What better way to end a stressful week with a field trip to a highly industrial and technologically advanced industrial park? A mediocre field trip to a highly industrial and technologically advanced industrial park. To be honest, I was really looking forward to this trip, since the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) sounded very intriguing.
We had to take a one and a half hour bus ride to SIP, which I luckily slept through. When we got there, we sat through a brief presentation about the area, which I found to be the best part of the SIP tour. As for the area itself, it is impressive. The planning is meticulous, as should be expected for a place with Singaporean influence. We were given a bus tour of the park (which is enormous), but it wasn’t very interesting. Even though the place is clean, it’s too sterile for my liking. The streets are pretty much empty (probably because almost EVERYONE who lives there is working). I would hate to work there.
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Another day, another adventure in Beijing. On the agenda was Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Summer Palace , and the Beijing Olympic stadiums. Amazingly, we got through everything with time to spare at the end! I guess it’s because we woke up at 7:00 AM and it took us the better part of the day to finish seeing everything. (I mean, we ate dinner at 10:00 PM…)
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Just a small note before I start writing about Beijing. I don’t think daily recaps are good for writing about travel. I did A LOT in Beijing every day, so cramming, say, a post about Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and the Olympics site would be an enjoyable post. It’d be insanely long and dense. So what I’m going to do is write about each place I saw in separate posts. I’ll keep the daily recap, but they’ll be more of an overview of what I did instead of a full blown detailed write-up.
So without further ado, my wonderful experience in the northern capital, Beijing.
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Rain + hole in shoe = disaster. That pretty much sums up my day.
It rained all day for the first time since I arrived in Shanghai. Rain storms aren’t fun in NYC and they’re even less fun here, mostly because it becomes even more hazardous to cross the streets with all those bikes and mopeds. Anyways, I got my first dose of heavy rain when I went out between classes to Trust Mart to get a hiking backpack. It isn’t exactly a short walk out to the front gate where Trust Mart is, so I got soaked. I tried my best to tread through the rain carefully so the water wouldn’t get into my shoes, but it was raining too heavily. Luckily, I did find a hiking backpack. Too bad my luck seemingly ended there…
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More shady dealing! Since we bought more plane tickets, we had to wait for another guy give us the tickets in exchange for a giant wad of cash. This time, it was at the front gate of ECNU. It really does feel awkward doing the exchange, especially in broad daylight and in such a crowded area.
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