The Chinese culture is very interesting, and very different from American culture.  American culture is very diverse.  America was founded on foreigners.  Many aliens migrate to America every year.

Chinese culture is very uninfluenced.  This is, because China was closed off for many years without trading and not being influenced by other cultures.  While I was in China there were many misconceptions of American culture and Chinese culture.

I found Chinese women find profane and derogatory language very offensive.  Some will even go as far as asking you not to speak that way in front of them.  In America some women will swear more than men.  I would not call them sheltered, but I would say that have not been exposed to that type of environment like most Americans have.

In America it is become more and more acceptable to have premarital sex.  This is very uncommon for a woman in China, and it is very unacceptable.  It is more acceptable for a man obviously, because there are no physical changes that occur.

In America, if someone does something rude that is clearly from another culture, it is disrespectful to comment on it or reject them, because it is clear they do not know.  I have seen this in China more than I have in America that Chinese less understanding and less relaxed than Americans.  They want you to understand their culture, practice their culture, but are not very interested in your culture.  I am by no means saying this is all Chinese people or no Americans do this, but it is more common in Chinese than Americans.

There are a variety of different foods in China.  In truth, there is no food that is really disgusting, there are just differences.  It all depends on the persons’ taste buds.  In this post I will go over the types of foods I willingly tried.  Some of them I found rather bad tasting, and others were actually very good.  It is interesting how the brain works, because depending on how you are raised, you may feel ashamed after eating certain foods.  This is only, because it may not have been socially acceptable in America, but in China it is perfectly fine, so there is no need to feel that way.

I ate sea urchin twice in China.  The first time it was with wasabi.  I was in the separate room with fewer students, Dr.  Wu, and Dean Masters.  It tasted very good.  I can not compare it to anything I have tried in America.  I have never even seen it on a menu in America.  I spoke to my father, and he told me he ate it in Germany.

Dr.  Wu’s TA left with me to go pick him up after a CEO dinner.  I sat down with them, and I was offered something to eat.  I took a bite out of it, and it wasn’t until a few days later that I asked Chen what it was.  He told me it was pig brain.  All I know is I didn’t like it, and it was an uncooked, tofu-like tasting substance.  Brains is probably where my food tasting craziness stops, but this wasn’t the only time.

Mr. Gao was my partner at the China University of Mining and Technology, and he wanted to treat me for lunch the one day.  We had lamb meat on a stick which was very good.  A few minutes later, a waiter brought us another stick that appeared to be the same thing.  It was darker, so I expected it to taste different than the first, and it did.  He put his down and said he didn’t like it.  I asked him if it was lamb too, and he said no.  He told me it was lamb kidney.  Interesting… Lamb kidneys taste an awful lot like lamb meat.

In DaLian Dr. Wu bought us all dog meat for Dan’s birthday.  Dog meat comes with a special sauce that tastes very good.  I had dog meat in Beijing beside another university.  We looked for that place for a good 45 minutes before finding it.  I suspect the people thought we were making fun of them, because some just pointed us in random directions away from them.

The day I left for Beijing Mr. Gao and a phD candidate took me out for duck head.  I did not want to eat it at all.  I made up my mind before that I would not eat any more brains.  I accidentally ate a duck brain, but it didn’t taste any different than the rest of the duck head.  It was very good, and the spices made it very good tasting.  The restaurant provided a glove so your hands didn’t get messy.

We arrived as a group at China University of Mining Technology in May.  I met this woman named Jenny, and she poke very good English.  She told me that if I ever needed to know where something was, she would send me a message on WeChat.

I stayed in this university located in Beijing for about two months.  I left early in July due to being called up for my annual training in the Army.  I wish I could have stayed longer.  It was a great experience.  My major is chemical engineering, so Dr. Wu placed me in the Chemical Engineering department.  I performed individualized intensive research for the first month, and the second month I performed experiments.

I was surprised that the graduate student I was partnered with was not well versed in proper PPE and safety precautions as well as the best methods for experimentation like titration, dilution, simple chemical reactions, etc.  At one point we were hooking up a filtration system to separate silica gel from the Iron (III) Nitrate.  My partner wanted to use a dirty filter corroded with coal tar that was clearly stained through the entire filter.  He was also using wet toilet paper to create a seal around the opening of the Buchner funnel to the volumetric flask.  I proposed filter paper and a Buchner funnel with a rubber seal.  The fume hoods in the lab were there, but I was told they didn’t work.  The coal tar lab was very messy and there were many pieces of broken equipment.  They wore latex gloves to keep the chemicals from staining their skin.

These experimental practices are not wrong or incorrect, and the experiments can still be done.  They do however require more work, they are not as accurate, and they are not as clean.

The Global Financial Center had levels of excitement I could not explain.  I don’t think the elevator ascended high enough to describe how cool it was.  The GFC is an amazing tourist attraction, even though it only scratched the surface of the wonders of Shanghai.  It was the first time I had been in a building looking out of an entire city of rooftops.

The floor below me just added to the suspense — glass.  I could see what was directly below me, hundreds of feet below me.  It was so cool.  It almost made me forget about when I was in the elevator, and started falling down.  It caught itself, and we were only on the 5th floor when it started falling.  It could have been a lot worse, but we were fortunate.  It is an interesting elevator story I live to tell!

We went to the gift shop, and there was a bar in the corner.  I totally wanted to have a beer on the highest building in the world, but they were so expensive, and I am… well… so cheap.

I was happy to get on the elevator, and descend safely.  It was a good time, and I would join this program if I could do it all over again.

The Ghost City was to say the least interesting, and I had more than enough fun for everyone in the program. It started off leaving the cruise ship off the Yangtze River. Every time we left the cruise to go on our next on shore expedition, we had to cross a series of scaffolding sections on ground level, metal pallets, and stone structures. The only time we had to cross every kind of obstacle was the Ghost City. All the cruise ship workers were saying, “Mind your step.” and “Watch your head.”

After I crossed the series of exercise warm-up worth of paths made, I approached a very large set of stairs, and after the Great Wall just about everyone hates stairs. I remember thinking, “What if I see a ghost?” Just as this thought passed through my head a man appeared in front of me, as I had been staring right in front of myself until this point, he was disabled and begging for money. Regardless, the way his leg was bent reminded me of a scary movie. I tried my best to keep calm, and I did. My heart was probably beating an extra 50 bpm in addition to the stair climbing though. There were many other disabled beggers on our way up to the Ghost City.

Electric carts took us into the city and dropped us off where we were able to see and hear from a tour guide much of the Chinese religious traditions and history. I thought it was very interesting. I remember seeing an old lady performing the bridge test with us. You were not allowed to slip, and you had to take an odd number of steps. I took an even number of steps by accident, but no one seemed to notice.

One of the other tests was to lift a 400 pound stone I think it was onto a small curved surface about a foot off of the ground.  The stone was small, but extremely heavy.  One of the students in our group tried to lift it, but he looked like he was going to pop a blood vessel in his brain or something.  Then, we watched a skinny man do it.  He spun it in a circle, and then lifted it onto the surface.  The legend was if you could lift it, then you were superman.  Surprise.  We were informed that since he could lift the heavy stone, we should give him money.  It was pretty cool so I gave him ¥5.