Academic Skills and Achievements

Languages

Chinese (Mandarin) - Native Language
English - Proficient
French - Limited working proficiency
German - Elementary Proficiency
In Learning Progress (basic alphabetical and pronunciation knowledge): Arabics, Classical and Liturgical Latin, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, and Russian.

STEMS

AP Statistics Exam Scored 4 (May 2017)
Society of Women Engineers Certificate of Merit Award (May 2016)
AP Calculus Exam Scored 5 (May 2016)
AP Physics Exam Scored 4 (May 2016)

Writing

Daomao Alley: An Descriptive Essay from English Composition Class

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            There is a narrowed pathway in the middle of a busy city, next to the most important bridge of the downtown traffic, Fengqi interchange. It has seen centuries of history in this one-time capital of an ancient empire, now forgotten the new, industrialized city. This is Daomao Alley, where I grew up, where my friends and I chased each other when we were little. From there, I go to the grocery store a couple steps away or leave home for a school across the ocean.

            Daomao Alley stretches from the north to the south, cut in half by one of the city’s main street, Fengqi Road. Daomao Alley is a mostly residential area, but it also has my middle school, a high school, and a huge hospital on the north half. My home and hundreds of small stores are on the south half. It is located in Hangzhou, a beautiful city in southern China with the famous West Lake. Almost a thousand years ago, Hangzhou was the Capital of the giant empire, Daomao Alley has existed since that time. It was the closest Alley to the old city gate. Poets have written that it was the busiest place in the whole city. In 1928, a French Catholic charity chose Daomao Allay as the location for a hospital, a school, and a church. It is miniature compared to the traffic hubs around it, but It carries a millennium of history and all of my childhood memories.

            My family moved to the apartment complex on Daomao Alley when I was three and has stayed there since then. At that time, Daomao Alley was the whole world to me, the hundreds of years old maidenhair trees that gave fruit every year, the one-next-to-another local stores, the schools, and one chain supermarket that had a KFC and a gym in it. There were not many cars in China at that time. Daomao Alley seemed like a wide empty street to me; I was scared to cross it by myself.

            Summers were the best time in Daomao Alley. Thousands of cicadas on the hundreds of maidenhair trees buzzed day and night. It was the symphony of my childhood. The summers in Hangzhou were so hot that you could smell the pitch as the roads melted. This never killed our passion for exploring the “world outside,” Daomao Alley. Parents in the neighborhood warned their kids: “Do not go to Daomao Alley without an adult. Someone is going to kidnap you and sell you to the people in the mountains.” That never stopped us from sneaking out of the apartment complex and wander around the stores during the day with the pocket money we saved. Every store owner in Daomao Alley knew every kid in the neighborhood. They gave us free candies and a discount on sodas. Parents also told their kids: “Don’t eat the candies other people give you.” But store owners were not strangers to us, and we enjoyed everything we got from them (this drove our parents crazy). Every summer, cicadas buzzing, heat, and icy sodas from the stores in the Daomao Alley, filled my childhood.

            Like most of the cities south of the Yangzi River, Hangzhou rains a lot. Daomao Alley was not well constructed. The sidewalk was made of rough bricks. It was a lot of fun during the rainy days, at least for us children, but a headache for our parents. After each rainstorm, the air smells like grass. The old and worn bricks hide the water under them. Since the bricks have always been uneven, there is no way to tell which brick has water under it. It became a game of minesweeping for us. After the rainstorm, we all walked out om our normal clothes and started stepping and jumping around on the bricks, competing to see who could get the most water out of the bricks. When our parents came back from work, saw their kids jumping, the clothes that were clean and shiny in the morning now wet and blackened by whatever was under the bricks. After that you could hear the weeping of children and the yelling of parents.

            As the city ­- and the whole country - became more industrialized, there were more vehicles in the city. One day a car crashed into a kid crossing Daomao Alley. The kid later lost his leg. Our parents told us one more time, “Do not wander around Daomao Alley alone!” This time, when summer came, they locked us in our apartments when they were away and told the guards not to let us out. That summer, Daomao Alley was as busy and noisy as ever, but we were no longer a part of it.

            The cicadas buzzed every summer. The recycling guy still wandered around Daomao Alley with his loudspeaker, calling “Collecting old TVs, refrigerators, air conditioners, computers and washing machines” over and over again. You could tell when the fall started each year when the sweet scent of the osmanthus rushed in your nose (osmanthus is a kind of tiny flowers that smells so good, it is also used in Chinese desserts). In the winters, Daomao Alley got quieter. Closer to the Spring Festival, a lot of people left the city and returned to their hometown for the holiday. We were allowed to hang out on the street again.

            In middle school, life got busier. There was no more time for me to hang out and wander around the Daomao Alley. Most of my childhood friends moved away from the neighborhood. Without my noticing, the little grocery store that used to give kids free candies closed, replaced by a chain glasses store. The owner of the small restaurant who knew exactly what I was going to order every time sold the store to another person who does not even say hi to the customers. The KFC was still there, but because of the rumors of they raising six-winged chickens, it was no longer the kingdom for kids. The city spent money to fix the sidewalks, and there were no more bricks to hide water after rain.

            As I only go back home twice a year, and Daomao Alley has become unfamiliar to me. None of the stores in my childhood memory remained. Even the big chain supermarket is gone. Instead there will be a high-end apartment complex that only the richest people can afford. But Daomao Alley still bides all that history, and now, bides my childhood memories too.

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