Wuhu Tiehua 芜湖铁画 Wuhu Iron Painting

        When we arrived at our second hotel, I was surprised how high up we were and how fanciful the building was. During this entire trip, I must say that this was the best hotel we stayed at, barring the one I stayed at on a later date. We quickly checked-in, got cookies (awesome!), and dropped off our bags. We ventured back down to travel to dinner and then again parted our ways, some retreating to their rooms to relax while the adventurous ones explored the city.

I was still a bit hungover from the bittersweet time we had with the students from ANU as they were so nice and welcoming. Reflecting on the times since we explored the city, we no longer had the students as guides from I made quite some friendships. With Dr Fang not present at our social outings, I was the only one that was translating between the students and it was quite a burdensome task as not every made up their mind and I also had to account of the differences in culture as well when speaking, so it was quite confounding. At times, I began speaking Chinese to the US students, and English to the ANU students, which I quickly realised and felt embarrassed.

Accommodating to being alone in Wuhu, we continued our research. Every morning we either had a meeting or travelled to one of the many workshops to conduct interviews. Then we had lunch as a group, and continued into further discussions or interviews in the afternoon. When all the work had concluded for the day, the evenings were free for us to mingle about the city. We continued this process for the remaining week in Wuhu, with the exceptions of a few days where we had field trips to nearby cities to learn about the local culture to help give a perspective of understanding the area.

In some of the rather urban areas that we travelled to, some of the students were not as acquitted to foods that had the bone in, which left them confused as to either pick the bones out or spit them out. I personally preferred the latter as that was what was to me. One of the interesting things I noticed while in Xuan Cheng (宣城), was that the food seemed to be spicy and cooked in water, which I found strange as we had already crossed the border into Southern China.

After we concluded our research in Wuhu, we then travelled to Shanghai. While the majority of the group was excited to travel into a large city in addition to nearing the end of trip, as being in a foreign country can take a toll on the mind, I was dreading it.