On a Saturday in late November, my friends and I left Beijing and drove 400 kilometers to see the night sky in the Ulanqab Volcano Geopark, one of the darkest places in China. The extreme cold and the snow on the highway nearly killed us, but we were lucky to see beautiful things that many people have never seen.

Silven Liu is a senior majoring in Bioprocess Engineering and is on track to graduate this spring with a degree from both SUNY-ESF and Beijing University of Chemical Technology.  He loves collecting and repairing old cameras.