Week 2: June 6-12

Everyone in our group was fortunate enough to get Sunday-Wednesday off from lab for the Duanwujie holiday (Dragon Boast Festival) so we were able to go on a big trip to Shanghai and Suzhou. We departed via bullet train on Sunday morning and spent two nights in Shanghai. We stayed at a youth hostel in the Pudong District. We managed to meet a fantastic woman who was in Shanghai for a few nights for a conference who showed us around the city for the day. Shanghai was an extremely modern and impressive city. Pudong Financial District is where all of the tall buildings are located. We went up the Pearl Tower and got some amazing night views of the city skyline. The Shanghai Tower (which will be the second tallest in the world when completed) was under construction and it was possible to see welding sparks at night from the viewing deck on the Pearl Tower. We also had some amazing soup dumplings in Shanghai. On Tuesday morning we departed for Suzhou via bullet train. We took a bus to a historical water canal town outside the city. It was very touristy but had some beautiful scenery. The next day we took the bullet train back to Beijing. It felt really good to return to Beijing and is taking on a “second home” feel for me. Overall, I am very happy with the way this trip turned out.

In terms of differences, I think Beijing has a stronger governmental presence than in Shanghai or Suzhou. I did not notice any military personnel in either Shanghai or Suzhou.

As I mentioned, to get to Shanghai and Suzhou, we took the bullet train. You can certainly tell that the Chinese tried to model their bullet train system off the Japanese. Unlike Taiwan, which directly purchased high speed rail technology/infrastructure from Japan, China tried to simply copy it by observation and hiring Japanese engineers. On the surface, they are very similar but there are some subtle differences. For example, the way you go about purchasing tickets in China is ridiculous. Foreigners are not able to purchase tickets online and all the trip planning websites are in Chinese. Fortunately, for this trip we had someone who could book and buy bullet train tickets for us. One thing that I really like about the trains in China is that they offer free hot water so you can bring your own instant ramen on board for lunch!

Week 3: June 13-19

On Saturday I went with the cohort to the Yonghegong Temple, the Confucian Museum, and Houhai. I have been to many Buddhist temples in Japan, but Yonghegong Temple was very different. The architecture was entirely different and the atmosphere was more relaxed. I found it fascinating that during the Cultural Revolution, the Yonghegong Temple was essentially walled off and isolated, but not destroyed. They had a few relics from Tibet in the temples which were very intricate and beautiful. The Confucian Museum had some very interesting old cedar trees in the grounds which I liked a lot. Houhai reminded me of a Chinese version of Lake Calhoun, a famous shopping area near a lake in Minneapolis. Very touristy but beautiful at night.

On Sunday I rode the city bus for about one and a half hours to Phoenix Mountain for some hiking. I was fortunate enough to meet up with three Dutch people on the bus who were also going to hike. I spent the day with them. Two of them work as psychologists in Beijing and the other works for Jet Li as a Tai Chi model and movie extra. It was very interesting to talk to young expat workers. We climbed the mountain and did Tai Chi at the top. This was the coolest thing I have done on this trip by far. I got back and did some barter-shopping in Beijing with Shakked.

I have been getting to know some of the Tsinghua students. Hiroko is a Japanese colleague in my lab who is enrolled in a dual degree program between Tokyo Tech and Tsinghua. It is so amazing to talk to her and my Chinese labmates and to compare and contrast Japanese, American and Chinese life. For instance, today during lunch we talked about our high schools. Apparently in China, most students attend high school classes from 7 a.m.-10 p.m. and live in dormitories at school. In Japan, it is more like the US, but sports and study take up a large part of the student’s afterschool time. Also, my roommate and I have a good relationship. For instance, last week we went running together.

I’ve also discovered new Chinese foods every day! I love the food here. I will just list a few:

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#x2022; Mochi filled with sesame butter in a sweet sauce• Clay pot beef bone soup

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#x2022; Sunflower seed ice cream bar• Meat filled chewy bread

• Rice custard with vinegar/soy sauce

• Fried chicken w/plum sauce

• Pork femur bone with spicy cartilage

As for daily life, I’m starting to get into a routine on the weekdays. I wake up at 6:30 am and (weather/pollution permitting) go for a run off campus. During my runs, I am finding that Tsinghua is really a utopian bubble within Beijing. Literally two blocks away there are slums, massive construction projects, and abandoned buildings. This is the first time in my life where I have seen poverty like this, so it is fascinating, extremely sad, and exciting all at the same time. The construction projects are insane. One day I found a vacant four-lane highway and just started to run along it. It stretched for miles but there were no cars on it. My morning runs are by far the best part of my day because everything turns into an adventure. I usually get to lab at 8:30am and check my email until 9am. Then I meet with my grad student and work until ~10pm. I usually eat lunch and dinner with my labmates. Then I work out at 10:30 p.m. at the outdoor weight room and head back for bed.

Week 4: June 20-26

The Great Wall was amazing! I am really glad that we hiked primarily on the un-renovated section. I think it helped to put the age in perspective. We did hike part of the renovated section at the end and it seemed less spectacular. The portion we hiked was very famous for its topography and roughness, so literally every section was my favorite. I really liked the periodic and dilapidated forts along the wall. We hiked on a beautiful blue sky day, a rare thing for Beijing. I think it’s really hard to grasp the true size of the Great Wall from only seeing such a small portion on our hike. I’m super bummed that we got there so late so I could not camp on the wall. Overall, it was one of the coolest hikes I have done in my life.

It’s now the middle of the program. My biggest accomplishment has been my research and interactions with my lab group. I really love everyone in my lab group and think they are great people. My graduate student (Peng Ce) and I have been getting into some really interesting discussions during our meals together about everything from popular culture and politics to fishing. I am also very proud of my evolving bartering skills.

The biggest challenge and frustration has been with planning travel in China. The train, online information, and language barrier make planning a trip to a rural/natural part of China nearly impossible without the help of a native speaker. I guess that’s more motivation to learn Mandarin!

I feel that I am having significantly more “regrets” than last summer. With such a small tight-knit group that wants to stick together, it’s really hard to come to consensus.

These things are left to do on my China bucket list:

• Super excited for my Hong Kong-Macau trip and to see my Fulbright lab group
• Wet market
• Happy Valley Amusement park
• Beach
• More mountain hiking/camping
• Beijing bathhouse, massage, eastern medicine
• Tianjin
• Buy more cheap clothes and shoes
• Spend some time with my sister. She is coming to Beijing this weekend

Week 5: June 27-July 3

One of my lab mates (I call her Meow Meow) invited me and my graduate mentor over to her apartment for one of the most personable dinners I have had in China. We all helped make dumplings on a set of small card tables and cooked them on a hot plate. Meow Meow is engaged to a Civil Engineering post doc student and lives in a small one bedroom apartment. It was really interesting to see the kind of living conditions that non-international students have to manage with. It was really interesting and fun interacting with my lab mates in a setting seemingly outside Tsinghua and academia. I feel really honored and grateful that I got to have this experience with my lab mates.

This week the weather has been absolutely fantastic. Blue sky, low pollution, and 80ish weather in the mornings. I have been waking up at 5:30am and running to the main parks near Tsinghua (Olympic park, summer palace, fragrant hills). I usually get to lab a little after 9am and start the day feeling extremely refreshed and satisfied.

Recently, Professor Shaoping Li and a few of his PhD students were in Beijing for a conference on pharmaceutical analysis. He invited me to attend part of the conference and have lunch with him and a few of his students. I also attended a conference when I was in Japan on carbon nanotube electronics. Although the subject areas are totally different, the environment of the conference in China seemed relatively laid back but covered more material. It’s interesting to compare and contrast international conference environments and styles. Also, I felt like a poster child the whole time I was there. Even though I was not presenting, the photographers hovered over me and took pictures all the time—very funny. My meeting with Professor Shaoping Li was extremely reassuring of a Fulbright in Macau. I will travel there next week to make my final decision between HKUST and Macau. The graduate students there were also really interesting. Two were from Mainland China and one was from Malaysia. I felt really honored to be invited to the conference and learned a lot in the process.

Right now, my sister is on her way to volunteer at a rural middle school outside Xingyang in Central China for 2 months. Her name is Madeline. She is seventeen years old and a rising senior at Central High School in St. Paul, MN. Her group flew into Beijing so I arranged to meet up with them and show them around the city on Sunday and Monday. It’s always so interesting meeting up with longtime friends and family in unfamiliar places. I am really glad that I had the opportunity to meet her in China and hope that she has a great time in Xingyang.

As for research, I have attached my group meeting Power Point Presentation from this past Monday. I am working hard to resolve issues associated with the IBU release study. I will try to do Ca and PO4 release quantification next week before I leave for Macau and Hong Kong. I have almost everything typed up, although I need to analyze XRF, XRD and BET results more thoroughly. I probably will not have time to get to the dentin application and characterization unless things go very well the next few weeks. Fingers crossed!

Week 6: July 4-July 10

This past weekend was by far the most interesting and irregular weekend I have had so far. I decided to go on a hiking trip to Mount Haitou with a group of eight students and alumni I meet the previous week at Tsinghua. We had a wide range of camping-experience levels, ranging from first time hikers to veterans like myself. The hike up took us roughly seven hours and we climbed nearly 6,000 feet. The weather was gorgeous and we seldom saw other hikers. Everyone in our group was some sort of science major so it was really interesting to talk to them about their research and experiences. We set up camp on a flat ridge-line near the top of the mountain with almost 200 other people and had a very “Chinese camping” experience of cooking ramen and shouting at other campers. Then, a HUGE thunderstorm rolled in with 45 mph winds that literally blew some of the cheaper Chinese tents off the mountain. I had to rescue two Chinese girls whose tent broke in the wind. Everyone made it out OK and the next morning I split from the group and went on a more rigorous hike down the back-side of the mountain with two more experienced hikers in our group who worked for Airbus in Beijing. We followed a wild flower-covered ridgeline trail to an ice cold spring (they drank directly from it, I passed…). We followed the spring down the mountain to find a crystal clear lake which we swam in. At the bottom of the mountain was a huge grove of wild peach trees and blackberry trees. We feasted for about an hour and then made our way back to Beijing. I brought back what was maybe a pound of peaches back to my lab group.

In my research lab, Profesor Cai holds group meetings about once every two weeks. Everyone in the group has a chance to present and share their research progress. It’s a really laid back atmosphere and the Q&A sessions afterwards seem very productive and collaborative. I am fortunate enough to be able to present at group meetings. I try to only take ten minutes to present. Most presentations are in Chinese but the powerpoints are in English so I am able to follow along and look up things I do not know in Wikipedia. The meetings usually last about two hours. Profesor Cai always gives an interesting little pep talk at the end of the group meeting. It’s in Chinese so I cannot understand it but it kind of reminds me of my high school football days.

The overall theme of our research projects here is sustainability. I think China is suffering from two types of sustainability issues: cultural and economic. China has such a rich history and culture which is constantly at odds with its rapid drive for economic expansion. I think the first picture below really sums up this conflict in China, where cultural destruction is often times justified by economic advancement. It’s a tough problem that many historic countries like India and much of South East Asia will have to deal with as they continue to modernize. On the other hand, I think Japan has somehow managed to preserve its culture while becoming a modernized society. I think policies and principles from Japan could easily be applied to China. Economic sustainability in China is another huge issue. I think we are already seeing a rapid shift in the Chinese economy toward more tertiary services. I think living conditions in China will continue to increase in the future as people become more educated and are able to enjoy more freedom form the government.

Week 7/8: July 11-July 21

I was fortunate enough to be able to take off a few days from work to travel to Macau and Hong Kong to visit a few potential Fulbright laboratories. The weekend turned into much more than just a business trip and was probably the most memorable thing I did in China. I first visited Macau for three night and stayed at one of my labmate’s apartments. Macau is such a special place. It’s sort of a mix between Hawaii, Las Vegas, Portugal, and Hong Kong. Although it is small, the islands are so diverse and interesting that it seems as big as Beijing. One of my labmates was big into biking, so he lent me one of his racing bikes and uniforms and we spent the day biking around the island stopping at every beach and eating seafood. Right before I departed to Hong Kong, my advisor at the University of Macau took me out to a famous Portuguese restaurant. Probably the best meal of the trip.

Hong Kong was also very beautiful. I stayed on Hong Kong Island and traveled around with a Korean girl I met at my hostel. We hiked the Dragons back trail, went to the top of Victoria Peak and explored Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. The food and wet markets were amazing. Overall, I think I like the Southern Chinese (Cantonese) culture better than the Northern culture. It’s more loud, funny, tasty, and free-spirited. One interesting tradition in the South is that during dim sum breakfast, random strangers will join each other at large round dining tables so they can eat and talk together. I woke up at 5:30 a.m. my last morning in Hong Kong to partake in this tradition. An older Hong Konger saw me sit down by myself and moved from his seat to join me to find out why I was in Hong Kong. I traveled to Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) to meet with a few professors there. HKUST has to be the most beautiful campus on the world. All of its building are built into the hillside and cascade down to a beautiful beach. Every building has an amazing view of the ocean. This is the top school in Asia so I am probably going to apply for a PhD there in the fall but I think a Fulbright really would not apply here. It’s far too Western and removed from the rest of Hong Kong and China.

I think my biggest personal gain this summer has been in my ability to positively react to spontaneous situations. In China, it is nearly impossible to plan a trip and have it work 100% so I quickly learned how to be more adaptable and realistic. Last summer in Japan, I could easily plan trips and depend on transportation being on time, but in China this is usually not a realistic goal. I think one of the most useful tools to react to unpredictable situations is to make friends that know more than you do about the situation. For example, on my way to Macau my flight was abruptly cancelled when I got to the airport. I would have been totally lost if I had not started talking to this guy that was in line with me. It tuned out that he was from Macau and was going to Tsinghua next year for a Masters in Finance. We both worked out the situation together and figured out a way to fly into Hong Kong and take a ferry over to Macau. I would have never been able to do this without this friend. In general, I think I have become a lot more outgoing and able to make short term friendships.

Overall, I think I have learned a lot more about myself this summer than last summer. Both the research and lifestyle of China is relatively unstructured which encouraged me to think on my toes and act more independently. I think from this experience I have become a more independent researcher, have a better understanding of the research culture in China, and have a better idea of what it means to be a global citizen and scientist. I am very excited to get back to the University of Minnesota, finish my last semester and head to Singapore and then hopefully Macau for more research in Asia. I am really thankful that I had this opportunity this summer and will try to use what I have learned to become a more effective global scientist.