Susie in Shanghai

Monday I had an interview scheduled with Dr. Peter Zhang, the co-founder of a biotech company called GenePharma.  However, not only did Dr. Zhang agree to be interviewed, but he scheduled an entire day of activities for me and Maria, including a trip to the famous Suzhou gardens.  [Maria is one of my best friends who is visiting me and Matt in China for a few weeks.  She was a biology major at Georgetown as well, so I brought her along to hear about the company and to see more of China outside of Shanghai.]

The day started at 10am with a 45 minute subway ride to Pudong, the other side of Shanghai. Dr. Zhang picked us up from the station and took us to GenePharma’s Pudong facility.  After a quick tour of the modest building, we all went out to lunch at a fabulous authentic Chinese restaurant.  It was definitely some of the best food I’ve had since being in China.  In fact, the food was so good that Maria and I tried to take the left-overs home, which started a very hilarious conversation in which we were told that this was absolutely unheard of and “people would know” if we carried around left-over food. Definitely a highlight of the day.

Over lunch I interviewed Dr. Zhang about his company (that will be a future blog post) and just had a really nice conversation about living in Shanghai versus the U.S. as well. Following lunch Dr. Zhang had to go to Suzhou to his other facility, so he brought Maria and I along on this two-hour trip.  Once in Suzhou, we were given a tour of GenePharma’s Suzhou facilities.  The building here was brand new and state-of-the-art, compliments of the Suzhou government! Although the office only houses approximately 65 employees currently, it was extremely impressive.

Dr. Zhang was an unbelievable host and had arranged for a driver to take Maria and I to LiuYuan–the beautiful gardens of the Liu family.  We walked through the serene and scenic trails and took a lot of pictures along the way.  One woman, clearly excited to practice her english, came over to talk to us and welcome us to China.  She was so sweet and insisted that if we needed anything at all, we could ask her.  We also had another interesting encounter when a younger boy (I’d say about 14) asked to take his picture with Maria.  She obliged and the only way I could describe his reaction would be to say he looked like a little kid on Christmas morning. He was jumping up and down, shaking, and talking 100 miles per minute in Chinese.  We still haven’t figured out if he thought she was a celebrity or not…  After the gardens, we went across the street to see some of the local vendors.  I bought a pretty fan and Maria bought a little outfit for her niece. It was a really good opportunity to practice some of my mandarin.

We didn’t get home until about 8pm, but the long day was definitely worth it.  I had a great conversation about GenePharma and also was able to venture outside of Shanghai.  Now that Maria is here (and it’s my last week in China!) I have been able to focus on being a tourist. I took Maria on a bus tour of Shanghai the next day, which somehow we ended up riding for free. I’d say the highlight of this excursion was the woman in People’s Square (a park in the center of Shanghai) asking Maria and I if we were sisters…”because of our dark hair and big noses.” Gotta love the honesty.

Below are the photos I took at the gardens. Hope you enjoy!