Day 32, Part II: Goodbye, Science!

Picture 1: The super nice Wang XianPing and me.

Picture 2: A very poorly taken picture of Fuzimiao. It's so much prettier in real life! 

This morning I was finally able to sleep in, as the night before my host mom told me and my host sister we weren't leaving for work until after lunch today. After folding up my laundry from the night before – I'm a genius for hanging my underwear up to dry by a window, by the way – my host sister, Li Yue, and I set out to find some breakfast and complete a few errands. Our first stop was a coffee shop/bakery called 85 Degrees or something like that, where they have a buy a pastry and get a coffee type of deal before 10 am. I definitely made a mental note to come back to this chain of bakeries for breakfast in Shanghai.

After finishing our errands, we met up with my host mom, ate lunch, and made our way to work. When I finally made it to my lab, my coworkers exclaimed with surprise that I had come in today. Keeping on with that genius theme, I had forgotten to WeChat someone to let them know I would be late. During my last day at the lab, I was able to again observe the general day-to-day of the lab. I brought in some American candies – Werther's Originals and Jolly Ranchers, to be exact – for everyone to eat, and I was happy to see that the Jolly Ranchers especially were getting lots of attention. Someone else brought in a watermelon and cut it up on the desk next to mine (not for any special occasion, I have a feeling this just happens frequently here) and we all shared that too. Plus, a grad student bought me an ice cream after showing me where the makeshift vending machine/fridge was on the 6th floor.

When it was getting closer to leaving time, Wang XianPing, a graduate student who was especially nice and willing to show me what he does every day, came to where I was sitting to say bye. It was kind of sad, but we had already exchanged WeChat ID's so I can send him pictures of… I don't know… American fruit flies or something. He handed me a book, told me it was a gift, and explained that it was a Bible written in Chinese. It's the one he keeps at work and he wanted to give it to me because maybe I would want to look at a Chinese one and read it. Even though I'm an illiterate atheist, the thought was so sweet that it really did make my day (although I don't know how I'm going to go about reading it). This will definitely be a very interesting and very touching souvenir of this trip! I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to many others as they were eating dinner in the cafeteria, but there was plenty of candy left so hopefully they will be able to infer my thanks and appreciation through the sweets. I wish I had had more time to learn skills and really participate in this lab. One thing though – Wang XianPing showed me the flies that I had transferred into a new vial yesterday, and they had already laid a bunch of eggs. Babies are on the way!

This evening my host family decided to do one last touristy thing with me and take me to Fuzimiao (I think that might kind of be close to how it's spelled), or Confucius Temple. It's where, a very long time ago, young adults would take the official exam based on Confucian principles. I was expecting a much more serene place than I found, but the architecture of the buildings and light-up dragons and boats made the area still very scenic and beautiful. It was absolutely definitely a tourist trap, though. We were all pretty tired, so we walked around the area, took a few pictures, and drove back home. Now I have to pack and finish my papers before Shanghai tomorrow! I exchanged money today, so I expect to be super touristy and shop on Saturday and Sunday, when we have free time. Yay! Saying goodbye to my host family will be hard, but my host sister goes to school in Pittsburgh so I can probably get her to visit me in Boston soon!

- Alice G.

Day 32: One-Month Aniversary

Our final week in Nanjing is coming to an end, and this means it’s time to say farewell to our colleagues at our internships and our homestay families!

For breakfast I had matuan, congjianbing, and suannai with my host family, and then rode the bus for about 30 minutes to my internship. My internship was at Sinotrans, a state-owned transportation logistics company, and most of the work they do involves planning out the routing of shipments of goods being exported from China. This is a field I had never really considered before, although I am very interested in international trade. 

Although the work was pretty difficult, as it mostly involved reading long technical documents in Chinese, my boss was very understanding of my needing several minutes to read a single page of documents and gave me relatively free rein to work at my own pace. The project I was investigating was specifically about taking wind turbines manufactured in Chongqing and Xinjiang in Western China and shipping them to Iowa, where they will be installed at a wind farm. The amount of planning that goes into this is much more intricate than the average package sent via UPS, as might be expected when the package weighs several hundred tons and is too large to fit on a standard container ship. As my boss explained, their options for ports they can ship these components to and from is severely limited just due to their sheer size! My contribution to this project involved researching labor standards in the midwest, through the different states they were looking to hire truck drivers from to transport these wind turbines from the port to the final destination. In addition, I did a lot of research about the industry in general, including the details about different ports in the US and abroad and how different transportation methods work together.

Since it was the last day, I had already finished up most of my work for the week, and didn’t have much to do. I mostly observed my coworkers as they worked, and tried to get a better feel for the day in the life of the average Chinese office worker. I think I will miss the daily nap time after lunch if I end up working at a US company, although I hear that Google and some tech companies have similar benefits…

After saying goodbye to everyone in the office, I boarded the bus back to my homestay, where I ate dinner one last time with my host family. They bought a roast duck for the occasion, along with several home made dishes, and most importantly a giant pile of duck tongues! They then chided me the whole dinner for not being more enthusiastic about eating from the plate of duck tongues, as I muttered excuses in broken Chinese about why I didn’t need to eat another three. Not that I dislike duck tongue, but “I’m not particularly hungry” is not a valid excuse in China, especially when you’re an American and a guest in the home whose duty it is to eat the same amount as the entire family combined!

With our time in Nanjing coming to an end, it feels like it’s been so long and yet so short a period of time. It’s hard to imagine we’ve been in China exactly one month as of today! Even if I’m sad to leave Nanjing, I’m excited to set out for our final destination tomorrow afternoon. Shanghai here we come!  

- Andy G

Day 31: Thursday!

My day started with fresh baozi and doujiang (my favorite!). Then we rushed off to work. My internship is at the Model Animal Research Institute (MARC), which is the only major research animal depository in China. Luckily, my host mother is a technician in a lab there, so I can ride with her and from work. She doesn’t speak any English, and my Chinese is barely above that level, so our conversations are pretty limited, but it works.

The lab was pretty quiet when we arrived. The grad student I work with was preparing to present a paper at journal club, so I spent some time going over the article. Jessica invited me to her lab to help with something. It turned out to be extracting the brains from baby mice…Her grad student casually decapitated each one and showed us how to cut through first the skin and then the paper-thin skull to carefully remove the brain. I ruined the first one I tried, but Jessica was a natural! The brains will be thinly sliced and stained to check for the expression of certain genes. 

Having never worked with animal models before, I was surprised by how much we have been allowed to try hands-on here. Northeastern requires hours of training and certification just to set foot in a lab, let alone do anything. The atmosphere is much more relaxed here. It’s great. After lunch Jessica, Alice, and I interviewed Dr. Gao, who is the founder of the institute and our host. He’s a very busy man, so we were lucky to get so much time with him. He shared a lot of background on MARC and insights on research in China with us. Did you know that China is number two in the world for number of scientific publications annually? I didn’t. Basic research in China is catching up to top nations like the US and Germany and even surpassing them in some areas. 

At the end of the day, somebody cut up a watermelon and everybody pushed slices into each others’ hands. They had to mop up the floor afterward! I’ve probably had more watermelon this week than in the previous six months combined. During one of these watermelon sessions, I learned that it is called xigua, or “west melon” in Chinese, and that pumpkin is nangua, or “south melon”. Yes, pumpkins are melons here. I love it.

After work, I thought we were going home, when we drove up to and parked in front of a line of restaurants. As usual, I just went with it. My host mom found the one she was looking for, and when we went upstairs, I found my boss, his children, and two members of his lab. Apparently it was one of the member’s last day. I certainly hadn’t earned a place at this intimate gathering, so I felt pretty honored to be invited. The first dish looked like a giant mound of fried rice (as in 18 inches across). Suddenly, everyone started jabbing it and it caved in. It was actually an entire wok’s worth of burnt on rice. It was magical. 

After dinner we went home and had more fried rice!

-Jared O.

Day 30, Part II: Getting over the hump

Before going into the details of another exciting day at our internships, here is a snapshot from last night. My host mom subscribes to the folk wisdom that walking one hundred steps after dinner makes you live to ninety nine. We headed out by the river, teeming with kids and families out jogging, walking, and zipping around on mopeds. A little further out, a group was starting up the square dancing that we saw first in Anhui. Yesterday we saw an impromptu concert being held under a bridge by the river. It featured accompaniments of some older songs with a saxophone, an acoustic guitar,  an accordion, and a traditional two-string instrument called the erhu. Several old folks watching the performance, making it into a round of karaoke.

As for this morning, I was sent off to the bus stop, stomach full of fruits and a red bean bun. I actually arrived early to our office, home to The Nanjinger, an expat magazine. Jessica G and I have been charged with writing articles tackling the tricky topic of Morality. Shortly after lunch and submitting first drafts of our articles, our bosses took us on a field trip to an art exhibit at Chenguang 1865 Creative Industry Park.

The exhibit in question actually featured a group of local artists along with several American artists based in St. Louis. Nanjing and St. Louis are sister cities, and actually represent the first such relationship between China and the United States. The exhibit, River to River, creates a connection between the great Mississippi and Yangtze rivers. The city of Nanjing played host to the Americans for a month, facilitating cultural exchange through art. Sounds a little bit like a group of college students I know!

Speaking of which, Jessica and I had the great pleasure of meeting a delightful pair of elementary schoolers while making our way around the exhibit. They were there on a school field trip and their teachers surreptitiously encouraged them to practice their English with us. No problems there because their English was leaps and bounds better than our Chinese!

Just after making our way back to the office building, we reunited with the rest of the group near the Nanjing Railway Station. It only goes to show how close we've all become that a few days away from each other felt like an eternity. From there we made our way to the home of Hu Jie. Prior to traveling, one of our assignments included watching one of the documentaries of Hu Jie. That powerful film, Spark, chronicled the activities and the fate of several university students involved in a magazine working to report the truth of the Great Famine.

Hu Jie's films and artwork tend to focus on the persecution of intellectuals during China's Cultural Revolution, and other dark truths gone untold. Despite the horrors of his subject matter, we found him to be an excellent host, an easy-going person, and happy to answer our many questions. These ranged from his observations about generational views of Chairman Mao to how he was able to diffuse his works while under such close watch. 

After this dialogue, we made our way to the top floor of a nearby hotel where we were treated to dinner in a revolving restaurant. Now home at last, I think I'll join my host family in watching a British film, dubbed into Mandarin, starring the man who plays Captain America!

Sydney M.

Day 30: Why I’m Gaining Weight in China

Someone needs to save me from myself. Why? Because I chose to intern for five whole days at a deliciously tantalizing bakery. Patricia and I work together at Skyways Bakery, a bakery founded and owned by German native Patrick Heckelmann. At the bakery storefront, Patricia and I man one of the baked goods counter—it's not only a fairly simple job, but it's also easy to overcome any language barriers with patrons when they can point at what they want, no words needed. Meanwhile, we also observe our coworkers and make small talk for our eventual essay due at the end of the week comparing Chinese companies to American companies. 

When Patricia and I stand behind the muffins, raisin coffee cakes, baguettes, whole wheat bread rolls, croissants, chocolate covered almonds, cookies, soft pretzels, cheese, cake and macarons, we inhale the sweet and floury scent, and we can't help but fantasize about all the crumbly pastries we want to eat once lunch comes around. It doesn't help that our boss generously gave us a preloaded customer card to spend on lunch, so needless to say, it's hard to restrain ourselves. Food perks aside, our coworkers are incredibly friendly despite Patricia and I mainly getting in their way. The space behind the counter is very small, yet we try to fit in eight people. Everyone is constantly walking back and forth between the baked goods, sandwich prep station, cash register and espresso machine, so it's pretty hectic, but fun. Patricia and I are learning a lot, too. Today we visited Skyways' business office and production site. We interviewed Mr. Heckelmann and prepared a survey that we will ask customers to complete tomorrow and Friday.

Everyone else seems to be having a good and significant experience at their internship. I heard that many of them get to take midday naps and I'm so jealous! Of course, this is countered with events like 12 hour meetings, which I heard that Michelle, Jared R. and Caton had to sit through one. I think I'll take baked goods to naps and 12 hour meetings any day.

My own host family treats me very well. They're kind and help me accomplish difficult tasks like buying a cell phone SIM card. My host parents ask me about the price of American colleges, the average American salary, and how Asian Americans act and interact with other ethnicities in America. As both of them are police, they also ask me about the police and government system in the U.S. My host sister is incredibly sweet and I address her as 妹妹 mei mei, the Chinese word for little sister because she's two years younger than I. But sometimes I feel weird calling her my little sister because she's 6 feet tall! That's almost an entire foot taller than I am! But height difference aside, we have a lot of fun together going shopping, eating out and watching TV and movies.

Tonight we will going to the home studio of Hu Jie, one of China's most important historical documentary filmmakers.  Hu Jie has produced works based on oral history about some of the horrific acts the Chinese government committed during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution like Searching for Lin Zhao's Soul (2004), Though I am Gone (2007), and Spark (2013). After tonight's meeting with him, we will continue to work through Thursday and Friday and gear up for Shanghai!

Malia B.

Day 29, Part II: New country, same everyday life

Picture 1. Sydney and I working hard on our articles.
Picture 2. At lunch with our supervisor and fellow interns from the Nanjing International School
Picture 3. The Sino Connexion workspace
Picture 4. My host sister, Ariana, and I in front of their house on Sunday 

Picture 5. My host dad helps my host mom cook. She is wearing a super cute apron.
Picture 6. Scrambling eggs with chopsticks
Picture 7. Learning how to wrap the dumplings 

If you would have told me five years ago that I would intern in China for a magazine publication, I would have probably called you crazy. This dialogue gives us all a wonderful opportunity to pursue a potential career path in a country where we have no real-life experience. 

First, let's back track to my morning at my wonderful host family's home. They live close to the Nanjing Youth Olympics site, by the Yangtze River, in a gated community. The parents are both government workers and they have a 14-year-old daughter. They moved to this house last year. Yes, it is a house and everything is gorgeous: velvet curtains, beautiful fury other and even mechanized toilets. 

This morning, my host mom made a fruit soup with dried red dates and she steamed frozen red-bean buns. Normally, the parents leave at 6am, but this week, the mom is going late as she wants to still be at home when I get ready. I've told her she doesn't have to, but she is anyways. I think their daughter leaves for school just after 7am. 

To get to work, I walk about seven minutes to the bus stop. This morning, I arrived at the bus stop at the same time as yesterday, but to my dismay, my bus didn't come for 20 minutes. My ride is 20 minutes, so I knew I would be late to work. I texted my boss with my super old school cell phone. Thankfully, he is understanding and knows the buses are not dependable. I had never before been late to work, but there's always a first!

My internship is at Sino Connexion, a media and newspaper company that publishes guides for expatriates living in Nanjing. Along with Sydney M., our task is to write an article for the next Nanjinger, the monthly magazine. Today, I finished my research and wrote my first draft. The day went by very quickly as we took a longer lunch and I am enjoying getting to know the lay of the company. 

I also take the bus home - once again, my bus didn't come for 20 minutes, but at least it wasn't raining not was it cold. My host parents arrived home at the same time I did and we began to make dinner. Last night, I told my host parents we learned how to make dumplings. So, my host mom asked her friend for a recipe so that we could make them for dinner tonight. Using eggs and Chinese green beans as the filling since I don't eat pork (my family is extremely understanding of my requests), the mom and I made around 50 dumplings. As the mom and I wrapped them, the dad joked that I am his "adopted daughter." I was elated that he said this. The four of us have a group chat, titled "new family." The parents said that after I return to America, we will keep our group chat; I will not be deleted from the family. On wechat, the dad posted several pictures of me cooking and titled the album "其乐融融" or "joyous and harmonious." I really do have a great family for the week. After dinner, I continued asking the mom questions for our homestay report. Realizing I had asked too many tough questions, I asked to see family photos. The mom was very happy, looking at past memories of their family trips to America, Asia, and Europe. I'm so glad the family feels so comfortable to show me their family memories. I look forward to getting to know the family even better over the next three days. The time is flying by!

- Jessica G.

Day 29: Fruit Flies and Pizza Pies

Picture 1 – A typical vial of fruit flies, plugged with cotton. The writing shows the date they were bottled, the genders, and the strains.

Picture 2 – A very nice graduate student prepping some ovaries on a slide for me to look at.

Picture 3 – A picture highlighting the nuclei of an egg chamber, which contains an oocyte (egg cell) and it's supporting cells so that it can grow.

Picture 4 – Pizza!

Day two of our internship week started bright and early for me, with a 6 am self-enforced wake-up call that is required so that I don't show up to work looking like a gremlin. My host mom, a lovely woman who is determined to feed me to the point of bursting, also works at my internship site and leaves every morning at 7. In order to avoid getting lost on public transportation, I get up early and sit in the car with her and my host sister, who also works in the same building. And then I drink freshly ground coffee from a machine in the office. Not a bad deal, really.

My internship is at the Nanjing University's Model Animal Research Center. Although this facility is mostly focused on research on a wide variety of mice strains, other model organisms are also used including zebrafish, frogs, etc. I am staying in Dr. Jiong Chen's lab this week, which primarily focuses on Drosophila melanogaster or the common fruit fly. Its ovaries are a wonderful resource for learning how cell clusters migrate through tissues together, which is useful information that can be used to understand tumor metastasis, among other things. These first few days I have been doing a lot of reading, watching others work with flies, and question asking. Two particularly helpful graduate students have shown me fly dissections, fly food preparation, fly identification and separation techniques, and lots of pretty colored pictures of fly ovary egg chambers. I was also handed an old handbook (That actually used to be Dr. Chen's when he went to UCLA!) with all the precious secrets of 'fly pushing', or basically how to create and maintain and work with flies with all kinds of different mutations. I had no idea that flies were such good model organisms – I just thought that they grew quickly and were easy to take care of, but their usefulness as in vivo models extends beyond that. The males apparently experience no recombination within their chromosomes at all while creating sperm, which means it's easier to determine if their offspring have the mutation that is desired or not. Since genetic studies require extremely pure lines in order to study the phenotype of certain mutations, this is very useful within a model organism.

Normally my host mother would drive us home as well, but today Li Yue (my host sister) and I had to find our way home ourselves. Luckily there's a convenient shuttle bus from the research center that takes us to a bus stop, which we rode straight to a Pizza Hut for dinner. I know what you're thinking – why would you go to a Pizza Hut when you can eat authentic Chinese food? Well, Pizza Huts in China are quite different from the fast-food establishments in the U.S., and I felt like I had to check it out. They're super fancy on the inside, with nice plush booths and real menus and wait staff who give you lemon water. Plus, the menu has things like steak, red wine, appetizers, and various rice dishes (it is China, after all). My host sister and I enjoyed a little pizza topped with vegetables and bits of salmon wrapped in bacon…seriously. It was so nice.

It's starting to dawn on me now that there's only about a week left of this dialogue before I go back to the states. Although I'm excited to see my family again, I can't help but feel bittersweet. I know there are many things here that I won't have the chance to see for a very long time. Still, I'm pretty sure my lungs will thank me when I land in Texas where the sky is literally blue and clear every day. And I need to exercise regularly when I get home. The food here just tastes too good!

Here's to another week full of adventures, food, and smog!

-Alice G.