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!