Day 9 (8/3) – Suzhou Silk Factory, Suzhou Museum + Backalleys of Suzhou

The drive from Shanghai to Suzhou was a good one to two hours, so many people took this chance to quickly take a nap. I was especially excited for the trip to Suzhou because it is reputed as being China’s own little “Venice.” Once we arrived, the first thing we did was visit a Silk [...]

Day 8 (8/2) – Houston Day at Shanghai Expo

Today was by no exception also a hot, hot day in Shanghai. Luckily, we were able to skip the admissions line and several lines thereafter, so I and the rest of the Ambassadors are no doubt happy about that. We quickly entered the USA pavilion to join the celebration of Houston Day at the Shanghai [...]

Day 7 (8/1) – Wind Farm, River Cruise with Houston Delegation

As our first official day in Shanghai, we spent the morning driving all the way to Donghai Bridge, which is the second longest bridge in the world (the longest being also rather close to said bridge). We weren’t going for the island it would lead to or the bridge itself, but rather for the wind farm [...]

Day 6 (7/31) – Hongjiu Manor + Miyun Reservoir

We arrived in Miyun County the afternoon the day before, but I took a couple of pictures to document the Chinese style architecure of our hotel rooms. The hotel rooms were modeled after traditional Chinese Housing. It had rained early that morning, so the sky had somewhat cleared up. The smog was a lot better, [...]

Day 5 (7/30) – Temple of Heaven + the Great Wall

Today, we would visit the Temple of Heaven, which used to be a place where the Emperor would come several times a year to pray for good harvests and a prosperous year. Nowadays, it is a leisure park where one can find many retired invidiuals spending their free time playing cards or dancing. We were [...]

Day 4 (7/29) – Tiananmen Square, Forbidden Palace, + Meeting with Beijing Students

Today, we woke up early once again (this would become a recurring ritual for the next couple of days) in order to visit Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden Palace in the morning. While driving there, it can be noted that many people carried umbrellas with them everywhere they went – the umbrellas were not meant [...]

Day 3 (7/28) – Summer Palace, Beijing + Tsinghua University

We woke up EARLY in the morning the next day to visit the Summer Palace. Luckily, our hotel had a complimentary breakfast with a combination of western and Asian foods available, so hopefully everyone was well energized for the long day ahead.  One of the biggest distinctions between Asian and western breakfast foods for me [...]

Day 2 (7/27) – Arrival @ Beijing

To get to Beijing, we had to fly from Houston to Los Angeles, from Los Angeles to Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport, and then from there to the Beijing Airport. Although this was a lot of flight changes, most of the flights were on time and we managed to get into Beijing early in the morning [...]

Day 1 (7/26) – LAX

Our plane departing Houston left roughly on time early in the morning a little past 7:00 AM. At the time, I had no idea that it would be about another 20 or so hours of getting off and getting on planes before arriving in China. Luckily, I managed to grab a window seat on the [...]

The Morning of August 4th

Hello everyone! It’s early in the morning in China right now, and I still can’t believe that we have about 7 or 8 more hours before we leave these shores and land in America again. There are so many experiences that we’ve experienced in the past ten days that it’s just so hard to put [...]