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Published: March 3rd 2011
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Greetings friends!
I've officially arrived in Jinhua and have been here for three days now. Amazingly, I had very little jet-lag after a 14-hour flight and so have been on a normal schedule since I arrived. I've received several questions about exactly why it is I am traveling to China, so I shall respond to this inquiry now. For the past two years, my Masters research focused on the development of children's "face space," a theoretical model that explains the way in which we organize and process faces of different races, ages, and sex. In particular, I am interested in the way in which race is processed as a perceptual and social category and how this develops over time. In my Masters, I tested Caucasian 5- and 8-year-old children living in the Niagara region of Ontario. These children have minimal experience with other-race faces and thus provide a great control. As part of my PhD, I am exploring the role of experience in shaping the development of face space with regard to race; as such, I want to examine three populations with different degrees of experience: 1) Caucasian children with little experience with Chinese faces (Niagara, Ontario), 2) Caucasian children
with ample experience with BOTH Caucasian and Chinese face (Toronto, Ontario), and 3) Chinese children with little experience with Caucasian faces (Jinhua, China). I have already tested the first population as part of my Masters and I am currently collaborating with researchers at the University of Toronto for the second population. And, in order to test my third population, I am now living in Jinhua! I'll be doing some additional work with our 3-dimensional software and camera while I'm here, but one of my main goals is clearly testing a huge sample of Chinese 5-year-olds on a series of experiments I have designed.
Okay! Now that I've gotten all that research talk out of the way, I can move on to my travel adventures! Sarah, one of our wonderful research assistants in the lab, had the delightful and much-envied task of picking me up at 6:00 in the morning to take me to the Toronto airport with my two massive suitcases and three additional bags of 3-D camera equipment. Let me tell you, this 3-D camera equipment is a beast! The main camera system bag was 50 pounds, the bag just carrying the tripods was another 35 pounds, and
the bag carrying the studio lights was an additional 30 pounds. I wish we had a video of us hauling all this into the airport because we were quite the sight- I think we had to take over 10 rest breaks in the parking garage alone! After we finally got all the luggage dealt with, Sarah stayed with me until I had to go through security and then I was off on the first leg of the journey!
The plane ride actually wasn't too bad. I got really lucky and not only had an aisle seat but an empty seat beside me as well! A girl from Shanghai was seated by the window with the empty seat beside her, and we took turns using that seat as a place to spread out. She was very nice and also helped me with translations at customs and at the exchange booth. I arrived in Shanghai around 4:00 in the afternoon and two graduate students from the lab came and picked me up. It was a four-hour drive from Shanghai to Jinhua, and I was pretty exhausted by that time (I only slept 2 hours on the flight) and slept half the
way there. We stopped at a rest stop, where I got my first experience of people being very intrigued by my foreignness. It's rather humorous; I think it's the only time in my life where I've ever felt exotic!
We finally arrived at the university around 10 at night and I unpacked right away and then collapsed in bed. I was up the next morning at 8 am and I had a very busy day of getting my life organized. I met several other graduate students and we went shopping for things for my dorm room, registered me at the university, went to the bank, and had a tour of the campus. The campus is very large and my dorm is at the far east end, while the lab is at the west end. There are three cafeterias on campus, and I am slowly getting used to the food. It is very different from the Chinese food we have in North America. I can be quite a picky eater but I am trying lots of different things and finding some food that I like. I go for each meal with some of the Chinese graduate students in the lab,
and I think they end up staying in the cafeteria for way longer than they usually do because 1) I am normally a very slow eater and 2) I am terrible with chopsticks, which slows me down even more! Also, I never know what it is that I am eating, so I am constantly asking, "What do you call this?" On the first day, I made the mistake of actually eating a bunch of tiny chicken bones because I thought it was just something really burnt and crunchy! (very embarassing, but it gave everyone a good laugh!)
Well, it is getting rather late here and I have an early morning of training on some new equipment tomorrow, so I should probably get to bed. I haven't taken any pictures here yet, but I'll soon post some along with a new update! Below are some photos from the wonderful going away party Ashley and Ryan hosted for me a few days before I left- an ice cream social! Thanks to everyone who came out for it and for all the good wishes people have passed along to me! 😊
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Matt
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Glad you made it there safely. I'm looking forward to hearing about your adventures!