Several days ago, our Mandarin professor briefly told us about Peking University, describing it as the “Harvard of China.” Today, we finally got to visit this school of fables, and from the moment we walked in through its large archway, I could see that the significance of Peking University was certainly not overstated by any means.
In the late morning, we attended a lecture on U.S.-Sino relations given by Professor Wu Qiang. He spoke mainly about nationalism in China, and afterwards, we all got a chance to engage him in discourse on the restraints placed on the surface-web content that Chinese citizens are permitted to access, as well as Chinese citizens’ reactions to foreigners.
For lunch, we had spaghetti! This was really exciting for both me and Chloe, because we had been craving spaghetti for the past 2 weeks, telling each other at least once every day that we could seriously go for some spaghetti, and that plates of spaghetti would be the first things we would eat upon touching down in the United States. As it turns out, we didn’t need to sit through another 16+ hours on a plane to have our wishes come true!
Finally, we got the chance to take a tour around Peking University’s campus. Our guide, Bryan, led us through the campus park, which included a great number of weeping willows swaying above a large lake containing koi fish. At one end of the lake was also a water tower whose eaves were shaped in the fashion of those of traditional Chinese buildings, and really added to the scenic mood of the park.