by Benjamin M. Brown ‘10

This past summer, I had the honor of participating for 11 weeks in an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) in China.  This program in marine science and engineering gave me insight into the research process as well as Chinese culture.  I have always had a desire to travel in China and this program allowed me to fulfill that long-awaited dream much sooner than I had anticipated and during the summer of the 2008 Beijing Olympics no less.  While I did see a fair amount of historic sights and traditional culture, the program was in general an awakening to the reality of Chinese life and culture today.  Coming from a small rural community, I am not often exposed to the diversity that reveals what real life is like in developing countries nor the interactions that can form between cultures. While I have worked closely with the International Club at Hampden-Sydney, I could not even begin to claim that I had any concept of what this experience would teach me.

As an undergraduate, I have had very few opportunities to perform independent research. This program not only gave me insight into the world of investigative studies, but exposed me to it in an environment where one realizes that knowledge is universal.  However independent the research was, I still invested a great deal of trust in my Chinese peer advisor. Working with her was a tremendous honor as we interacted both academically as well as culturally, often speaking about the differences between American and Chinese life.

My research was conducted at the Ocean University of China, Laoshan Campus, and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.  I studied the soil microbial diversity of the Yellow River delta in Shandong Province.  The river is burdened by the detrimental effects of pollution as well as environmental degradation such as red tide and eutrophication.  My work proposed that by using microbial diversity as an indicator of soil health, we could gain insight into how depleted the soil is and possibly how to revive it.  After intense work which consisted of biochemical analyses of the soil and microbial analyses of the soil, we concluded that the river delta was nearly barren due to high salinity and lack of vegetation which was necessary to revive the soil’s conditions.

In my first week abroad, I was awestruck and completely in disbelief about how inconvenient or nonexistent aspects of my daily life were in China.  My knowledge about the country was acquired through a combination of the Travel Channel and museum collections, but my interest in ancient Chinese culture blinded me to the present reality of its citizens’ poverty and harsh living conditions.  While seeing the great wall and the Forbidden City in Beijing was unforgettable, what will really stay with me is how happy the people were despite their limited, strained, and often poor lives.

It is not all negative, however, as even the mind set of the people astonished me.  Person after person seemed to exude kindness and a difficult-to-fathom sense of empathy.  I had never considered the positive aspects of interacting with another culture in this way, but rather enjoyed watching from a distance in order to fulfill my curiosity about the outside world.  Living in such an environment where I obviously didn’t belong yet sharing ideas openly and often with people as curious as I am, was nothing short of eye opening.  I now have a new-found appreciation for the limitless bridges that such interactions can build.  Because of their strong sense of pride and nationalism which balances carefully with openness and willingness to exchange ideas, I think it only fitting that China had the honor of hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics.