Fifth Week in Beijing

It’s hard to believe that my time here in China is almost half over! It has definitely gone by very fast. So here’s a quick update on what I have been up to lately:

I've mostly gotten adapted to my lab here in Beijing and I work with one other student from the program, PJ. We normally just have group meetings on Mondays and then work Tuesday through Friday. To give you a brief overview of my project, I am working on these things called polymer grafts, which have a lot of bio-medical applications. The grafts lot basically like mesh made out of nino-fibers of polymers (plastics), which living cells can then grow on/around. There are many uses for these grafts; for example, on a basic level they can be used for burn victims and to strengthen bones. In the future, they could be used during brain-surgeries to prevent clotting and as a basis to make organs for transplants out of a patients own cells. The basic idea is that the polymer grafts would be used to make a model/frame for the cells to grow on, thereby producing an organ for transplant (sorry if that doesn't make the most sense!) PJ mostly works on the synthesis of these grafts and then I do a lot of characterization tests, including SEM (scanning electron microscope - used to look at the grafts at the nano-scale level), testing the electrical properties (mostly for brain applications), and more.

On Friday (June 24), we just had a normal day of work and then we had a lab dinner as a "good-bye" to two students from the lab who were graduating and a "welcome" to PJ and I who just joined the lab (2 weeks ago, but it's the thought that counts). The dinner was excellent, plus we got to try Peking duck for the first time, which was delicious!

On Saturday (June 25), we decided we wanted to see the Lama Temple (which we were originally scheduled to see our first week here, but never ended up happening), one of the largest Buddhist temples in the world. Of importance, Lama = high priest in Buddhism, not llama, like seen below! (Sorry...I couldn't help myself. Unfortunately, we did not see any llamas, as this picture was stolen from google)

I know absolutely nothing about Buddhism or its traditions, so I was quite surprised by many of the things in the temple. The Lama Temple was actually composed of 5 buildings in a straight row, all of which were symbolic of some part of Buddhism. In front of the first building, there were a lot of people burning incest before entering the temple. Of course, like 99% of all buildings in China, there were two lions, a male and a female, at the gate.

The first building of the temple had four large statues which, honestly, kind of creeped me out a little bit. The statues were probably about 15 feet tall and looked very menacing. Unfortunately, I only got pictures of two of them because we supposedly were not allowed to take pictures in the temple. However, only the foreigners were being told not to take pictures, which we thought was strange (even though the natives were being obnoxious about it and using flash).

The next building had a statue I did recognize! The Happy Buddha :)

The next two buildings had three female Buddhas in a row. As we went from building to building in the temple, we noticed that the size of the statues got bigger and bigger until we finally got to the final building (which is called The Pavilion of 10,000 Happinesses). Inside was one of the largest statues I've ever seen. In addition, the fact that it was inside this very cramped building made it look even bigger. The statue is about 90 feet tall and, as I discovered later, carved out of a single piece of wood (another Guinness World Record)!

In addition to the main temples, there were also smaller buildings that had more statues, most of which were very interesting. Some of the most interesting can be seen below.

I'm still not sure why they had statues of blue cows with 15 hands and feet but, hey, who am I to judge?

On Sunday, everyone in the program (saying "everyone" makes it sound like a bigger crowd than just the four of us...) was inviting to a going-away party for a colleague of Professor Coppola who had been working at Peking University for three months. It was a fun time plus we got to talk to Professor Coppola for the first time in a week about how everything was going because he has been in Hong Kong.

So that's about it for now. We're currently planning a large trip for the end of July because we have a week off of work. Right now it's looking like we're going to go to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Bangkok, Thailand! I'll keep you posted!

Day Trip to Longqing Gorge

This past weekend, we decided we wanted to go to Longqing Gorge, a location that many past participants have gone to. It is only about 2 hours away from Beijing via bus, so we decided to only go for the day.
It was an early morning on Saturday (June 18th), but we wanted to get to the gorge as early as possible because it opened at 7:30 and closed around 4:00. We met up with Oliver, our language instructor/student at Peking University because he also wanted to come with us, which ended up being a good thing. It was almost impossible to figure out where the buses left from and we're 99.9% sure we would not have found it if Oliver wasn't with us. We found the bus terminal about 20 minutes before the last bus left for the morning at 8:30 and it was an uneventful ride until about 10:30. We got stopped at an intersection and it took us a while to figure out why the road was blocked off: there was a cycling competition going on so we had to wait about 45 minutes in the bus before we could cross the intersection! The worst part of sitting in the bus for 45 minutes was that we had just planned to buy lunch at the gorge, so we had not bothered to bring anything besides water bottles. However, everyone else in the bus seemed to have brought MASSIVE amounts of food! There was one guy that had brought ham, huge sausages, bread, etc. for his entire group. We were joking around that if they had a turkey, it would have been just like Thanksgiving Dinner!
After the cycling competition finally ended, we were able to cross the street, only to find out that we were literally a minute!!! away from the place! So we were stuck (while hungry) across the street from Longqing Gorge for about 45 minutes!
Once we finally got out of the bus, we had a nice 15 minute or so walk to the entrance of Longqing Gorge/the place where we had to buy our entrance tickets. Once we got into the area, we had to take this huge escalator to the where the Gorge was which was shaped like a giant dragon, which was very cool.

Once we got to the top (over the dam), we took this nice boat ride around the gorge, which was very beautiful! There were many tall, skinny mountains, just like the kind you see in old Chinese movies and like the ones in Mulan.

There were also a lot of other things to do in the Gorge, including a lot of trails to walk around and there was a zip-line over the gorge, which we all decided to go. The view from the zip-line was very cool but we all commented that it was probably the slowest zip-line in the world; the ride on the speed-boat across the river in the gorge was more thrilling!
We also decided to rent some canoes for a little while and paddle around the gorge. Apparently, however, Chinese don't know what canoes are and they ended up being more like paddle-boats, which are a lot slower. It also didn't help that they only had two pieces of wood nailed together for a paddle, which made it difficult to paddle the boat.

The canoes were still a lot of fun though because people kept running into our boats. We're not sure if it was on purpose or not, but it was hard to steer the boats and it ended up turning into bumper-boats! Though I'm sure some of the people were purposely running into us because two guys did and then exclaimed in broken English, "You very beautiful girl!"
After walking around a little more, we headed back to the entrance because the place was closing and we needed to catch our bus back. It was definitely a fun way to spend the day and we were all exhausted after we got back, but it was nice to get out of the big city of Beijing for a while.

Weekend in Xi'an

Sorry it's taken so long to post about my trip to Xi'an! I've been busy figuring out who I will be working for this summer and getting acquainted with the lab and my co-workers.

This past weekend, we all went to Xi'an (西安 which literally translates to "west peace"), one of the ancient capitals of China. We had to leave early Saturday (June 11) morning to catch our flight. We left our apartment around 6:15 to get to the airport and catch our 8:30 flight to Xi'an. We all commented that, after our 13 hour flight from Detroit, we were still not to thrilled to be getting on another airplane! Once we landed, we were met by our tour guide for the weekend. Because we only had a limited amount of time in Xi'an, we went straight to Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Museum (more commonly known as the Terracotta Warriors) without checking into our hotel. On the way to the Terracotta Warriors, our tour guide gave us a brief history of Xi'an and the Terracotta Warriors. She told us about how they were discovered in the mid 70's by a some farmers digging a well. They were ordered to be built by Emperor Qin around 200 BC to guard his tomb after his death and ensure that he would remain in control after his death.

We visited Pit 1 first, which is the largest pit and contains about 6,000 warriors. It was amazing to see all the warriors which were precisely aligned in different attack formations. The front of the pit where we entered was almost entirely uncovered and the terracotta figures were reconstructed.

Towards the back of the pit, however, people were still working to un-bury the figures and reconstruct some of the destroyed figures. It has been hypothesized that someone had broken into the pit because many of the figures had been smashed, there was evidence that someone had set fire inside the pit, and many of the weapons had been stolen. After exploring the first pit, we got a quick lunch before heading to see Pits 2 and 3.

Pit 3 was much smaller than Pit 1, only containing about 70 figures. Although it was quite small, the pit contained some horse figures, which were cool to see. There was also some displays about the history of the Terracotta Warriors, including some of the best preserved figures that we could see up close and some pictures of the Terracotta Warriors when they were first un-buried and still had paint on them. Looking at the Terracotta Army, it was hard to imagine them all painted and colorful!

Then, we headed to Pit 2, almost none of which has been un-covered. The only parts that had been uncovered contained a lot of broken figures yet to be reconstructed. There is a fourth pit that is not open to the public but is just an empty underground structure. It has been guessed that when Emperor Qin died, work on the Terracotta Army ended and the project was left unfinished.

Finally, we visited a museum in the area which contained some relics found in the pits, including tools, pots, horse skeletons (I guess Emperor Qin needed real horses to help defend his tomb?), and more. The museum also contained the two brass chariots which were found in the pits.

After finishing exploring the pits and seeing the Terracotta Army, we visited the Huaqing Hot Springs, which was like a summer palace for the emperors of Xi'an. It was very similar to the Summer Palace in Beijing, but was still very beautiful and less crowded.

The theme of the Hot Springs, however, seemed to be "this pool was built for this emperor's favorite concubine and this pool was built for another concubine." Still, the area was very beautiful and we did get to put our hands in the warm water from the springs.

After wandering around the hot springs for a while, we headed to a dinner/show evening at a local restaurant. First, we saw a music and dance show that highlighted many traditional Chinese songs and dances. Many of the dance told stories, including one about young girls in spring time, the history of an emperor, and a war dance. The most incredible song was done by a man who could play two trumpets and was trained to sing like a bird, aka very high-pitched!

After dinner, we ate a delicious dumpling dinner, a specialty in Xi'an. The funniest thing was that some of the dumplings were shaped like animals; the fish dumplings were shaped like fish, the duck dumplings were shaped like ducks, and so on. The last type of dumpling we got to try were these little dumplings the size of a penny that were cooked into a soup. The number of these little dumplings you got in your bowl of soup determined your fortune. I got two dumplings (the most of anyone at the table), which means double-happiness! After dinner, we headed to our hotel to check in and then walked around for a little while but we were all tired after our morning wake-up call so we just went back to the hotel room to watch a movie and crash.

The next morning, we had a continental breakfast at the hotel, which wasn't that good. It was not what I would consider a breakfast, but they did have some good orange juice and bread. After eating, we went to the ancient city wall and decided the best way to see the wall was to rent some bikes and ride around the top of the wall, about 9 miles total. It was a nice bike ride, but slightly bumpy in some areas because the stones on the floor were all worn out and some were broken. After finishing our bike ride, we went to an art museum in Xi'an which had few different types of art, including traditional farmer's art, shadow puppets, paper art, and more. Then, we got to test out our artistic abilities as we attempted to draw some Chinese characters. We were also shown one of the most complicated Chinese character, which is for a special type of dumpling in Xi'an and contains 57 brush strokes!

After the art museum, we headed to a factory where they make replica Terracotta figures. We all got to make one using some clay and a mold. After we all made ours, the owner of the store judged all the figures and I got first place and won a small jade necklace with the Chinese symbol for happiness on it (福)!

We then grabbed a quick lunch before heading to the main Buddhist Temple in Xi'an, where we climbed to the top of a seven-story pagoda.

There was also an area where you could write prayers on these wooden planks. It was very neat to see all the prayers in different languages and from all over the world. It was also funny to see how many of the included prayers for a 4.0 GPA! After climbing to the top of the pagoda, we also met a couple from Bilabo, Spain. One of the members of our group's native language is Spanish so we both went over and had a brief conversation with them. They were very nice and it was also fun to practice my Spanish a little bit, something I miss doing everyday!

After visiting the pagoda, we headed to the main plaza in Xi'an, which is filled with fountains and has a water/fountain show every couple of hours. The fountains were all set to music but, during the show, the plaza becomes a great place to run through the water and cool off a little bit after being in 95+ weather all day.

Finally, after the fountain show, we went to the Muslim section of Xi'an, where there were a lot of great places to shop. I personally liked this market better than the ones in Beijing because the sellers weren't as pushy. You could actually stop and look at stuff without suddenly being surrounded by eager sellers. We also walked through the mosque for a little while before heading back to the bus to head to the airport.

Xi'an is definitely a city worth visiting and having a tour guide the entire time was helpful because we were able to make the most out of only two days in the city. We never would have been able to see everything we did if we didn't have someone taking us around!

The best discoveries of the week about China:
13 yuan = $2 DVD's
20 yuan = $3 books from street vendors
Pretty decent cafeteria food at the Univesity. Even better: it is subsidized by the government and therefore only costs about 8 yuan = $1.25 per meal

Another Busy Few Days!

So, a lot has been going on so far this week! On Sunday, we went to the art district in Beijing, at Hepingman (which means peace gate). We walked around for quite a while and looked at a lot of the art in the area, mostly paintings, painted scrolls, and painted fans. I got a couple of cool paintings (while practicing my bargaining skills at the same time!) Some of the other participants even got this artist to paint some scrolls for them while we watched, which was pretty cool! After wandering around for a while, we got a very late lunch at a place called the Kro's Nest, which had very delicious and large pizza.

The Kro's nest was located in the "American" part of Beijing, by the American Embassy, where there were a lot of American grocery stores (which were very expensive) and other American stores.


On Monday, we had language class in the morning and learned about how to order food. I good skill to have here in China but we still don't know how to read the menus! So we've been forced to go to restaurants where they have an English menu or pictures on the menu so we can point and say "I want this." In the afternoon, we meet with a sociology professor here at Peking University to talk about education and population in China. Since there are only 5 of us here, it was very informal. We did find out, however, that the Chinese National College Exam was being administered on Monday and Tuesday for recent graduates of high school. She said it was a very stressful exam because the students are only allowed to take the exam once and it basically determines which colleges the students attend/what they study/the rest of their lives. On the way home, we passed by a high school and there was an ambulance parked outside! I definitely don't remember the ACT being that difficult!!!


On Tuesday (June 7th), we had language class once again, where we continued to learn about foods and how to order them in restaurants. We learned some Chinese characters so we wouldn't be so illiterate in the restaurants, but they are hard to memorized! I do know that meat is 肉 and fish is 鱼 (mainly so I can avoid that one hahaha!) For the afternoon, we went back to the art district (Hepingman) and got some delicious dumplings and wantons for lunch. Then, a few of us bought some more paintings/picked some up that we had ordered. Our language instructor, Oliver, cam with us which was nice because he was able to communicate with the shop owners. One of the shop owners had a bird in a cage outside that could repeat what you said and knew how to say "ni hao," or hello! There were also a lot of shop owners who had HUGE crickets in cages...just like in Mulan! Except, unlike the Disney movie, they fight the crickets; I'm not entirely sure why, but Oliver said you could spend thousands of dollars for a good cricket!

On Wednesday (June 8th), we had our final language class, and it was also Oliver's birthday! We went to the bakery before class to pick up a cake for him but unfortunately found out you had to order the big cakes ahead of time, so we ended up just buying a bunch of little ones, which was actually good because we got to taste a lot of different kinds! Oliver did say that it was the most interesting cake he had ever gotten :)

The desserts here in China aren't that sweet, but they are still really good! Some kinds we got were kiwi, walnut and chocolate, strawberry and vanilla (my favorite), strawberry and chocolate, and red bean/green tea.
After lunch, we went to Carrefour, the supermarket that's close by, to buy some snacks and some hangers because we discovered that the clothes dryer in our apartment doesn't work. Then, for dinner we met up with some students from PKU who will be going to Michigan in the fall for graduate school. We went to this amazing restaurant that specializes in food from Shanghai.

Today (Thursday), we were all suppose to start work. However, my mentor emailed me saying he's been super busy and hasn't come up with a project for me for the summer and that he wouldn't be able to meet with me till tomorrow, Friday. So here I am updating my blog while everyone else is in their labs...I'm not complaining too much :) And we're going to Xi'an (where the Terracotta Warriors are) this weekend! We leave super early on Saturday morning and get back late Sunday. 

Olympic Stadium and Great Wall

On June 2 (Thursday), we had language class in the morning and learned about telling time, dates, etc. Then, for lunch we went to this little restaurant by our apartment, which had really good dumplings :) One thing about the restaurants in China is that you pay for the meal right after you order and there is no tipping. Because of this, the waiters do the minimum they need to not be fired. After lunch, we meet up with about 6 students from Peking University studying sociology to talk about any questions we might have about life in China or any other questions. A couple of interesting things that they brought up were that they have a lot of freedoms but they can't trust anything that is printed in newspapers or online. The other main thing we talked about was college life for them. They said that, on average, they take 11 classes a semester! I think I would die (though it sounded like they had almost no free time.) We ended up getting dinner with them and they took us around campus to give us a brief tour and talk some more. They were all very nice and we ended up sharing contact information at the end of the evening, so hopefully we will keep in touch.
On Friday, we once again had our language class and learned about how to order food in a restaurant (probable a good thing to know how to do!) Then, for lunch, we met our professors who we will be working with for the rest of the semester. For some reason, the professor I was suppose to be with decided she didn't need another person in her lab, so I was placed with a different professor. I'm not sure what I will be doing yet because as soon as lunch was over, my professor had a meeting and had to leave without telling me what types of projects I would be working on. After, we decided to go to the Olympic Park here in Beijing. It was amazing how nice and clean the metro was the closer you got to the Olympic Stadium! We had to walk through this really nice park area with a lot of statues to get to the Olympic buildings.

We got to see the Indoor Events Building (which I believe is where all the track events are held), the Bird's Nest (which we didn't get to go inside because we got there after the closing time), the torch, the Water Cube (which we went inside and discover they built a water-park in part of it...who knew?), and more.

 The entire area was very nice to just walk around. The best part of the time there was when we were taking a picture with this statue of running people and a huge group of people from India called us over so we could all get a picture together!

On Saturday, June 4, we went to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, a part of the Great Wall that is farter away from the city and, therefore, a lot less crowded. The climbed to the top of wall up almost 500 steps of stairs and the view was AMAZING! It was honestly one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.

I took us about 2 1/2 hours to walk the open area of the wall (there are a lot of parts of the wall you can't climb because of safety issues because the wall hasn't been well maintained in the non-tourist areas) and the number of people on the wall the farther along we got went down drastically. By the time we got to the top, there were only about 5 other people with us!

After we got back to the city, we all took a well-deserved nap before heading out to dinner. Then, we went to the HouHai area of Beijing for the evening, which contains a small lake, so we were able to rent paddle-boats and talk and relax for a while. We also got some delicious "meat-on-a-stick." It was spicy, but very good!

New Chinese words I have learned:
女 (woman)
男 (man)
北京 (Beijing)
北 (north)
西 (west)

Visit to the Summer Palace, the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Sqaure, the Temple of Heaven and more!

Obviously, we've been seeing a ton of stuff here in China and been all over the city! On Tuesday (May 31st), we found this popular place for breakfast...although breakfast isn't at all like breakfast in the US. We all got these steamed-pork-filled dumplings which were really good. Best part: 10 of the dumplings are 4.5 RMB, or only about 70 cents! Everything here is crazy cheap (but I'm not complaining!)

After breakfast we made our way to the Summer Palace, which is on the outskirts of Beijing and use to be the  vacation-spot of choice for the Chinese Emperors. It's basically a lot of buildings in a wooded-park area with a huge lake in the middle. There were a bunch of people exercising in the palace area, playing traditional music, and a ton of people doing what we assume was a Chinese version of the Macarena...not really sure but PJ, Angela, and Han attempted to dance too, which got a lot of attention from the locals!

After lunch, we headed to the Forbidden City (named because back in the day commoners were not allowed in except with special permission from the emperor). It was HUGE and completely surrounded by two huge ways and a moat...which is probably why it was forbidden. The buildings were all really beautiful and the wood work was very detailed and intricate. The only bad thing was that you couldn't go inside any of the buildings (though you could look into a couple which had these ridiculously extravagant chairs for the emperor. The most amazing thing is that all the buildings had special names/meanings (even though they all were very similar).

Then, we went to Tiananman Square, which is at the south gate of the Forbidden City. The portrait of Chairman Mao was much larger than I thought it was going to be and the most interesting thing was the number of cameras in the square! Guess they're trying to prevent another incident like in 1989...

On June 1, we had our first Chinese language class, which covered the sounds that the Chinese letters make, numbers, and basic phrases. I’m also beginning to be able to recognize a few Chinese characters (namely the numbers, 人(people), 日(day or sun) and 月(moon or month). After our class (which lasted all morning), we went to the Temple of Heaven, a huge park that was built around an ancient temple that used to be used for sacrifices to heaven. The temple was beautiful and it was nice to just walk around for a while. Also, the Temple of Heaven seemed to be the place for old people to get together and play cards (and let me tell you, some of those games were intense!). We also met an old guy who played this awesome instrument and was 

extremely happy to play it for us.

After visiting the temple, we went to the Pearl Market, a market area where you can get a lot of cool cheap stuff (like jewelry, souvenirs, clothes, etc.) if you know how to bargain. I ended up getting a couple things for about 15% what the people were originally asking for...score! Finally, for dinner, we went to this place called the Hot Pot, where you order a bunch of meat and vegetables and cook it in a pot of boiling water at your table....very good even though we ordered waaaaay too much food! At least it was still cheap!

Some prices of things in Beijing:

1 trip in the metro to anywhere in the city: 2 RMB = $0.30

A bottle of water from the supermarket: 0.69 RMB = $0.10

I've also learned electricity is often conserved in Beijing....I've been in two restaurants that turn of the power if the place is less than half-full, so they can save money.