#connormadriago

This week started off with a trip to Costco with some friends. We were curious if the Costco in China was any different than the ones in America, specifically the food court. We found out that it was, in fact, quite different. They had a couple different options, such as a Bulgogi bake, a Hawaii beef burger, a Japanese pizza, and pork buns.

We also found these giant green dinosaurs in the Costco, as well as protein drinks and beer flavored chips.

After the quick Costco trip, I set out for Zhangjiajie. I ended up staying up all night, since I had been going to bed around 3 am for a while, and my flight was early and we were leaving around 5 am. It ended up being a pretty good decision, as I just slept on the flight and in the Didi and I felt pretty rested. When we arrived in Zhangjiajie, the scenery immediately caught my eye, the mountains around us were a stunning landscape that I didn't expect to see as soon as I got off the plane. I had been missing mountains since I had got to China.

Before exploring, we had to stash our luggage at the hotel that we were staying it. It was by far the strangest hotel that I have stayed at so far, it felt like a bank vault opening with a large metal door and futuristic lock. It also had a Japanese style interior, and limited air conditioning usage. However, it made up for that with an automatic mahjong table in the main room that we ended up playing later. Additionally, since we came early, they gave us an upgraded room with an extra bed and 3 separate rooms which was very nice. Finally, we left and set out for Tianmenshan National Forest Park, where we would go see the 999 steps to heaven.

Then we went to the 999 steps to heaven—a giant staircase that led into a hole in between the mountains. It was quite tiring, so me and my friends made an agreement to do the entire staircase in one go without resting, or we would have to do it all over again from the bottom. We took on the challenge and fortunately completed it without stopping or slowing down the entire time—sweating buckets by the end of the staircase as it was over 100 degrees out.

When we reached the top, we found a small reflecting pool that was filled by water dripping down from the mountains above. We stayed here for a while and took pictures, as it provided a beautiful view of the scenery around us, and allowed us to look back on all the stairs we had just climbed and the other people still attempting it.

Next, we took an extremely long escalator up to the top of the mountain. It was by far the longest escalator I had ever been on—actually containing more than 15 escalators with a few steps of flat ground in between each one. Each elevator was several minutes long, and the entire ride up took more than 45 minutes. We could feel our ears popping as we went up each escalator.

After finally reaching the top, we found out that the theory that we heard was true—there was a Burger King at the very top of the mountain. Taking a second to eat, we ventured on to visit a temple, more viewing spots, and a long walk around the side of the mountain.

Coming down from the climb, we ate dinner and watched the staircase light up with neon lights.

On the second day on Zhangjiajie, we went to another national park in a different spot in Zhangjiajie—it was actually the place where the movie "Avatar" was filmed, pillars of rock and forest that looked unique in a way that I had never seen before. We also saw several monkeys.

On the third day, we visited the Grand Canyon of Zhangjiajie, where they had a glass bridge, zipline across the canyon, and a river walk. The glass bridge was pretty scary, but somehow the zipline was super fun and not scary at all.

The river walk was really nice and relaxing, and it was much cooler temperature too which was an added bonus.

During the final day with the entire group, we visited Furong ancient town, which was a beautiful lake town that lit up at night. We walked around all of the viewing angles, bought some food, and had a great time walking underneath a waterfall. We even got to see a performance from some dancers.

On the final day, most of the group left and me and one of my friends stayed to do a climb on the side of the mountain. I agreed without really knowing what I was getting myself into, but I'm glad that I did. It was one of the craziest experiences that I've ever had, but was completely worth it. We climbed along the side of a mountain with only a clip attached to a harness that we clipped and unclipped ourself, while dangling above an infinite expanse that stretched out into clouds below.

There were sections where we could only use our arms, sections where we had to walk on a tight rope, and the most difficult of them all was a ladder at the very end that was over an hour long, where the only place you could stand on was one very thin bar ladder that shook and moved in the wind.

It really was one of the most amazing things I've ever done, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who visits Zhangjiajie, even if you have a bit of a fear of heights like me.

We finished off the day by exploring a nearby street, where we found some cool areas. However, we didn't find anything super interesting, and just ended up leaving for our flight back to Shanghai around midnight.

This week was a pretty crazy week and I had a really fun time, thanks for listening along to my journey so far, and see you next week!

Connor Madriago

Mechanical Engineering

Continuing from my previous post on my Beijing trip in China, we took a trip up to Jingshan park, overlooking the Forbidden city. It actually ended up being a cooler temperature up here, which was nice. It also gave us a beautiful view of the entire city and the Forbidden city.

Next up was the trip to the Great Wall—one of the things that I was looking forward to most during this trip. After a very long car drive (almost 2 hours), and a couple wrong turns, we finally made it to the wall. It was very thin, but impossibly long. It was set in a nice forest scenery, as we were at the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. There's another section of the wall that is more popular, however, we decided to go to this one because the other section tends to be much more crowded and we decided that a large crowd would take away from the experience.

We walked along the wall for a while, as we talked to one of the tour guides that finished his tour, he told us about the history of the wall and why it was built. We watched the sunset and explored one of the buildings/towers along the wall. Some of the buildings had a strange underwater scene playing on the walls from a projector which was interesting.

At night, lights turned on and lit up the whole wall and surrounding mountains, there were even characters illuminated on the mountain

After we walked along the wall again in the dark for a while, we headed back via the cable car, where although it was difficult to get a good picture due to the darkness—it was still a beautiful view of the city below.

We then visited the summer palace, which was cool and had a lot of steps. My favorite part was the forest area behind it, which was very interesting and had many other temples and cool areas. One such area was a lake with lily pads that we stayed at for a while and rested. We saw many fish and talked to a lot of people there. This was one of the times where I was able to learn and practice my Chinese a lot.

On the other side of the palace, there was a lake that had an "American" restaurant where they just sold hotdogs and burgers—although it was admittedly pretty good.

After the summer palace, our next and final stop was Tiananmen Square before dinner. We got lost during the bike ride after our Beijing duck lunch, but we eventually found out how to cross the street and get in line. Luckily, we were somehow able to skip almost the entire line because we were foreigners and they couldn't scan our passports (instead of a Chinese ID). After we got into the Square, we watched the flag lowering during sunset.

Afterwards, we walked through an underground tunnel to get to a large, lit up egg shaped building.

For dinner, we visited a fancy local restaurant that was pretty hard to find. We thought we found the entrance right on the Main Street, which was a very small building. But after we told them how many people we had, a guy in a suit led us behind the building, and we were walking down an alleyway for a few minutes. Finally, we reach a building far away the Main Street that was huge, which 3 or 4 floors. We entered and found out that this was the real restaurant. The main course was Beijing duck again, a classic local dish of Beijing, and it was set in our own private room with a spinning table.

The final day was very short, we explored a couple more streets, did a VR interactive tour of Beijing where we flew over the city, explored a mall and played an arcade, and finally got on the plane in the afternoon.

After we left the airport, we waited a long time for a didi but finally got one, immediately going back to our dorm and going to sleep.

Not much else happened the rest of this week—we celebrated a birthday and had a cake, however we had no forks or plates. I also had more dumplings and began the next stage of a personal engineering project I was working on, and took my midterm exam.

We also found this really delicious pizza place, that was, unlike most of the pizza in China that has no tomato sauce and has durian on it, pretty good Italian pizza.

This week was another amazing week in Shanghai, and the Beijing trip was definitely a highlight of my study abroad experience so far.

See you next week!

我要冷水

Connor Madriago

Mechanical Engineering

This week we were planning to go to Beijing, which was very exciting, and we were going to take an overnight train to get there. However, since we were leaving on Wednesday night, that meant that I had to finish all my assignments and homework early, before we left. After I did that, I had a bit of extra time to explore some of the restaurants near my dorm that I hadn't gotten to yet.

I also got to play pool at a 24 hour pool place with some friends. Pool is a very popular game to play in China, so these 24 hour pool places are very common. The lights were also maize and blue colored later in the night.

That night, it rained very hard, the most rain I've ever seen since being in Shanghai. It reminded me of my hometown, Portland, Oregon a lot.

We set out for Beijing the afternoon after. After waiting in line for a while, we finally got on our train and I was astonished by how long it was—much longer than the normal high speed trains. It was also much slower than the high speed trains, but traveled overnight. Everyone got their own beds (bunks of 3 beds stacked on top of each other, and 6 beds per room). Unfortunately me and my friends weren't able to be in the same room and were separated, but I got lucky in that the people in my room were pretty quiet. However, we weren't prepared for how early Chinese people wake up. We stayed up decently late—around 2 am—well after everyone went to sleep, but some of my friends were woken up by people in their room waking up around 4:30-5 am and talking. I slept pretty well, so I woke up 3 minutes before the train stop, but others weren't so lucky. We will definitely remember that people wake up really early next time we take an overnight train.

For our first day in Beijing, we visited the temple of heaven. We got to see beautiful ancient Chinese architecture and temples as we went through several gates that each led to a bigger and bigger temple area.

We also had this delicious ice cream that was in the shape of the temple, that, although pretty expensive (25 yuan), it gave us a much needed break from the swelteringly hot day. Throughout the whole day, I had a UV umbrella, both a hand and neck fan, and ice cream and yet I was still hot due to the 103 degrees and high UV. My friends also weren't as prepared so I ended up giving them some of my stuff. Fortunately there were spots with air-conditioning and ice cream along the way.

We weren't allowed to take photos inside of several of the temples, however we could still take some of the outside. There were others were you were allowed to go inside of, and some where you weren't. Another thing that we noticed was that the temples were kept almost exactly the same as they were originally, but some of them had hidden modern additions such as fans in the ceiling or security cameras blended into the outside.

After the temple of heaven I was a bit tired, so I took a nap while others got Mixue, but eventually we took a 40 minute didi to the national film museum of China. This was important, not only because it is the largest and most famous film museum in China, but also because it was a good place to document for our assignment in our Chinese culture class.

They had this large area where the entire room was covered in a screen that would show various sceneries and videos.

We then went to Zizhuyuan park, which was very beautiful but the craziest thing happened where we joined some ladies in dancing to a song and making a TikTok. They had us join and taught us the dance—where I was admittedly pretty bad at it. However, it was still a great time and we were dancing with them for almost an hour.

The next day, we visited the palace museum, where we actually didn't have any tickets for—but we luckily were able to acquire tickets in person at the gate—even getting a student discount in the process for attending SJTU. The heat wasn't much better today, as Beijing is known for its hot weather and high UV.

We learned that this was just the first part of the palace museum! However, the rest of the Beijing trip will have to wait until later, as this blog is already getting pretty long and I have a lot more to talk about. So il finish this trip next week!

再见！

Connor Madriago

Mechanical Engineering

One of the first things I did this week was go on an adventure exploring more niche parts of Shanghai by myself at night. I took one of the blue hello bikes, and decided to ride west and see how far I could go. It actually turned out to be a fun decision, as I left at about 12 am and got back around 4 am, much later than I expected. It was extremely peaceful and interesting, and I didn't really have much to worry about as China is one of the safest countries in the world for walking alone at night.

One of the things I found first on my bike ride was a night market, one of only a few places in Shanghai that is open well past 10 pm. While there, I drank some delicious tea and had skewers made right in front of me. There was so many dogs and people up playing card games, I was fascinated.

After the night market, I biked for a couple more hours, crossed a river, explored a small water town, and found these streets where all the cars and trucks were strangely parked on the side of the road, while one end was closed off. Finally, I ended the night by getting some sushi.

Later in the week, we got the amazing opportunity to visit the national center for Huawei. Normally, foreigners are not allowed to visit, however, we got special access through SJTU and our program, so we were able to take a tour of the company.

Our tour guide told us all about the company and the work life here in China, while we explored the area, which was absolutely massive and beautiful. We even got to ride electric scooters around the campus to get back to the beginning.

For our friend Leon's birthday, we went to Haidilao. It's been a tradition so far to go to Haidilao whenever it's someone's birthday, as the will always come over to you with a cake prop and sing happy birthday in Chinese. Sometimes, they will even do a special noodle dance where they stretch long noodles and dance back and forth. The long noodles represent longevity of life and it tends to bring good luck to eat long noodles on one's birthday.

Finally, that weekend, we took a day trip to Suzhou, a nearby city. The lake was so scenic and pretty, we stayed there for a while. We were originally drawn to Suzhou for "the pants" which are a large building that vaguely resembles a pair of metal pants. Unfortunately, we weren't able to see them as we didn't have enough time, but I was able to see them far in the distance in the picture below.

During our time in Suzhou, we had so many people approach us and ask for photos with us because we were foreigners and asking us to sing their notebooks in English, it was so interesting and I've never experienced anything like that before.

We even were able to board a ferris wheel that took us up above the city skyline next to the lake, and we were able to see across the entire city. By the time it touched down on the other side it was already dark, and we were lucky enough to be at the very top during sunset.

After that, we ate at a fancy Indian food restaurant, which was delicious and a nice change of pace in the food, as there doesn't tend to be much Indian food in china. Finally, we got on the high speed train back to Shanghai for the night.

Xiexie For keeping up so far! I'll see you next week.

Connor Madriago

Mechanical Engineering

Dragon Boat Festival

The first thing I did during week 7 was made these herb bundles for the dragon boat festival that was coming up. The dragon boat festival is a yearly festival around China where people race very long boats, commonly with dragon heads on the ends, along canals and rivers against each other. Unfortunately I didn't get to watch one, but there were still many festivities and things to do centered around the festival such as the herb bundles we made, and mooncakes that we ate.

However, the most exciting thing that I got to do during this time was getting to race a dragon boat myself! As part of the program, we all got trained by some people from SJTU, then we all got on two boats and, after a bit of practice, competed against each other from the docs to the bridge.

Although we were pretty new to it and a lot of people were out of sync with the drum, so my boat ended up losing—but it was still a great time and was super cool. We even got a gift of sjtu mooncakes and a hat!

Unexpected Maker Competition

Later that week, my buddy from SJTU asked me if I would like to join them in a maker competition for their project they were working on. I agreed, so I showed up to the meeting later that night. They explained the project to me—it was a company plan to put combine ai training data centers with electric vehicle charging stations. The idea was that, as EV charging stations usually only sit at less than 50% usage, we can use the existing grid system and energy infrastructure to support certain kinds of ai training and generation so that we don't have to use extra resources and land to create data centers, without harming the EV charging station either as it can be switched off whenever needed. After they explained the project, they told me that I would be presenting the project myself the next day at 7 am! They said I would have an advantage because I spoke English very well. I was very surprised, but agreed anyways. The next day, I woke up super early to catch the bus, got a quick snack, met my buddy Tianyu, and left for downtown to present the project.

Presenting the project was a bit scary, and there were judges that were taking notes, but I feel that me and Tianyu presented it pretty well. After we were done, we went around and looked at other people's projects, some of them were very interesting.

The craziest thing is that we ended up getting second place! Some of the other projects were so cool, I was very surprised.

Cloud Nice Mall

We visited Cloud mall, and I had some of the best noodles I've eaten here, it had a sort of barbecue-like sauce with chicken, and was a new kind of flavor for noodles that I had never really had before.

They also had one of the most interesting bathroom I've ever seen, with led purple lights and a fancy design, as well as very human-like robots, that only when you got closer you could see that half of them were actually just people dressed up and with makeup, and the other half were actual robots.

But the main reason we went to the mall was to visit the Pokemon center, a huge Pokemon gym where lots of people were playing, and you could buy the new cards that just released the week prior. In order to buy the card, they would show you a Pokemon and you had to name it correctly in one try. Luckily, I got a easy one with jynx and I passed and was able to get the new pack.

After the Pokemon center, we visited a pc cafe, which are very common in Shanghai and China in general. It was pretty cheap and had good computers, I was even able to order dumplings directly to our table!

I finished off the week by going to a techno rave with some friends, and drawing more pictorials for my mecheng250 class.

This week was pretty fun. Although I stayed in Shanghai this week, I was able to visit the city a lot an enjoy a lot of activities that I had never done before, it was a fun time.

See you next week!

bye bye

Connor Madriago

Mechanical Engineering

On Monday night, I went to a delicious restaurant and had spicy tofu, rice, and potato noodles. It was so good, and came from a restaurant called 黃蠵干饭食堂, downtown near the Bund.

Later, we learned anchient chinese rubbing (ta_pian) which is a technique for printing images onto thin paper. This was an activity as a part of the class that I am taking called intro to Chinese culture, but was also open to everyone in the program.

This week, we also took a trip to the indoor skiing mountain in downtown Shanghai, which had a beautiful castle and scenery outside. After we went inside, the temperature changed dramatically, instantly changing from over 90 degrees f to below freezing. It had multiple floors, from easy, to medium, to hard. The final floor even had chairlifts and a black diamond level difficulty slope. It only had 3 routes, but it was very fun and unique I strongly recommend anyone visiting Shanghai to try it out.

After the skiing experience, we visiting Hangzhou as a part of the group tour led by the program. First, we visited the lake, where, although it was quite rainy, it was still really cool to see and beautiful.

Afterwards, we visited a beautiful green mountain area near the west lake scenic spot. It was where they make and grow famous Hangzhou tea leaves, and we got to hike all the way to the top of the mountain, past a small village where I also got to buy some tea.

We saw a really fat cat, hiked more through a forest on the top of the tea mountains, and were able to look down on an absolutely stunning view, it didn't even feel like we were in the same country.

We then stayed at a really luxurious hotel, and stayed the night. When we woke up the next day, I ate a quick breakfast at the hotel, then went to our next activity. Unfortunately it was not rainy anymore, and was much hotter, but that ended up being for the best because it allowed us to experience Hangzhou while it was sunny, which was pretty nice when we visited the lake.

During the end of the trip, I bought some bread from a shop in Hangzhou which was some of the most tasty bread I've ever had. Then, we got on the bus ride back to Shanghai to finish off the week.

In the end, week 6 was another absolutely amazing week. Every week here has been exciting and it's so fun exploring new places and discovering new things while traveling China. It has been a life changing experience that I would 10/10 do again.

Thanks for following so far! And see you next week.

Connor Madriago

Mechanical Engineering

After my trip to Nanjing last week, week 5 was a lot more low-key and relaxing, and I finally got to settle into a somewhat normal, every day routine. Instead of constantly exploring new places and cities, I got to slow down and enjoy the everyday things and work on studying and homework, which was a nice change of pace.

One thing I've wanted to do since I got here is start going to the gym consistently. There is a gym right by our dorm, but it's not very good—it's pretty small and doesn't have much equipment, and the equipment that they do have is very weird. So instead, a few of us decided to check out the gym on the "bei" (北, which means north) campus, and it was so much better. It had way more equipment, a lot more space, and best of all it was super cheap—only 2 yuan per hour (~27 cents). Compared to the US where a gym membership can be like $30-50 a month, being able to work out for basically pennies still surprises me, something that would never happen in the US.

For some downtime, me and my friends put together a puzzle of the Shanghai skyline that was made using an AI generated image. It was really funny because all of the pieces were the same shape, but it actually ended up being really relaxing, and we built oriental pearl tower, a large tower in Shanghai.

We also played a lot of cards, and the coolest part was that some of the other exchange students taught us a few chinese card games that I had never heard of before. I don't remember the exact name, but they games were so fun and we learned a lot.

I've been getting dumplings every other day. There's a place I keep going back to where they come in this little green tray, and they are so good. I usually get the pork and celery ones, and I put a lot of vinegar on them, which always tastes so good. They're also super cheap compared to anything in the US, and so delicious for the price. If you ever come to china, I strongly recommend finding some dumplings and drowning them in vinegar.

We also found a place selling dog-shaped popsicles, which were so cute and surprisingly detailed. I got a chocolate one and my friend got vanilla, and they were as tasty as they were adorable. My favorite part about exploring Shanghai is finding all these niche restaurants and places with new and cool things to explore.

Planetary gears

On the school side of things, this week in mecheng 250 we learned about planetary gears, which was pretty cool. I had always been curious about how they worked—mostly regarding automatic transmissions in cars, they usually consist of a few planet gears, and a ring gear all spinning together. Getting to actually hold it was pretty interesting. Getting to study mechanical engineering in a completely different country is one of my favorite parts about this study abroad experience.

A night out

Later in the week, we checked out a really fancy mall, and it was on a completely different level than anything I've been to. Almost every store had items well over $1000 USD—they had everything like gucci, rolex, and a bunch of high end chinese brands too. We mostly just walked around and looked, because obviously none of us were about to spend that kind of money, but it was still really cool to see.

To get a taste of home, we went to an actual mexican restaurant called La Diosa. Mexican food is one of the things I've missed most from back in the states, so even though it was pretty expensive compared to normal chinese food, it was 100% worth it. It was super delicious and I ended up getting a quesadilla.

We also went to one of the coolest restaurants I've been to yet—the entire place was built around a giant disco ball hanging from the ceiling. The atmosphere was unlike anywhere I've eaten before, and its another example of how you can find very interesting niche restaurants whoever you walk in Shanghai.

To finish off the week, I have to talk about the lights here. The buildings in Shanghai light up at night in a way that is like nothing that we have in the US. The night cityscape is always beautiful wherever you are. We went to Hunan road and just took in the scenery, and I kept stopping to take pictures. Even after over a month here, the cityscape at night still gets me every time.

Overall, week 5 was a lot more relaxed than the past few weeks, but that was exactly what I needed. Between the gym, the dumplings, the card games, and the nights out, it was still an absolute blast, and I feel like I'm really starting to live here instead of just visiting. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

拜拜!

Connor Madriago

Mechanical Engineering

I started off week 4 by finishing an assignment for one of the classes that I'm in: Introduction to Chinese culture. I had to interview two Chinese students at SJTU, one from Shanghai, and one who was born somewhere else. I talked to my buddy, who told me a lot about Shanghai. However, soon after I got sick for the first time. Luckily, I was able to use meituan to deliver some headache medicine, which worked very well. I was considering visiting the doctor, since my friend said its common for people to go for simple things like headaches since a visit is free or very cheap, but I decided to just relax and take the day off instead. I ordered this ice cream, which was pretty good.

Some of my friends in the program also took me to a pizza place on campus. It was okay, although we had to use the gloves that they gave us because it fell apart pretty easily. Even though it had no tomato sauce and had steak on It, it was definitely the best pizza that I've had here so far.

The cat, nicknamed 六七, is frequently seen around the dorm. She has lived there for a long time and can be seen lounging on top of cars, and particularly enjoys sitting on this one black seat in specific in the lobby area. We also found out that she does not like any of the food that people try to give her, but it seems like the ladies at the front desk leave food out for her to eat.

The trip to Nanjing

At the start of our trip to Nanjing for the weekend, we had to make our way to the train station. After arriving, we had to go through security, which took longer than expected because they had to check our passports which kept getting denied by the automatic systems. Finally, we got through, although worried because we only had 15 minutes until our train left. Finally we got through, and we were greeted by a super long line.

However, we found out that they were just waiting for the station to open, and when it opened everyone went in quickly. We met up with the rest of the group, and boarded the high speed train. Finding our seats, we boarded the train. It was super modern and polished, feeling more like an airplane than a train. All of the seats had plenty of room and there was even a food compartment on board. One of the things that was most interesting to me was the fact that you can order food online ahead of time, from any restaurant near any of the stations where it stops, and they will bring you the food on board when you reach that station.

Arriving in Nanjing

After a quick hour and a half train ride, we reached the city. Although we had a hotel room without a window, the beds were pretty nice and it was directly in the middle of the city—it was also less than $10 per night which is pretty crazy if you compare it to American hotel prices.

We then explored the city, where we found people playing music, Confucius temple, and beautiful lights around a large shopping district.

A lot of people have a favorite restaurant that they love to order at 2 am while studying or playing mahjong, it's called mixue. It's relatively cheap (around $2 for a drink, and less than 50 cents for ice cream) and they sell fruit-water drinks, boba, and ice cream. While we were in Nanjing, we were lucky to find a giant version of the store that we loved, with multiple floors and a giant mixue snowman.

While in Nanjing, we also visited the Nanjing zoo, where we saw many animals like leopards, pandas, and birds.

Visiting the temple was also an amazing experience. Although we were't aloud to take pictures inside, I was able to get one of the outside.

To finish up the day, we went on a boat ride in motorized duck-shaped boats, and sailed around the river during sunset. It was really beautiful and we got many great pictures of the scenery and surrounding cityscape. Although the city wasn't as big or special as Shanghai's view, it was still a stunning sight.

To finish up my Nanjing trip, we climbed the steps in the Zhongshan mountain scenic area. Me and my friend split off of the main group for this, however, getting to the area was a bit more difficult since neither of us spoke Chinese. After lots of Google Translate and pointing, we finally got tickets and made it in to climb the many steps. It was also a bit hot, so I ended up buying a fan for $1, and it was so nice, I strongly recommend.

That night, we found a person selling puppies and they let them out to play with us, they were so cute that we stayed for almost an hour.

We finished off the night with a game of mahjong (many games) on one of the automatic mahjong tables, which was really convenient and made setting up take less than 10 seconds.

Finishing off the trip, we went to the world renowned niu beer museum, got some of the best sushi I've ever had, and took the high speed train back to Shanghai before midnight.

Overall, my trip to Nanjing was absolutely amazing and if anyone else is interested in studying abroad in China or anywhere else, I encourage exploring cities near you as it can be a really great time. Hopefully I get to travel to more cities while I'm in china.