The Brooklyn Bridge in New York

Typing out the last word of my story, I folded my laptop, grabbed my backpack and jumped the Uber downstairs that took me to the Beijing International Airport. Fifteen hours, two barely edible in-flight meals and three films later, I was at the Newark International Airport, ready to begin my first trip to the US.

Combining the pitiful annual leave I have - five days - with a weekend and a three-day May Day holiday, I was able to squeeze out 10 days to visit the States with my boyfriend.

Some friends recommended the natural beauty of the West Coast, but with a little more than a week's time, we decided to visit the more historic East Coast cities of New York and Washington DC, which are close together and conveniently connected by Amtrak.

Just as we were lining up at the customs, news broke out on the TV in the hall: Prince, the American singer, had died. We weren't big fans, but his sudden death made him the most prevalent American face we would see during our entire trip. Over the next few days, whenever we turned on the TV, someone, no matter how remotely they seemed to be connected to the singer, would be mourning him or talking about his influence. I found it fascinating as no singer's death would attract such massive and repeated coverage by mainstream media in China.

Our first and superficial impression of New York was that it is indeed, however clichéd the term, a melting pot. On the NJ transit train which took us to Manhattan, we were seated amid people of various ethnic groups, colors and accents, and for someone who comes from a relatively homogeneous culture like myself, this was indeed a memorable experience.

A street performer plays guitar in New York.

New York rush

I'd been to metropolises like Hong Kong, London and Tokyo, but New York was livelier and more energetic than any of these cities. I loved the Art Deco skyscrapers and elegant brownstones, the graffiti and hotdog stands, while the noise of NYPD sirens, roadwork, honking horns and street performers were all music to my ears.

Every trip to a new country comes with some little awkward moments. In New York ours came while we were swiping the MetroCards to enter the subway. The locals seemed to be able to swipe with great ease, but as tourists it took us an average of 10 swipes each time we tried to get through the turnstiles - which endlessly annoyed the fast-paced New Yorkers stuck behind us.

To make the most of our short holiday, we purchased a New York Pass - a prepaid card which allows you to visit almost any scenic spot in New York within a certain time limit.

It's a great deal - we were able to choose from dozens of tourist attractions, guided tours and cruise tours. The price of going to just a few of these places would have equaled the price of the pass, so it really was a steal.

However, it was also a burden as we found ourselves constantly trying to make the most of it. This led to the first three days of our trip being crammed full of activities.

On the first day of our trip, we walked our feet off as we visited three art museums in a row. On the second day, we rented two bikes, cycled to Brooklyn from Manhattan and back, and visited the 9/11 memorial. On the third day, we cruised along the Hudson river, visited another museum, joined a guided tour in Greenwich and enjoyed an amazing night view of Manhattan from the Empire State Building.

By the fourth day, we were exhausted and decided to take a random stroll along the streets of New York. That turned out to be the most enjoyable and memorable experience we had in the city.

We found ourselves pleasantly transported from one world to another as we walked past the grand Beaux-Arts architecture in lower Manhattan, the tacky Chinatown, the aromatic little Italy and the fashionable SoHo district. We spent the afternoon just sitting on a bench at Washington Square, our favorite spot in the city, where we read, sun-bathed, people watched and enjoyed the energy that exuded from the park.

An exhibit about 9/11 in St. Paul's Chapel, New York Photos: Zhang Yu/GT

American dreams

In Chinatown, we had our first conversation with a New York resident. Mr Li, my mom's old neighbor in Hangzhou from about 20 years ago, ­invited us to dinner at a ­Cantonese restaurant.

I had never met Li in China. My mom told me that he used to be a dentist in China, but left for the US in the 1990s.

Li, in his 50s and neatly dressed in a grey suit, turned out to be a typical first generation Chinese immigrant to the US. Since his dentist license wasn't recognized in the States, he said he had been a truck driver, a curtain salesman and was currently a sales representative at MetLife in Chinatown. His English was heavily accented, but judging from the conversations he had on the phone, his work didn't require him to speak the language very often as most of his clients are Chinese.

Li was rather critical of China's recent development, and took pride in his hard-earned life in the US. He bragged that he wanted to continue to work until he's 70, showed us pictures of his son and his son's white girlfriend and said we should eat as many hamburgers as we could in the US because they are the quintessential American food. Later we learned that Li's home was actually in Miami, and that he goes back every two weeks to unite with his wife.

When we told him how much we loved the diversity of New York, his response got us thinking. "When you're out of New York, you'll see the real America," he told us.

That same evening we had dinner with my cousin, who moved to the US about 10 years ago, in Midtown.

Unlike Li, my cousin, now in her early 30s, represents one of those younger, elite Chinese immigrants to the US. She graduated from Harvard, works at a hedge fund on Wall Street, married a Chinese American and now lives on the Upper East Side.

We spoke English at dinner and talked mainly about Chinese politics and the economy, which seem to be of importance to my cousin's investment as she deals with millions of dollars every day.

When we talked about how more Chinese are sending their children to the US at an earlier age, she frowned.

"Lily and Don will have more competitors!" she said, referring to her 2-year-old twins.

The Washington Monument in Washington DC

The capital

We weren't sure what Li meant by "the real America," but Washington DC certainly gave us a very different impression of the States. When our B&B host picked us up at Union Station and took us to his house in the eastern part of the city, we were taken by surprise that it was an all-black neighborhood, except perhaps for our hosts who were white Samoans.

We learned later that Washington DC used to have one of the highest black populations in the US. A New York Times story said the black population peaked at about 70 percent in the 1970s. Now, due to gentrification and other factors, the black population has lost its majority, now standing at a little lower than 50 percent. However, the population of the eastern part of DC, especially the southeast, is still predominantly black.

Our B&B was a lovely house with Hawaiian style decor and really nice, attentive hosts - very different from our impression of DC itself as its austere white, marble monuments were a bit too monotonous for our tastes.

The highlight of our trip was the Newseum, which was the only paid attraction on our DC trip.

With its television set-like exterior, the Newseum has some great exhibitions about journalism and how freedom of expression has progressed in the world. The museum even had eight 12-foot-high concrete sections of the ­original Berlin Wall.

We were amazed to find that the East German side of the wall was covered in graffiti, symbols of freedom, while the West German side was completely blank, a sign of the repression that people endured under the Soviet rule.