In 2018 spring semester, I had the opportunity to travel to Beijing for 8 weeks to do research at the Peking University Institute for Computer Science and Technology. While there, I worked on computer vision research in Yongtao Wang’s VDIG Lab. Although I was not officially a student, I was able to find housing in the PKU Shaoyuan Guest house for the duration of my stay, and came and went daily through PKU’s beautiful campus. I also was able to greatly improve my spoken Chinese confidence and fluency.

 

This trip would not have been possible without the support of the Fung Foundation, so I am truly grateful for their support..

 

Work

At PKU, my research was focused on producing a real-time object detection framework that is efficient enough to run on your phone. With this framework, then, people could run applications that rely not just on classifying what’s seen on a camera, but where it is physically within a world as well. Specifically, I worked with the VDIG lab to produce minified version of the Faster-RCNN neural net architecture. This required the use of Tensorflow, as well as the use of iOS and Android app development tools such as Xcode and Android Studio. In the end, I was able to present them with a working demo about 6 weeks through my internship.

 

After working on that project, my research group had an impending paper deadline for the projects they had been working on concurrently. I helped revise and edit their papers to improve their English fluency, which was incredibly rewarding. My interactions with my group were entirely in Chinese, which, in a trial-by-fire fashion, helped improve my spoken Chinese greatly.

 

Outside of Work

Outside of work, I made a bunch of new friends through Shaoyuan Guest House. PKU’s Shaoyuan is where exchange students and Yenching scholars live, and so I was continually surrounded by other students my age. In the end, I made about a dozen new friends. I especially found home with Margaret Tian (who was also at PKU on a MISTI trip), and two Hong Kongers named Max and Amy. As a group, we explored Beijing the many Hutongs of Beijing and experienced the culture first hand.

On the weekends, we frequently made side trips, in and out of Beijing. Especially notable was our trip to Wuhan about 4 weeks in, where I was able to see the cherry blossom trees at the peak of their bloom. We took an overnight train as a group and it as all around a phenomenal and beautiful experience. Multiple people even asked to take pictures of me!

 

Besides our trip to Wuhan, I also got to see the Beijing Zoo pandas as well as the Great Wall. I also ate Scorpion in the Wangfujing area of Beijing!

 

Thank you
All and all, this trip to Beijing was a absolutely outstanding experience. I got to experience Chinese culture to the extreme while doing meaningful work at a lab and making new friends. All of these experiences would not have been possible without the generous support of the Victor and William Fung Foundation, and for that I am extremely grateful.