Shanghai was our final destination on our trip in China.  A photo of Shanghai’s skyline that I took while standing next to the Huangpu River that travels through the city. In this picture includes the Shanghai TV station, the one that has two spheres on the top and bottom, and the Shanghai Tower, with is the second tallest building in the world, standing at 632 meters tall. This photo of the the skyline is actually my favorite photo I took on the trip. When we visited the Shanghai Tower, the main thing that stood out to me was how much the city of Shanghai had developed in the past 30 years. It was definitely a technical marvel that I have never seen before. The city was also the most diverse out of all the cities we went to. We got stopped for photos the least amount of times while in Shanghai. I guess people there are more used to seeing foreigners.

Our trip to Shanghai Disney was also great! Seeing all of the cultural differences from our own disney world in America was very interesting. I noticed people didn’t really care about cutting in line which I thought was funny. The food options there were completely different from the ones you would find in America. They also had Mickey mouse shaped rice and food. But overall Disney was definitely the most familiar location for me because it was an American Company.

Joel Sakyi

When we arrived in the city of Chongqing, we all went to the zoo to see the animals. I think it might had been my first time seeing a panda in real life. The zoo had many pandas built on their own shrines. Very adorable. The weather was cloudy that day but it never rained enough to spoil our day. Some of us were allowed to go feed an elephant, which I’ve never seen in American zoos. But the zoo was a great place to unwind after the cruise. Following the zoo, we got to explore more of our hotel.

Hongya Cave was a hotel we stayed in. It was shopping center that attracts tourist and residents in the city of Chongqing. The lobby of the hotel starts on the top floor, and descends to access the rest of the hotel. The location included multiple restaurants and merchants to interact with. The structure is was built leaning on a mountain, right next to the Jialing River. I was able to explore the location and find many places to eat and try new things. I had some mango drink that seems to be everywhere in China. And I also really enjoyed the hot pot dinners we had. Hot pot is basically when they have a large pot of broth in the center of the table and everyone at the table dips their raw meat in the broth to cook it. It was a very interesting and fun thing to experience for the first time.

Joel Sakyi

This photo of me was taken in Xi’an, were my class and I learn about the Terracotta Warriors. These sculptures were created during the 210 BCE, to protect China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, for an eternity in his tomb. It is estimated to around 6,000 of these sculptures buried under ground.  About 1,000 of the sculptures have already been uncovered, but they have decreased the amount of digging because they are trying to find new ways to preserve the color on the figures. The figures that have been found already have lost all of their color and turned gray. All of the figures were built on a 1:1 scale so they were created with a lot of detail and similar to the Chinese human body structure back then. The site, which started digging in 1974, has become one of the most important archaeological sites in the world.

We also explored the city of Xi’an. We went on top of the inner city wall and rode rental bikes all around the city on the wall. This wall was created during the Ming Dynasty under the Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang. This mall makes the city of Xi’an even more interesting because it is divided from its inner and outer city wall parts. We also saw a beautiful water show that was synchronized with an orchestra music.

Joel Sakyi

These photos was taken on the third day of our trip at the Great Wall of China, outside of Beijing. The Great Wall was initially built during the time of the first emperor, but was rebuilt during the Ming Dynasty. The Wall today is 13,171 miles long, and my group spent about 3 hours climbing up and back down a section of the wall. The steps were pretty steep and varied in sizes so it made it very difficult to climb. But during on ascension, we met many people from all around the world that also came to climb the wall of China outside of Beijing. It also gave us time to bond with the students that I had just met on the trip. I also bought a beautiful wall scroll from a store during the path. We were able to reach the top and back within three hours.

Afterwards we travelled back to Beijing and went to the Bird’s nest, the stadium built for the 2008 Summer Olympics. We learned about how the building was engineered and the history of it. Finally we travelled to Silk Road where we were able to go shopping for goods. It was the first time we saw how merchants were like outside of the United States. The idea of bargaining was pretty difficult for me to master. I needed a lot of help haha. But it was interesting to compete over the value of items with the merchants, especially not speaking the same language.

Joel Sakyi

The first full day of our trip, we started our exploration of Beijing. We traveled to Tiananamen Square, the Forbidden City, and saw an Acrobatic Show. The first impression I got form being in China was that all of the people were very friendly and were more outgoing/ less hostile than Americans are. Having people walk up to our group to take pictures was very common and socially acceptable thing

One of the pictures below includes three Penn State Students (From left to right, Zion Emmanuel, Mohamadou Sow, and Joel Sakyi) at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. This city square is one of the largest city squares in the world. The structure in the background is the “Monument to the People’s Heroes”, designed by Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin in the 1950s. It’s dedicated to veterans who participated in Chinese wars from 1842-1949.

This photo was taken on a small mountain in Beijing that showcases the view of the city of Beijing, and more notably the Forbidden City in the background of the photo. This was the one of the first locations we traveled to on the first day of our trip. It was the imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the Qing dynasty in 1912. It consists of 9,999 rooms, because 9 is a lucky number in China, and it located in the exact center of Beijing.

Joel Sakyi