Ann Arbor is a
wonderful town located about an hour and a half drive’s west of Detroit.
The town is most famous for being the home to the University
of Michigan, the highest rated
public university in the world. Spending a month based in Ann
Arbor was a wonderful experience, with three features
of the town standing out in particular: scenery, people and food.
1. Change of scenery
The tallest building in Ann Arbor, just a tad smaller than most buildings in the Beijing metropolis!
2. Fun, smart people
Ann Arbor is a
lovely town, about 1/60th the size of Beijing.
The largest building in Ann Arbor
is about the same size as our Beijing
apartment block.
A smaller population does have advantages. Ann
Arbor is known as ‘Tree
Town’ and the streets have a
wonderful leafy suburban feel that does not exist in Beijing.
The ability to get in the car and drive 30 minutes to a wonderful kayaking spot
was also appreciated!
I was impressed by Molly’s family and friends. I met many
fun, smart people of various backgrounds and ages. I had wonderfully deep discussions
with a variety of people, and I treasure how open these people were with me. I now
know where to go if I want detailed discussions on sexuality and gender issues!
While meeting all these smart, fun people I was struck by
how many people did not have jobs. While some smart people are unemployed for
periods in Australia,
the number of unemployed or underemployed people in Ann
Arbor was concerning. I will discuss this issue
further in the third part of the series, where I consider the economic implications
and lessons of Michigan.
3. Great tasty food
Living in Beijing,
I adopted a rather care-free attitude towards my food. Having researched for
work the numerous problems in Chinese food safety, I would generally put
something in my mouth if it wouldn’t give me food poisoning or kill me in less
than 24 hours.
In comparison to Beijing,
the residents of Ann Arbor should
be referred to as food connoisseurs! Residents of Ann
Arbor appear highly concerned about the food that they
eat, priding themselves on consuming organic locally-grown foods. The desire
for high quality foods has led to the establishment of food co-operatives,
farmers markets and high quality restaurants. While I could talk incessantly
about the tasty food in the markets, let’s move to my personal highlight of Ann
Arbor food: the ice cream!
Washtenaw Dairy has the biggest, best value ice cream I have
ever tasted. For starters, Washtenaw Dairy doesn’t believe in small sizes. A
small (kids) ice cream is about double the size of a normal ice cream. A
regular ice cream (with waffle cone) is only a little over three dollars, and
is a mountain of ice cream.
Washtenaw Dairy ice creams are creamy with strong natural tasting
flavours. Over my five visits to the dairy I settled on Blueberry Wafflecone
and Triple Chocolate Overload as my favourites. However, I never found a
flavour I did not like.
This is a 'regular' sized ice cream. The mind boggles as to how big a double would be!
