Aug 22, 2017 Every weekend, I commute into Beijing’s city center to fulfill my proper tourist duties. Sany Heavy Industry, China’s leading engineering machinery manufacturer (and also my workplace), is located in Changping, a suburb two hours away by transit from downtown Beijing. After a week living and working inside the industrial park I can’t […]
Aug 29, 2017 Never in my life have I ever felt more Chinese. Growing up in a 95% white town, I was the majority of my friends’ only Asian friend, and because of this, I was their encyclopedia to all things China. I desperately tried to explain how fortune cookies aren’t actually a Chinese thing,
Sep 1, 2017 Going into this summer, I really didn’t know what to expect. Since leaving Beijing as a young child, every subsequent experience I’d had in my homeland was completely filtered through the lens of a foreigner, with full immersion always supplanted by my mother’s help with translation, comfortable hotel stays, and nice dinner
Sep 5, 2017 The freeway was awash in a golden late-evening glow as I drifted in and out of sleep on the airport shuttle into Shanghai. I remember looking out the window and seeing all the trees, the grass, the vines draped over every concrete pillar in sight, all flushed with a comfortable kind of
Sep 7, 2017 A telltale sign of a local is the ease with which he or she navigates the public transportation system. I went into this summer thinking that I could pretty much pass as a local, with my fluent Chinese and abundance of experience traveling in China with family. When I first arrived in
Sep 12, 2017 As the summer ends and I board the plane to head home, I am filled with numerous fond memories of living in Shanghai. I applied to the Harvard China Student Internship Program (HCSIP) because I had never been to China before and wanted to improve my Chinese while learning more about the
