China in brief

Intro

For the past two months, I have been traveling I China for my Ph.D research with a group of undergraduates on study abroad. We spent part of the time doing science stuff and part of the time touring around to learn about the culture. Altogether, I spent the last eight weeks visiting ten different cities in China and Taiwan by plane, train, and bus. While I kept a daily log of my travels, I figure I will give a brief summary here with a few pics. I have more pics posted on Facebook.

Shanghai
We first spent a few days in Shanghai, a city I had visited previously many years ago. However, we visited several places and museums that I had not been to before. Shanghai is a very modern city and has a long history of Western influence. The rest of the group spent a day at the World Expo, I chose to explore more of the city by myself.

Nanjing
We basically used Nanjing as our base for the rest of the trip. We stayed at Nanjing University, where we have several good contacts and collaborators. We spent time here between trips to other places and visited many of the sites around the area as well.

Beijing
We visited Beijing to see some of the major attractions of China (the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, etc.) and to also visit with one of our collaborators in research. Since I had spent a lot of time in this city already there wasn’t much new to me that I hadn’t already seen. We did eat some wonderful Beijing duck. I spent part of a day away from the group with a Chinese grad student friend of mine. Beijing has always been a city I have enjoyed and I never grow tired of visiting it.

Xishuangbanna
The province of Yunan is in the southernmost part of China and borders southeast Asia, Xishuangbanna is a county right on the border. We stayed here for a week in a tropical botanical garden. We learned about tropical rain forests, did a few field experiments, and enjoyed the tropics. This part of China is home to several minority ethnic groups that exist in the region. A grad student at the botanical garden is Dai and she graciously took us to her village and we went for a hike in their sacred forest. Afterwards, her mother treated us to a tremendous lunch of their native dishes.

Kunming
We spent a couple of days sightseeing in this city on the way back from Xishuangbanna. It is the capital of Yunnan Province and attracts a large number of tourists each year. We visited one of the mountains outside of the city that had several Buddhist/Daoist shrines carved into the side of the mountain. Probably the most impressive thing we visited was the Stone Forest, which extended for hundreds of acres outside of the city.

Taipei
I had made some contacts of my own for my research that I wanted to follow-up on so while the rest of the group stayed in Nanjing for a time, I headed out to Taipei. I was hosted by a professor at National Taiwan Normal University, who is really into invasive species and is quite knowledgeable about them in Taiwan. We collected some mosquitofish throughout the northern part of Taiwan and spent some time in his lab with his grad students.

Guangzhou
After Taiwan, I headed to Guangzhou where I was hosted by a professor at Jinan University. I spent a couple of days collecting mosquitofish around the city with one of his grad students. It was a delightful city and the food was excellent, one of the few palces in the world where you will be offered chicken feet for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Jiuzhaigou
They say that many Chinese couples come to Jiuzhaigou because it is said to be one of the most beautiful places in China. I would have to agree. This lush, green valley is full of crystal clear mineral water lakes connected by various streams, shoals, and waterfalls. The scenery was amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere.

Lhasa
One of the most anticipated parts of the trip was our trip to Tibet. We spent several days visiting sites in the city of Lhasa and traveling around to see nearby lakes and other shrines/monasteries. One of the issues we ran into here was altitude sickness. Due to the elevation we took precautions and only one of our group really had any difficulty during the trip.

Chengdu
We spent several days in Chengdu seeing the panda breeding facility, Tibetan macaques, the zoo, more Buddhist temples, and other attractions. Since this part of the trip was right near the end everyone was tired and anxious for some relaxation time.

Wuhu
One of the professors at our university working with us has some contacts in a smaller city not far from Nanjing. Upon returning from Chengdu my advisor and I took a quick trip down there to meet with some other faculty and grad students. We made some presentations about our research and made arrangements for others from our group to come down and help out with a survey they were doing the following week.

Conclusion
After all those cities, hotels, flights, trains, etc. I was ready to come home. My wife and kids had stayed with her parents in Utah during the duration of my absence. They had enjoyed being with family the whole time and had spent time with both sets of grandparents. It was great to see them after so long and I look forward to spending the rest of the summer with them.