A Day in My Life at USTC, Hefei

A spare day allows me to write a little about my everyday life in Hefei.

Campus Food and Relaxation

One thing I still remember is fruits. There's a fruit store on the east campus just beside the cafeteria, so every time I finished lunch, I'd go there and pick something. The foods in Hefei are salty, so it's good to have something sweet and juicy. The fruits aren't expensive, they usually cost me no more than 15 yuan. There were apples, bananas, water lemon, kiwi fruit, oranges. The melon is sold in slices. So you pick up a slice and walk over to the counter, and the man would cut it out for you. You needn't go home and cut the fruit peel the fruit yourself. You can just buy one slice at a time, which is about 3 yuan.

I quickly became fond of eating fruits. After I bought the fruit, you know, the roads outside were pretty crowded, I would walk east down a path that leads to a quieter place. The east part of the east campus is mostly apartments, and it seemed pretty much like a park. There are few people, and most of those people are old men and women. It is a pretty pleasant place. There are lots of trees and lawns to walk on.

Walk a little farther and there is the USTC kindergarten. You can see some old man reading his newspaper while waiting for their grandson and granddaughter at around noon. Under the shade of trees sometimes you can see a fat cat. But if you walk too near, the cat will frantically run away to some other places he considered safer. Eating fruit under these trees is enjoyable.

Sometimes there are a group of old men and women who brought a large bag with them. They pick up trash as they walk around. They are the volunteers who help make the campus clean.

I also liked the nighttime snacking. It isn't anything like the nighttime snacks in my high school, believe me. Every night around 11 pm some stalls will arrive on Feixi Road. The road there was lighted up and bustling with noise and excitement. Their smells can lure just about anybody. There are stinky tofu, kebabs, stewed pear, and cold noodles. The foods are sour and spicy with strong flavors. But when you grow so frustrated with math and physics and still had to prepare for the tests, eating here is a good option to empty your mind.

Academic Spaces and Social Hubs

The library is on the west side of the cafeteria. It is usually crowded with students, and hard to find a seat since students always occupy seats. Then a little north is a cafe called USTC 1958. The cafe is really expensive and popular among students and teachers. The cafe mainly sells cakes, and one little cake and costs 30 yuan, more than average eating prices for a whole day. You can seat there as long as you want without ordering anything. I usually rest there for a while. There's also free water and sugar and a toilet inside.

In warmer weather people chat outside. When winter arrives people usually sit inside to avoid the chill.

I saw a lot of familiar people inside the cafe. Once I saw Mr. Ye and his wife having a cup of coffee there. Mr. Ye is the teacher for Electromagnetism. He is a scholar of much knowledge and erudition. Another time I saw the assistant teacher of my physics class there with his girlfriend.

Beside the cafe, there is the statue of Guo, the founder of USTC. He stood tall. There are many children playing beside the statue.

Walk to the west and, right in the middle of the east campus is School of the Gifted Young. It is a small building of only 4 stories. There is a tiny computer lab and library inside.

Then to the north side of the east campus, there're two buildings. One is for the math and economy department, another is for the department of Earth and Space Sciences. They both have 16 stories. The Economy Department is on the lower floors of the math building. You can find the professors who taught your math classes on the top floors of the math building. Mr. Cheng and Mr. Sheng are both on the fifteenth floor of that building. You can hear the professor discussing their questions from the corridor in that building.

The View from Above

I really liked the earth & space building. On the sixteenth floor of that building, there's a platform where you can see the roads outside. It was especially beautiful when the sun went down the west, and give all the cars and roads a reddish and goldish color. There is the hospital and the Anhui restaurant. The city center of Hefei is really crowded and dirty, tall buildings are everywhere.

On the other side, the whole east campus is visible. The paths look like blood vessels, filled with people, bikes, cars going here and there.

They are doing experiments on that opening platform, something about lasers, so the door soon became locked and I could no longer go on that platform. On some nights you can see a green beam that shoots out of the top of the earth & space building and you know they are doing experiments there.

Personal Reflections

There are just so many things going on on campus. Some people say I do not like to take part in activities. That is true, of course. I hadn't taken part in many activities throughout the semester. I had only attended the singing party at the end of December. But walking around the campus is all the same. They are just two different ways of relaxation, and I do not care too much about that.

Some Minor Courses

P. E. class

The P. E. class is really interesting in USTC. Let me talk about this class.

So every Tuesday afternoon I go to the playground to attend the P. E. class. We are divided into groups of twenty to thirty students, each assigned a specific teacher throughout the semester. There are about 150 of us in all. My parents told me that most P. E. teachers in universities were previously athletes. However, I don't see that at all.

Some of the teachers are female, but there aren't any girl students——they have P. E. class at a different time in the week. These teachers have a funny appearance. At least from what I can observe, their appearances are far different from traditional P. E. teachers.

I was assigned to a group on the southeast corner of the playground, and my teacher is that small guy only about five feet two and hunched. All of us, even the shortest one, towered over him. He has wide shoulders, but no muscle at all. His legs are crooked——his knees can't bend together. He wears those black sunglasses and a microphone. From the start of the semester, I looked down upon him. He looks no better than a blue-collar worker, you know, the kind of old man without so much energy left. He can be one of those who helped put the furniture in places when our family moved. I don't have any idea why he should be allowed to teach P. E. lessons instead of working on a construction site.

There are several other classes around the playground. When I run around, I get a close glimpse of them. The teacher on the far south side of the playground is a woman dressed in bright clothes. She has blue shirts, yellow pants, and red shoes. When she played Taichi it was as if she was dancing. I think she looked more like a pop singer or movie star than a teacher for P. E. lessons.

The teacher on the northeast side of the playground is another short man, about five feet three. What's interesting is he has a really big belly and a big fat head that makes him more like those taxi drivers than a P. E. teacher. There's a small restaurant designed for taxi drivers near my home, you know, the kind of dirty restaurants that sell cheap foods with a strong flavor. As a boy who is really fond of walking around, I've seen those taxi drivers going in and out of the restaurant many times, smoking with their bellies full and hunching a little. And that teacher looked exactly like one of those people.

On the northwest side of the playground, there is this old male teacher. He wears glasses and he is thin and his hair is white. He always wears a blue jacket. He speaks with a hoarse voice. I think he should be pretty handsome in his youth. However, he looks as old as one of those retired people. He walks fast and cautious. I still suspect he was once some professor.

But the funniest of all is the teacher on the east side. She is old with glasses and messy long grey hair. She is the tallest of all the teachers, about five feet ten. In my mind, she looks far more like some characters from a magic fantasy. I think she may be some witch in disguise.

Throughout the semester we are asked to do only three things, running, pull-ups, and practicing Taichi. I had no problem at all in the first two sports and got full marks. However, I really hate practicing Taichi, which, you know, is designed for those seniors. The idiotic teacher gave me a really low mark on that part, which made my final score only an A-.

In the summer I've been watching ESPN in my home. There is a channel in it called UFC, or short for Ultimate Fighting Championship, and those guys in it looked really strong and muscular. I really think the P. E. in school lesson is not that necessary.

English Class

I don't know why, but my university classmates are so poor in English that I, a student who hasn't gotten any top scores or showed any talents at all in English in my high school can easily get to the highest level and be one of the best in my class.

So the English course has four levels, designed for students with different skills or understandings of English. Students are divided due to the scores in the exam at the start of the semester.

I got into level 4, where you need only get 4 credits in English before graduating. You can choose any time to take these classes and choose any teachers.

I first chose a Chinese teacher, an old man like fifty years old. He was like, really bad in oral English, especially in pronunciation. Attending his class reminded me strongly of my high school English class where everyone is so tense and it isn't interesting at all. Furthermore, he played one Chinese video which is really stupid. All he talked about is our grades, the things we should do to get a higher score in the final or whatever. So I switched to a class with a foreign teacher, Mr. Kohet. The class is about intercultural communication.

Mr. Kohet is a man pretty old, about sixty. His hairs are all white and he is a heavy hunchback. He did not remind me of the other foreign teachers I met, like those in my primary school who interacted with students a lot. By contrast, his class is really quiet. It was like, no students talked at all. He went into the classroom, says "good morning", check our attendance, and that was like all the communication we had with him. The pattern goes like this. He talks for 10 minutes, let us watch a video (usually a TED talk or some courses from other universities), and then excuses himself either to the toilet or to have a drink of water.

Comparatively, I enjoyed this course because I am more free. The course has no final exams and only needs an essay. So I wrote about my own experiences. Surprisingly, I got 100 in the essay. I cannot fully express my gratitude to Mr. Kohet.