Xian.  The park reminded me somewhat of Central Park in New York – but on an even larger scale.  You could see all the tall buildings of Xian all around the edges of the park.  Our trip to see the palace also included a paddle boat ride around the lake that was within the park.  One awesome thing about China: the paddle boats had roofs to shade you from the sun (Although at this point I had been outside all day and had already sun burnt).

The Park

Xian has a very different feel from Beijing as a City.  In Beijing almost every sign has both the Chinese characters and the English translation, which I believe may be because Beijing was the host city for the 2008 Olympics.  There is a lot less English in Xian, and that was immediately apparent to me from even just our trip from the train station to our hotel.  Xian is definitely still somewhat of a tourist city in China, but it was interesting to see two different big cities in China.

Our third day in Xian was dedicated entirely to climbing Huashan. After an early start and a 2 hour bus ride, we made it to the mountain.  Huashan is the mountain where the Emperor used to pray when the capital was in Xian, and though many people say Huashan isn’t as pretty or impressive as Yellow Mountain, it holds a spiritual significance for the people of China.  There are multiple temples on your way up the mountain, including one right at the top.  In my opinion, Huashan was incredibly impressive – though I have yet to go to Huangshan (that’s Chinese for Yellow Mountain).  On Huashan, every rope you see on the mountain is covered in locks that people have left there.

The climb of the mountain itself was definitely challenging.  The cable car we took goes about half way up the mountain, and then you get to climb the rest.  Stairs are carved into the mountain out of the stone, and in certain sections they can be very steep.  It was already a cool day in Xian, but at the top of the mountain with all of the wind it was really cold, which was quite a difference from getting sunburnt the day before. When we reached the top we all bought medals with our names engraved on them to commemorate the occasion.

Our last day in Xian started out with checking out of our hotel and taking a bus ride to The Terracotta Warriors.  When I first found out we were going to Xian, The Terracotta warriors were the only thing that I was familiar with.  They were something I had heard of before, but the difference between seeing pictures and actually being there is astonishing.  I didn’t really understand the scale of The Terracotta Warriors until I was there right in front of them. Right now each pit is being excavated and every effort to rebuild all of these soldiers is underway. The restoration and excavation of the site occurs during the night, so that it can be open to tourists during the day.  My favorite part of The Terracotta Warriors was seeing the pits that were still in the process of excavation.

After seeing the terracotta warriors, we got to take part in a tea tasting and tea ceremony.  The Chinese definitely take their tea seriously – sometimes I’ve even asked for water with dinner and gotten tea.  We tried multiple different kinds of tea, and even though I didn’t particularly care for any of them, seeing how big tea is a part of the culture was interesting.  After that we went to the Xian airport where we boarded our plane to Hangzhou, China, where I’ll be staying for the rest of my time here in China.

I’ll do my best to write a new update about Zhejiang University, where I’m studying abroad as soon as I can!