November 21, 2009

10/16/2009 – Day 55 – Suzhou

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.

Read more…

September 6, 2009

09/03/2009 – Day 12 – Chinese provinces

Finally, the last day of classes for the first week. Chinese started the day as usual and it was followed by a better-than-expected lunch at one of the ECNU cafeterias. I had a bowl of noodles and at only 4 RMB, it was totally worth it.

Today was supposed to be a pretty crummy day, class-wise, because my original schedule had a huge 7 hour gap in between Chinese and Law and Society. Luckily, NYU is adding another Law and Society class at 1-4 PM, so I don’t have to wait until 5 PM to go to class. The professor, Dan Guttman, is really enthusiastic. He made a really good first impression. The first class was entertaining, as we introduced ourselves and had a little fun mapping out China’s geography. He [poorly] drew a shape representing China and we had to name places (provinces, cities, etc.).

Read more…