By LYNN YANG
Tiger Media Network
Bo Han Zhang is a Chinese student in the MBA 1+1 program at Fort Hays State University. Outside of school, he likes to travel, take risks, and try new things.
“I have been to many places in China,” Zhang said. “I have been to Xiamen, Nanjing, Shenyang. Among them, I like Nanjing best because the climate is very good and the people there are very polite.”
He said he must visit western China when he returns to China in the future.
“When I go back to China, I plan to visit Xinjiang and Tibet, China, because Xinjiang has a lot of good food. Tibet in China has the beautiful Potala Palace and is a holy place for pilgrimage,” he said. “I don’t know what a pilgrimage is, but I’d love to see how other people do it. And it is said that the scenery in these areas is also very beautiful, and there is the famous Doku Highway, which is comparable to these highways in the United States, so I still want to go and see. ”
As an international student, Zhang tried to leave campus every chance he got during his time at FHSU. Since he was only here for a year, he said he was eager to get to know the whole of the United States during that time.
“The first time I went out was for a weekend. I went to Wichita with my friends. In Wichita, we went to some churches,” he said. “We also went to the zoo, supermarket, the outlet and tried some good restaurants. ”
His next trip was to Orlando during Fall Break. He first took a plane from Hays to Orlando for almost five days before flying to St. Louis, where he traveled for a while.
“Orlando is one of the cities where I had fun in the United States. We went to Universal Studios in Orlando to play a lot of interesting projects,” Zhang said. “I still want to go back and play again. I really like raining, it was raining every day, although the clothes are wet, but I was really happy.”
While in Orlando, Zhang also went to see a crocodile pavilion where he had the chance to touch one of the reptiles. He also went boating and sightseeing for manatees. Although they didn’t see any on the trip, Zhang wants to return again.
“We wanted to see manatees, but we didn’t,” he said. “I’d like to go back to Florida if I get the chance because I really, really want to see manatees alive. That’s a pity.”
He said his best friend in St. Louis invited him to hang out. He went to St. Louis to visit a friend’s school, see the Arch, and view the Mississippi River.
“What impressed me most about St. Louis was that there was a very strange museum, like a maze, a maze-themed museum, and you get lost when you go in,” he said.
Zhang also first experienced target shooting in St. Louis.
“In St. Louis was the first time in my life that I made use of shooting. I was going to the range and I fired several shots from an M4A1, and then the gun was so deafening that it was hard on my ears and I had to wear earplugs and ear muffs to use it,” he said. “It was a very valuable experience in my life, but I’m sure I won’t fire it a second time.”
Zhang’s second big trip was during winter break. According to Zhang, it was a full trip, traveling the whole vacation without stopping for a moment. He went to New York, Boston, Miami, and his friend’s hometown. He enjoyed the northernmost part of the United States and then flew directly to the southernmost part.
“My best friend was in New York and we hung out together. First we went to see the very famous Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Times Square, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a lot more,” he said. “In short, I went to all the attractions in New York. “The Statue of Liberty was the most impressive.”
Zhang also take a boat to Ellis Island. Then he took a bus to Philadelphia, and from Philadelphia back to New York, and from New York to Brooklyn.
“There is a place in Brooklyn called Flushing, and there are a lot of Chinese Americans and Chinese in that place, and we went to Flushing to eat, and the restaurants there are very flavorful and very tasty,” he said.
After that it was another bus ride from New York to Boston. Boston is his favorite place because it brings him many different feelings.
“Boston is my favorite place in the U.S. I’ve been to so many places,” Zhang said. “The first one is the feeling of home because my aunt lives there. Secondly, the attractions in Boston are very skillfully designed. They have a road called the Freedom Road. It’s so comfortable that you can follow the brick guide and take in all the sights of Boston at once.”
Zhang also noted the nature and human landscape of Boston. He also enjoyed the wildlife via a whaling excursion. He also tourned many of the schools in the Boston area.
“There are a lot of schools in Boston, and I basically went to all of them,” he said. “Even during the winter break when school is closed, there are guides who will come and tell you about the school, and they do a great job of caring for the people.”
After Boston, Zhang traveled to Miami, where he says what impressed him the most was the cool climate and one of the southernmost wetland parks, having seen many animals he hadn’t seen before.
He says what he remembers most about the trip is that he ended up going to his American friend’s hometown and making music together.
“We made music together and this was very meaningful,” Zhang said. “I will leave it for my grandchildren, my future generations to listen to”
Zhang’s third big trip of the year was over spring break, one he planned single-handedly.
“For this trip, we chose to drive to our destination,” Zhang said. “We started from Hays and our final destination was Yellowstone.”
The journey was generally happy and tumultuous, but everything was meant to be, so a different landscape was experienced.
“We drove to Denver and played in natural landscapes like the Red Rocks Theater, Garden of the Gods, and went to another museum that was different from the one in St. Louis called Meow Wolf,” he said. “This maze was even more fun than the one in St. Louis. It’s psychedelic in color, it brings out your dreams, and it’s super much bigger than the previous one.”
They set off toward Salt Lake City, and Bohan said a lot of little things happened in the process.
“We were on the way to Salt Lake City and the car broke down once, and its radiator broke down. Then we took hot springs in the mountains in Denver, which were really snowy hot springs,” Zhang said. “Then the car was fixed and we went to Salt Lake City. This place is very beautiful, like a big mirror. It’s a very beautiful natural landscape.”
As his semester comes to an end in the coming weeks, Zhang can look back on his time at FHSU and in the United States as time well spent visiting different places and making the unknown world around him, known.
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