Week 2: June 6-June 12

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week were national holidays. As another example of the impressive work ethic engrained in this culture, I was shocked to find that the days that you do not work due to the holiday are replaced by working throughout the weekend.

My IRES group and one of my lab members, Qira, spent the holiday in Shanghai and Suzhou. Our first morning in Shanghai, we started talking to a woman who was staying in our hostel and I invited her to explore with us for the day. She turned out to be a Shanghai native with a degree in hospitality. Needless to say, she made our stay very enjoyable by combining both tourist attractions and local activities.

The next morning we went to the house where Mao Zedong and others secretly met to discuss the route that gave rise to the Communist movement. The museum gave me a much better sense of the good-natured intentions that these founders had—they were true visionaries.

Finally, we went to Suzhou and explored what is considered the Venice of China. The hostel we stayed at was super cool—it looked like a traditional palace with gardens and all.

At the hostel I met a fellow Israeli who was from the same town that I lived in three years ago—small world!

When we got back to Beijing we had one of my favorite meals so far—they gave us an entire raw lamb leg on a skewer. We cut pieces off and cooked them over charcoal. It was some of the best meat I have ever had.

Week 3: June 13-June 19

This week I felt like I was beginning to gain the respect of my lab members. I started working very late nights and, since our building doors lock at 11 p.m., if I am not finished by then I am forced to spend the night in lab. As a result I spent three consecutive nights in lab to work on experiments. On the fourth night I returned to my office to find a makeshift bed that one of my labmates set up for me. I was happy that my peers noticed that I was trying to work as hard as possible to get better results.

This week started with a failure—the first of many, I am sure. I was attempting to create hollow titania nanospheres using an organic template, which has not been previously achieved. In this process, we were aiming to create carbon sphere templates, modify their surface, coat them with titania, and finally remove the carbon core, thereby making hollow titania spheres. Unfortunately, I found that after the calcination procedure that was designed to remove the carbon core, my sample was brown rather than white, indicating that carbon was still present.

After seeing these results, I decided to explore the duration of the calcination procedure to find the minimum heating time required to remove all of the carbon from the material while maintaining a hollow structure. I simultaneously used this experiment to explore whether I could control the thickness and density of the titania coating. My initial hypothesis was that if I control the duration of the surface modification treatment of the carbon spheres, then I could controllably tune the thickness and density of the titania shell. We proposed this because the surface modification procedure adds functional groups to the outer layer of carbon, allowing titania to bind, creating nucleation sites for the coating layer to grow from. So, perhaps a longer carbon sphere surface modification will allow more nucleation sites to form, thereby increasing the thickness and density of the shell. When I analyzed my samples using SEM and EDS, I was thrilled to find that one set of parameters created, for the first time, hierarchically porous hollow titania spheres using an organic template. Although this marked the first major milestone towards the realization of the photocatalytic water purification membrane application, our results also revealed unexpected responses to changing the duration time of surface modification, suggesting that there are aspects to the material’s formation mechanism. So, to gain a better understanding of this mechanism, this week I will conduct additional controlled experiments attempting to tune the material’s properties.

Week 4: June 20-June 26

The Great Wall kinda sucked. It was swarming with tourists and it is constantly being renovated so I wasn’t able to feel the historical significance of the structure. But the WILD Great Wall, on the other hand, was unbelievable! Although I had a twisted ankle, we hiked along it for over eight hours and I think it was the most challenging hike I have ever been on. It has never been renovated since its original construction hundreds of years ago, so we were basically hiking through rubble and up and down vertical drops.

After seeing how natural forces aged the structure gave me a much better sense of how old and amazing this feat of engineering really is. It was also so nice to barely see any other tourists during our hike. One of the few people we greeted was someone I called the “Wall Troll”. He was waving refreshing drinks and invited us to climb down his ladder and sit with him. We relaxed, chatted—it was great. BUT, when we wanted to get back to our hike, he wouldn't let us use the ladder to get up the wall without charging us 20 kuai each! Sneaky troll….

Although we were a filthy mess by the time we got back to Beijing, a few of us decided to go straight to a market for some shopping. I washed my face and brushed my teeth in the middle of the street on our way there. I think that since everyone already stares at me like I am an alien regardless of how I behave, I feel less restricted to be “normal”.

Week 5: June 27-July 3

We went on quite an adventure this weekend. Alec, Qira and I took a private car to a random fishing village we found on google maps. We asked the villagers if there was a hiking trail nearby, but they all claimed there was not. After exploring, we found a trail that led up a neighboring mountain. When we got to the top of the mountain we realized that we had reached the village’s burial grounds. It was kinda creepy. Then we pitched a tent under a pagoda that overlooked the entire village. That night we made Chinese makeshift s’mores using a soft marshmallow-like candy pressed between two oreos (oreos come in over twenty flavors here including mango and green tea!).

When we wanted to head back to Beijing, we had to hike back for hours until we hit the nearest train station. When we got to the station, an employee who was warned about some kids that were hiking along the tracks started claiming that he was going to report us. However, Chinese hospitality was perfectly exemplified when this man, who was clearly angry with us, began showing where we can freshen up and supplied us with soap and towels. I think that in general, Chinese people are the most inviting and honest people I have come to know. They won’t accept tips and most are truly not interested in ripping you off—which is quite rare when you are a tourist.

Back at lab my experiments are still failing. No matter what I try, I am not able to control the thickness of these titania hollow spheres. Research can feel so pointless when you work countless hours and have no results to show for it.

Week 6: July 4-July 10

This week I went to Zhangjiajie, a park in South-East China where Avatar was filmed with Qira. We had to take a thirty hour train to get there. I thought that I attracted attention in Beijing, but that was nothing compared to the train. I was literally the only foreigner on the train (for good reason… who wants to take a 30 hour train when on vacation?). Sensing every pair of eyes follow me as I walked to my seat made me feel like I was walking down the aisle at my wedding.

Zhangjiajie was mindblowing. I saw some of the world’s most unique geological features. When we climbed to our first peak we saw a monkey and I made the mistake of calling to it. He confidently jumped down the tree, marched right over to me and growled. I was so scared.

I threw him some food and ran. But then I saw another monkey and approached differently—as if I knew that he was in charge. I ended up splitting an entire pack of oreos with the tiny fella.

We also went to Heaven’s Gate Mountain. It is the only mountain that a plane has flown through.

Aside from all of this excitement, I finally made a breakthrough with my project. For the past few weeks, I have been trying to improve the performance of titania hollow spheres by randomly modifying its structure, but did not succeed. So, instead of continuing to test these random modifications, I studied the underlying mechanism of titania’s photocatalysis, and thought of a new structure that might theoretically have increased reactivity. Therefore, I designed a new way to fabricate composite hollow nanospheres. I kind of felt like an artist again. The process of thinking about what I wanted to create and designing a method to make it a reality reminded me so much of the process of creating art which I used to be so passionate about. It’s cool to be able to transfer that feeling to an activity that can more directly help other people.

This picture was taken when I first realized that I was successful in my experiment. I was so excited that I didn’t realize my labmate was trying to get my attention for a picture…

Week 7: July 11-July 21

When I visited Tiananmen Square with my research mentor, we had a discussion about the Chinese government’s censorship of information regarding the protests that occurred there. While I automatically prioritized open access to information, she broadened my perspective by suggesting that total transparency can create disharmony, panic, and distrust in the government. As someone who aims to help people using scientific research in this interconnected age, understanding the contrasting perspectives across borders will allow me to more effectively diagnose the world’s issues and accelerate the development of solutions through global collaboration. Meanwhile, although my mentor and I had dissimilar social views about effective governance, back at lab we shared the same goal to improve water purification techniques, showing me our broader similarity. Although there are vast differences between countries, one of the only globally unified endeavors is that of scientific investigation, making it the biggest community whose aim is to help people. I am confident that joining this community is the best way to develop solutions to global issues.

Over these past weeks, I have grown an immense appreciation for the contrasting environment that initially made me uncomfortable. I can see myself happily researching in Tsinghua University long-term in the future.

I am realizing that “work hard, play hard” is totally how I want to live my life. I had an unforgettable summer full of adventures while making a discovery that enhanced the performance of the currently used photocatalyst by three-fold. The deep satisfaction I got from making a step towards sustainable water purification makes me want to continue creating sustainable technology using scientific research.