Stories – Aaron Yang | UI/UX Designer, User Researcher, Website Developer

Hometown Stories

Aaron Yang — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 02:05:44 +0000

“Weak up! It’s already eight o’clock!” this is the first sentence I heard from my father every morning when I was in my middle school. Then, I opened my eyes and looked at the clock: seven fifteen. Usually, I wanted to sleep for ten more minutes. But I might be late for school. Back then, we lived in a tiny town in a valley. There were no school buses. I had to walk for twenty-five minutes to the school. After a simple breakfast, I left home.

About fifty families lived in our community. It was built on the north side of the valley. In the old days, when my parents went to the market, they would say “go down to the market.” The markets sat at the bottom of the valley, and so did the schools.

I walked down to the main street and turn east. There were already a lot of people on the sidewalk, which was wider than the two-way road beside it. Two decade ago, this town only had few cars. Because of the small size of the town, most people walked to school or to work. In the summer, the morning air was fresh and cool. The golden sun made me feel comfortable.

On the other side of the road were machine plants, lumber mills, and storage facilities. This town was built on a big coalfield. All the local industries are about coal and mine. There was a train terminal behind the factories, which was the endpoint of an essential national coal-transportation line connected to the east coast of China. The tallest building is the twelve-storage-high coal processing building that was in the middle of the terminal. As a landmark, you can hardly avoid seeing it in the town. In this building, the coal was prepared and loaded to the hopper rail cars. Tow lines of rails were cross the bottom of the building. The empty cars were dragged in from one side slowly and came out from the other side with full of coal. After applying a layer of coating to prevent the dust, they were dragged toward east.

From the classroom window, we could see the train running on other side of the valley. It was one of my activities during the class break to count the rail cars. When I arrive the classroom, a typical day begins. The noising morning section started at eight o’clock. We had to read out load literary Chinese texts or memorize English words and sentences in this section that usually last for fifty-minutes. For some students, it was like a cup of morning coffee. Everybody read loudly in the classroom. (Drown other’s voice.) You would never fall into sleep again. To me, it was just too noisy.

Usually, the teachers did not need to show up. The course representative took in charge. But our class teacher often came over to check on the students. Not everyone focused on the studies. Some might fall asleep on the desk, eat snacks, or read comic books, which were not allowed during the class time. Sometimes the teacher appeared at the front door; other times she come to the backdoor and look through the small window. If she caught somebody doing something like that, she would come in, confiscate the food or the book, and ask the student to her office after the class. So, that was a scary scene that you were absorbed in your favorite comic book furtively at the wrong time but found your teacher watching over your shoulder for minutes.

The Community

Aaron Yang — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 00:18:31 +0000

As the biggest city in North Dakota, Fargo has a population of only a hundred and twenty thousand. It takes about fifteen minutes to driving from the airport to downtown on local roads. On the way, you will pass by the state university and cross a busy railroad. Our apartment building is in between, two blocks away from the railway. It is an important transportation line connecting the lake areas and west coast. Thousands of tons of agricultural products are transported to the east every day. As more oilfields are opened in west of the state, the rails shoulder more burdens.

When a train comes, the rolling sound echoes through the sky, followed by clashes of the wheels and the rail joints. The noise is so loud that we cannot escape in our apartment.

It is a busy line. The oil companies in the west transport petroleum to their clients far away from the state. Farmers all over North Dakota send their products to the coastal ports in the east. Trains pass by in the mornings, in the afternoons and in the evenings. Amtrak also has a passenger line traveling across the city. But I have never seen it since the arrival and departure time is around 3:30 am while I am still in my dream.

Close to my apartment building are two connected soccer fields, which are only used for training. The grass in the fields is in very good condition (green and lush) and much better than that outside our building. Close to my apartment building are two connected soccer fields, which are only used for training. The grass in the fields is in very good condition (green and lush) and much better than that outside our building. Some concrete sideway separates them. It is a good place to have a walk or run a kite after dinner. In winter, this place is closed, and nobody blow the snow. We used to walk the field in a snowy day. There have been covered by at least one-foot snow brought by two previous winter storms. The sideway in the middle of the field disappeared since nobody plow the snow in this place in winter.

It is convenient for the students in the university to live here. We have two campuses. The main campus is to the north of our building, about half mile away. The other one is in downtown. It usually takes five minutes to drive there from home. My laboratory is on the main campus. I teach a class on downtown campus. Since main campus is closer, I walk there if the weather is good, but I don’t have to. There’s a bus stop outside our apartment building. If it is too cold or too hot, especially in winter, I would take a bus to my lab. My iPhone has an app that tracks the location of school bus in real time. When it is two stops away from me, I run out and wait for it’s coming.

But the app is not reliable. Sometimes I missed the bus and have to wait for the next one or just walk to the school.

One day in a winter morning, I was waiting for the 9:40 bus. The tracking app showed the bus had stopped three stops away from me. I stared at the screen and waited for its moving. It stopped longer than usual. Then, the icon of the bus disappeared from the map for a second and reappeared close to me. I grabbed my backpack, ran out and waited at the front entrance of my building, which is not a bus stop. I didn’t have time to run to the actual stop since the bus had just left. So, I just see if the driver would stop for me. Yes, she did. The bus stopped. The front door opened right to me and I saw the driver, a lady who wore dark blue jacket and a pair of sunglasses, looking at me in smile. I stamped my feet for several times to get rid of snow off my shoes and hopped on the bus. The bus floor was wet from melted snow, some ice mixed with water remained near the door.

“Thank you so much, madam,” I said.

“You are welcome,” she said.

I found an empty seat near the back door and sit down. There were only four passengers on the bus. All of them were students, I guess. They all looked down at their smartphones, swiping the screen.

Fargo Seasons: Winter

Aaron Yang — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 20:01:56 +0000

You have probably heard of this city from the movie “Fargo.” It shows how the central northern US looks like in winter. But you will never feel it until you live in Fargo.

The winter is long here. The first snow comes to the city in October. The last snow usually comes in April. Every year, we have several winter storms. They usually last for one or two days, bringing ten to thirty inches of snow. Students like this kind of weather because the school will be canceled.

We suffered from our first winter last year. That was unforgettable. The weather became so cold in late September. While the campus was still green, the first snow arrived. I have very little memory of autumn. It feels like the summer in Fargo was followed by winter. Then the world became white and all the colors suddenly disappeared.

When a winter storm approaches, we have to stay at home before it stops. The wind speed can reach 50 miles per hour and the temperature drops to forty-degree below zero Fahrenheit. No cars can move because of the accumulation of snow. To keep the roads and highway clear of snow, snow plowing trucks were running around. The areas that were not cleaned would become the desert of snow. All parked vehicles were buried.

When the snow stops, the city comes back to life. Snow removal workers come to our parking lot to clean most parts of it. They use snow blowers to blow the snow off the sidewalk. Then someone drives wheel loaders to push the snow to the lawn. They usually do the job the night before the work day. The bumbling sound and beeps of equipment come from everywhere in the community. If we parked our car on the roadside, the workers could clean the parking space very easily. Otherwise, they will skip the areas around the car. In this case, we have to dig our car out with hand tools. First, I have to shovel a way so that we can get close to the car. Then we open the door and pick the tools we need. I use a snow brush or ice scraper to remove the snow on top. Just like cutting a birthday cake, I cut my tool into the snow and push a small part to the ground as it is so thick. Since we covered the windshield with a cloth protector, it doesn’t take too much time on the windshield. After cleaning the roof and engine hood, we start to shovel the space so that we can drive out. It was tough work. One-third of the car was buried in snow. It took me about half an hour to move hundreds of pounds of snow. Finally, we could leave the parking lot.

After the city worker cleaned the roads, only a thin layer of snow remained. Some areas showed concrete surface. Snow was piled up on both sides of the road. It was dangerous to drive now not only because of the slippery ground but also of the endless snow drifts. At the intersections, it was difficult to see the crossing traffic. For a smaller car like ours, it was worse. So, we had to drive very carefully. When the sun came out, the world was lit up. The sun shone on the snow, reflecting on my face, I could barely see the distance.

Several days after the snow storm, people still dealt with the aftermath. Some areas did not have enough space for piling up snow. Snow removal companies came in to transport snow to other places. Not far away from our apartment there was an empty space, as big as two soccer fields. It’s one of the destinations for the snow in this city. The trucks unloaded snow to this area. Bulldozers helped push it together. Gradually, a four stories tall white hill was formed. Then people put dark dirt on the surface of the hill to absorb heat from the light. The sun would do the rest of the work. In the coming April, the temperature rises up. The snow starts melting. Usually, the snow hill will melt away in the sun in more than a month.

That was our first winter in Fargo in 2018. It was also the coldest winter we have gone through. Minus 30 F was normal. A blizzard at the end of January brought a wind with the speed of 45 miles per hour and a wind chill temperature of minus 61 F. I was kidding with my wife: “you see, we are experiencing the weather in Antarctica.” Our car battery did not survive that winter. We have to jumpstart the car every morning, sometimes on the road before the intersection. When I took down the battery from the car, I noticed that it had become an ice block.

But we still had some fun in such an extreme weather. We went outside the building and pour some hot water into the cold air. Since the water temperature changed so rapidly, most of the water vaporized immediately and became icy cloud. During that winter, such activities are so popular across the north US.

When the sky cleared up, a large amount of ice crystals floated in the atmosphere, we could see the sundog. The sun was enclosed by a huge halo. Two spots of light emerged on both sides of the halo. They were almost as bright as the sun. When I saw one of the spots through my window for the first time, I thought it was the sun.

Another fascinating thing we did is to explore the lawn behind our apartment, which was fully covered by snow. In winter, we mainly have winds from north. The snow slowed down and was accumulated on the south side of the building. After couple of storms, we could barely see the window of the ground floor. One day, when passed by, we decided to walk into the lawn and measure the thickness of the snow with our legs. For the first several feet, the snow was knee-high. When we kept going forward, it became more difficult to make the steps. Because our legs were fully buried by the snow and my feet did not even reach the ground.

In April, Spring finally came. The weather became warmer. Snow starts melting, followed by flood. The Red River, the largest river in North Dakota, runs by Fargo towards the south, separating it from another town. In warm area, the water produced by snowmelt can be absorbed by the soil. But in the Red River’s upstream, the ground remains frozen in this season. As a result, all the water gathers in the river. When it arrives Fargo, the water level raised by dozens of feet higher than other seasons. In 2009, the floor level reached forty-one feet, which was the worst flood in the city’s history. People in Fargo have been battling this situation for more than a hundred years. Every March, volunteers prepare millions of sand bags in Fargo Doom, the largest in-door stadium of the city. Then, they placed sand bags along the river in the threatened area to protect the local property. This is one of the major events every year in the city.