Dylan Langharst - China

In May of 2024, I visited China for the first. This was a life changing experience. So many thing were done during that time

I visited my wife's family in Hubei province
I visited Ning Zhang at his institute Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, Hubei. There, I presented to his research group in the department of Mathematics and Statistics
I visited Changsha, Hunan. I presented in a conference hosted by Hunan University's mathematics department. Afterwards, they took us on some tourism.
- The mountains in Zhangjiajie, which features the mountain from James Cameron's Avatar
- Furong City, a very historic city above a waterfall
- Phoenix City, also very historic and very beautiful at night
I visited Shaanxi Normal University in Xi'an to present in a workshop. Then, we did some tourism.
- An archaeology museum and a history museum
- The original ancient city of Xi'an. It is here that the Qin dynasty, the first unifier of China and creators of the Great Wall, ruled. In this area, you'll see the original city walls.
- The Terracotta Army, buried with the first king of the Qin. His son succeeded him. Their dynasty ended with only two rulers, due to a peasant rebellion.
I visited Shanghai University (in Shanghai).

I will post here some pictures from this trip.

All the pictures with a name beneath are a link to a photo album!!

Above and Below: Scenes from my wife's hometown

Wuhan

Visiting Ning Zhang at his institute

Tourism

Professor Ning took us on some tourism. First, we went to East Lake. In the middle of that lake is an island. On that island is a mountain. On top of that mountain is a temple, which we climbed. On the last day of Wuhan, Ning took us on quite a tour. In the middle of Wuhan is a small mountain called Snake Mountain, and on that mountain is the Yellow Crane Tower. This tower was first built as a military post. Slowly, over the centuries it became an artistic hub for poets and musicians. There are a few famous poems mentioning the tower. Below is a link to the albums from this part of the journey.

East Lake, Wuhan

Yellow Crane Tower

After Crane tower, we went to the local history museum. It was quite expansive, covering 3000 years of history. One of the exhibits (not shown) was discussing if the Zeng and Sui kingdoms were one and the same.

There was a kingdom centered in Wuhan, ruled by Marquis Yi. They found his tomb filled with artifacts - meats, daily belongings like combs and bath tubs, the sarcophagi of 17 (!) women meant to accompany him in the after life... More importantly, they found a complete set of musical instruments (pictured above). In the museum, they have a concert, which we attended, where they play music on replicas of the instruments. All the songs were carried down throughout the centuries. The last song was a modern one; in previous years it was "Auld Lang Syne", but this year it was a new composition about Chairman Mao. Anyway.

The most awesome, in the literary sense, exhibition was on the Sword of Goujian. It is a bronze sword from 510 BC that belonged to the King of Yue, named Goujian, during the Autumn and Spring Period. The story is that Goujian wanted to conquer his neighbors, so he would read many books written by generals. While doing this, he would tie his long hair to the ceiling (and I guess hang from his hair?). He would hold his sword in his hand while reading - if he fell asleep, he would hence stab himself in his thigh with the sword, keeping him awake.

The Yue Kingdom would fall to the Chu, after a stretch of 9 monarchs. The sword would be given to the Chu king (who took the last Yue princess as a bride, if I understood correctly). Eventually, the sword was given to the local duke in Jingzhou, Hubei, as a gift, and this duke was buried with it. (Wuhan is in Hubei).

Wuhan Museum - Musical Performance and artifacts

Sword of Goujian

Changsha

After leaving Wuhan, I traveled for my main reason for the trip to China: I was to present in the "Conference on Convex Geometry and Related PDEs", run by Hunan University in Changsha, Hunan, China. I say "run" and not "hosted" because the whole conference is in a hotel 2 hours away from the university. The scientific committee for the conference is Gaoyong Zhang, Monika Ludwig and Yong Huang. I presented the higher-order stuff that I did with Julian Haddad, Michael Roysdon, Eli Putterman and Deping Ye. I also mentioned the work with Dongmeng Xi.

In China, they really treat mathematicians like rock stars. There were people running around with flash cameras. On the first day, Monika gave a little opening speech and the amount of flash photography reminded me of the Oscars ceremony. Monika was also kind enough to ask a question during my talk. A young Chinese researcher asked a question as well, but I didn't catch his name. My session was chaired by Yingbo Han. You can see a slide-show of some photos taken by the profession photographer at the bottom of the "Presentations" tab.

On one of the days of the conference, I was taken to visit Hunan university. The university is located at the bottom of a mountain, which we partially climbed. Located in the university is the Yuelu Academy, which specializes in literature. This academy is thousands of years old, and we toured it. Then, we went to the mathematics building.

As part of the conference, we went to a district of Changsha called Tongguanyao Ancient Town. This is a theme park recreating the ancient appearance of Changsha.

Hunan University

Tongguanyao Ancient Town: Recreation of Historic Changsha

Zhangjiajie Town and National Park

After the conference in Changsha, China, hosted by Hunan University, we were taken to the Zhangjiajie mountains. We had to take a bus to a town, also called Zhangjiajie, at the base of the mountains.

The town

In the Zhangjiajie town, we spent the first night attending a performance by the local minority group, Tujia. Each performance was from a different story, some over a thousand years old. Here are some highlights:

- One story about three guys competing (and working together) for the attention of one girl

- When the Eight-Nation alliance (Russia, UK, US, France, Germany, Japan, Austro-Hungary, and Italy) invaded China in the year 1900, a story was created. Husbands and sons went to war, but died. Then, a man from hell came to collect their souls. He raised their bodies first, and these dead soldiers came home, much to the horror of their families, before marching to the afterlife.

- Four volunteers were picked from the audience (everyone around me, including my wife, tried to get them to pick me...) the volunteers were competing to marry a bride. The guy in the blue is the lucky winner.

A Performance by the Tujia People

The park

We took a gondola to the top of the mountains. The first views we saw were the "Paint Brush Peaks" and then "Beautiful Lady Mountain" (we took pictures of ourselves with those). The other pictures in this album are the sandstone peaks.

There is a famous stone bridge. Our tour guide told us that it's a tradition for newly wed couples to cross the bridge and go around to the other side and back. She let us ditch the group to go on this side-journey. There, we bought two talismans to tie to the stone bridge (the red strips of cloth). One is for our marriage and one is for family and friends.

At one point, we saw an automaton of Sun Wukong from the ancient Chinese folktale "Journey to the West" selling some corn.

More recently, the story and the character was adapted as a monkey boy from space going on a journey to gather seven wishing orbs; he goes by the Japanese version of Sun Wukong in the adaptation, which is Son Goku, maybe you've heard of the story before: Dragon Ball.

Zhangjiajie UNESCO Park Pt 1: Sandstone Peaks

Zhangjiajie UNESCO Park Pt 2: Stone Bridge

Finally, we come to what Zhangjiajie is most famous for. We see here the stone mountain featured in James Cameron's film "Avatar".

We left the mountains by taking the Bailing elevator, which covers 326 meters / 1070 feet in 88 seconds. Guinness World Records says it is the world's largest outdoor elevator. At the bottom was a creek where we walked around. We also saw a bunch of monkeys!!!

Zhangjiajie UNESCO Park Pt 3: James Cameron's Avatar

Zhangjiajie UNESCO Park Pt 4: Elevator and Monkeys

Two Ancient Towns

After Zhangjiajie, we went to two villages. The first was Furong Village, Yongshun County, Xiangxi Prefecture, Hunan Province. This town is 800 years old and has many old buildings; many small towns were destroyed during the 1800s or during the reforms, so the buildings here are a tourist attraction. Originally named Wangcun, the town changed its name after a film called "Furong" (English name "Hibiscus Town") was shot here.

There is a waterfall that goes into the You River, and you can walk behind it. Unfortunately, the walkway was under construction. The Tujia minority group is native to this area, and, nowadays, they put on a show for the tourists in the pictured stage. There is a statue commemorating the visit of the Emperor.

The second ancient town in Hunan we went to was Feng Huang, or Phoenix Village. At night, it was beautiful. We walked along the river in the historic downtown with the tour group. This culminated in a boat ride. Afterwards, we went solo and climbed up a walking trail that goes to a mountain. It was dark so we turned back at the designated "you are now entering a national forest, there will be no lights" spot.

Furong Village

Fenghuang Village

Xi'an, Shaanxi

After being tourists for a bit, it was time to go back to work. There was a workshop at Shaanxi Normal University in Xi'an, Shaanxi. Xi'an, as a city, is a historic center for the Chinese people: the Qin dynasty, the short-reigned rulers who first unified China, had this city as their capital. Here, we find the world famous Terracotta Army.

We still did some tourism though! We went to two museums - the museum of archaeology and the museum of history. The mathematics department at Shaanxi University hired a tour guide for us. We then went to the downtown of Xi'an. There is a Tibetan pagoda from the Tang dynasty to emphasize the positive relations between the empire and that region during that time frame. Famously, Xuanzang, a real person featured in Journey to the West, brought Buddhism back from India to this city. There is a statute of him.

Two Museums in Xi'an

Downtown Xi'an

We went to the ancient downtown of Xi'an. Xi'an was the capital of many dynasties of China, including the Qin dynasty, the first unifiers of China.

In the ancient downtown, there is a Tibetan Buddhist temple. The original city walls still stand, and we toured those as well. Not too far from the city gates are a bell tower and drum tower. Near the drum tower is the Muslim village, which numbers over 1 million practicing Muslims. Xi'an was directly connected to the Middle East via the Silk Road.

The Qin were one of seven kingdoms that existed for four hundred years before unification. They adopted warrior values and conquered the west - the emperor who unified them, Shihuangdi, ruled for 49 years, from 259–210 BCE. He was seen as a severe ruler. Always concerned about this next life, he had the Terracotta Army built and buried with him to protect him in the afterlife. He was buried facing West, the only cardinal direction worth traveling to (North is Mongolia, South is India, East is the sea, and the west is the great unknown). The emperor wanted to live forever, and so took "immortality pills" that "immortals", living in the East, claimed granted eternal life. These pills were made of mercury. He died of a stroke while touring his kingdom. His son inherited the empire, but it quickly fell into disarray, lasting only four more years. The Han would then quell the chaos and become the new rulers. The Qin's greatest cultural achievement is the introduction of a common Chinese language and the concept of a China as a single entity. They also instigated the construction of the Great Wall.

The Ancient Downtown

Terracotta Army

Shanghai

I spent the last week of the trip in Shanghai; I presented to the mathematics department at Shanghai University at the invitation of Professor Dongmeng Xi. My wife and I walked along the Bund and took amazing pictures of the Business district. We also visited the Yuyan Garden Temple at night. Finally, we visited the Shanghai Zoological Park with Prof. Richard Gardner to see a giant panda.