Party!

This might easily have been the creepiest experience of my life... no, not the wedding. We'll get to that later. But on Friday I attended the annual female faculty party of Nanjing university. I get the tombola (I walked away with a supersize package of cookies), I also get the speeches (well, not in the understanding everything they say kind of way), but then - karaoke? No only did one woman sing 我爱你中国 "wo ai ni zhong guo - I love you China" with an over-the-top opera voice, she also had the matching background dancers who - I swear - were doing a swan lake parody (pretending to be toe dancing in their heavy winter boots) and background singers who were about half a tone off with her. It was so much worse than anything of that caliber I had ever seen! If they would have been completely drunk and this actually was a joke, it would have been fine, but no - everyone thought it was great. There was more dancing and singing. Now I finally know who those women are I regularly see practising dancing on the parking lot in front of my kung fu school. I mean, I'm sure it's a good way for those 60-70 year olds to get some exercise without over-exerting themselves, but putting it on stage? Now, really...

The wedding was great. Mostly because I got to practise Chinese all weekend and learned more about Chinese culture in two days than normally in two months. I just wish I wasn't so lazy - the thing is, I took notes over the weekend so I wouldn't forget anything, but now I really don't feel like typing these notes up for the blog. But due to personal requests (thank you guys for liking my blog) I'll do what my fans expect of me :) ah, stardom is hard...

I got to Ganzhou Friday morning after a rather pleasant train ride. I was sharing the compartment with two guys who were also going from Nanjing to attend a wedding in Ganzhou - but not the same, it turned out.

train_ride

They were already asleep when I returned from the dining car at 20:30, so I also went to sleep pretty early. Thankfully the berth was comfy and it was even rather warm in the compartment. Around 22:30 we were rudely awaken by the 4th person, who kept going in and out and leaving the door open. He seemed quite surprised to wake up "next to" a long-nose woman the next morning - I don't know which of the two was more shocking to him :) My friend picked me up at the station and we went for breakfast at a street stall. Had some tasty fried dough and "medicine soup" - it was a clear stock made from some bitter dried fungus or fruit, supposedly gives you energy after a long journey. He also showed me the main sights - a pontoon bridge made of small fishing boats, fish market, Buddhist temple...

ganzhou_1

Then I met his parents and wife (they were already legally married in Beijing, because that's where they are registered, but their parents insisted on them having a "proper" wedding) and had lunch with the family. I was told to stop saying "thank you," being impolite is part of being accepted as a family member :) I helped the bride to decorate "her new home," which means my friend's bedroom in his parents' place - not that their actually going to live their, since she studies in Beijing and he in Montreal, but tradition is tradition. The groom even had to buy new furniture for his room! So we glued "lucky characters," i.e. Chinese characters expressing good fortune made of red papercuts, on windows and mirrors. We had dinner also with the bride's parents. It was really nice, and my friend's mom a pretty good cook.

The next morning started with the ritual haggling for the bride :) Since the bride's parents are from Henan province, they stayed in a hotel in Ganzhou and the bride also spend the night before the wedding in the hotel. They had rented a suite and pretended it was her home. Three of her friends had also come and I was added to the bride's party so I could participate in all the fun. The fun being that the groom has to make a complete fool of himself and the bride is treated like a princess - that's basically the core principle of a Chinese wedding :) So the groom came and knocked on the door, asking for his bride. Her girlfriends put up a fight and did not want to let him in. He was forced to declare his love, promise to always obey his wife, even when she's wrong, and even sing! Only after he had pushed enough money envelopes under the door did they finally let him in (btw, the "bride's maids" got to keep the money from the red envelopes, so I even made ten yuan). He came with flowers and a traditional Chinese jacket, the bride was sitting on the bed amidst all her skirts.

wedding

They exchanged their rings and then the bride's parents served them food (they had borrowed a rice steamer so they could steam some eggs in the hotel room). Then there was the ritual bowing to the parents and handing over of red envelopes. Now all the groom had to do was find the bride's shows that we had hidden and we could go...

Not without taking a hundred pictures first. Everything was documented by a professional photographer and a guy with a digital camera. That's the main reason I lost my drive of taking pictures, so all the humiliations of the groom are only sparsely documented :) Sorry there are so few pictures of the wedding - if I get hold of more, I'll post them. From then on, all the way to his parents' home, the bride did not have to/was not allowed to walk on her own feet. The groom had to carry her everywhere (yes, with that huge dress). And we didn't take the direct route, our convoy of four cars stopped at a supermarket along the way, where the groom had to carry his wife into the store and buy water. It was quite a hilarious group storming through the store. Then we stopped at a square with a big statue of a bull, where one can rent a palanquin only for the purpose of having the groom (and his best man) carry the bride around. To add to the poor guy's misery, he also had to wear a ridiculous hat and a bow around his neck - the bride got a riding crop to speed him up. You just gotta love this imagery! The bride declined to touch the bull testicles though - I suppose that would have guaranteed a bunch of strong sons :)

Finally we arrived at the groom's house (again, there were fireworks when we arrived, as there had been at the hotel when we left), the bride was carried up the stairs into "her" new bedroom and from then on she was allowed to walk on her own feet. First, more pictures were taken with all groups of people sitting next to bride and groom on their wedding bed with a huge photograph of the two hanging above. Then they served the groom's parents tea, followed by more ritual bowing and exchanges of red envelopes. Phew. So much for the traditional part. Btw, they had friends who held printouts of the protocols in their hands - apparently, not every Chinese has internalized what the proper phrases for all these little rituals are.

Now it was time for the banquet. When we got to the restaurant, there were three(!) other couples who had their wedding lunches there. They were all standing downstairs greeting guest. In order for people to not go to the wrong wedding, each couple was standing next to a sign with their names (and usually picture). Guest started trickling in and, in most cases, greeted the groom's parents and handed them their red envelope. Then they headed upstairs to the dining room - just ignoring the newly weds! I was pretty stunned by that. It was explained to me that they are friends of the parents and in many cases the groom had never seen them before. But still - don't you congratulate the happy couple? No, you don't. You congratulate the parents and hand over your "entrance fee" to the banquet. That's what it looked like. There were of course some exceptions, friends and former teachers of the groom. Many group pictures were taken and all the men who came to congratulate were offered a cigarette - either by the groom's father or his best man, who was clearly new to this - he was a bit stiff in his role, but always had a nicely propped cigarette ready, whereas the father's cigarette pack was already all crumbled up :)

About 40 minutes later we also got into the dining room - a dream in pink! With ribbons and laces and the whole nine yards! They had apparently chosen the "modern theme," because there were also blue blinking lights and kind of up-beat electronic music, and an English sign "wedding" in front. The guests had already devoured most of the snacks (wedding candy, that's just normal candy with wedding motive wrappers, oranges (they had really tasty oranges everywhere in Ganzhou, they're in season right now, very sweet and juicy - wherever I went I was told to sit down and eat oranges)and peanuts). As soon as the couple entered the room (to the sounds of the wedding march and some confetti canon), the waiters started serving food and most of the guests focused their attention on the food instead of what was going on in front - which was a "host" with a microphone making the groom declare his love again and have the couple answer questions about each other. I didn't catch what was going on in front very well, it was too noisy. Especially one table - they seemed to have their own little celebration going on. They kept cheering and applauding to themselves at inopportune moments. Then the couple walked out of the room, the host had finished her job and the couple returned with the bride changed into a traditional short jacket (that the groom had delivered that morning) and pants. They went from table to table (I think there were 16 of them, just short of 200 people probably) to drink with the guests. Best man and bride's maid were carrying bottles for them and depending on what the respective table was drinking (Chinese red wine or 白酒 bai jiu - strong clear liquor) they had to rink the same stuff at least once. On several tables there were more toasts by single persons to the groom or both. The bride cheated - the bai jiu bottle her friend was carrying was filled with water. But the groom toughed it out and by the time he got to our table he looked already a bit under the weather :) Poor guy, he had a really tough time. When they finally got to sit down and have some - by then cold - food, the first guests already started leaving. It was suddenly all over very quickly. apparently that's typical for wedding lunches, it can drag on longer if it's a dinner. I think I now understand why they made it a lunch :) The hole thing was more or less for their parents - but then, isn't that true for most weddings? Maye here it was a bit extreme in the sense that most people only greeted the parents and the only time they spoke to the couple was when they were drinking a toast to them. And the saddest thing of all - I don't have much to say about the food. Anyways, I am glad I was there to witness the whole thing, I had a lot of fun.

Stay tuned for Ganzhou Part II!

No train home

Back I am in freezing Nanjing. I can't believe that after a couple of weeks at -15C I'm complaining about the weather here, but imagine, we haven't had any plus degrees here in a few days. Which means my apartment is so hard to heat (since none of my neighbors heat, the floors and walls are frigging cold) that I have concentrated all efforts on the living room and are sleeping on the couch. It gets cozy there with my two heaters, but taking a shower in the morning requires strength, not just because my bathroom feels like a fridge, but also because it's hard to get the shampoo out of the bottle. It's not quite frozen but very viscous. I did, however, import some of Montreal's fantastic winter technology - shrink wrap for my bedroom window to create a second layer (where the frigging second window pane is missing!) and foam tape to fix that gaping hole between my door and door frame. I believe that's the main source of dust in my apartment, at least there was always a really strong air flow coming in - pretty much all outside air as my neighbors believe also the hallway should be ventilated well and always open the windows even at minus frigging 6 degrees! Actually I'm starting to wonder why my shampoo isn't frozen yet...

Anyways, I have been assured that this madness will end with the spring festival. The lunar calendar is supposedly pretty accurate for this region (it was true for the beginning of winter). So, only 6 more weeks to go. Sigh. At least I am escaping this weekend, I'm taking a train to Ganzhou, about 800km south of here, to attend a wedding. Yay! A real Chinese wedding! I'm so excited. (I have to watch what I'm saying because the groom might be reading this blog :) I bet he's way to busy at the moment with wedding preparations though) So, in order to not commit any cultural faux-pas, I asked around among my Chinese friends about the DOs and DON'Ts. Our Chinese teacher had already told to not wear red (that's the color of the bride), black or white (the latter both being funeral colors - the closest family members wear white, other people black) and in general no dark colors. Well, brilliant. That eliminates my entire wardrobe. And I couldn't bring myself to invest in a pink dress with bows and ribbons that, I'm sure, I would have had no trouble finding. So I used my trip to Montreal to dig out a green skirt (which used to belong to my mother and I have never worn so far) and got a purple shirt. Mh. We'll see how it goes. The problem is, all my sweaters are black anyways, so I'll either freeze or violate the dress code. But I already have the suspicion that I'm taking this way too seriously. So far I have witnessed pretty much all DON'Ts committed by at least one Chinese person (even the terrible "don't stick your chopsticks upside down in your rice bowl, it symbolizes a grave"). It seems, money is the universal language of wedding gifts everywhere and I think I will not venture into the trap of buying flowers. It would not be a good idea to take them on my 18 hour train ride anyway.

Yes, that's right - 18 hours! For 800km! This is the special slow train. It's incredible. China really has a well-functioning train system, especially between Nanjing-Shanghai or Shanghai-Beijing. But there are several kind of trains with wildly varying speeds. The K-train seems to be the slowest and the idea is that you can sleep in the train and wake up at your destination. Well, nice in principle, but 18hours?! How did I get myself into this adventure? By asking my Chinese friends what's the best way to get to Ganzhou and they all said "by train of course." Only later did I find out that there is actually a flight with one stopover that only takes 3 hours. And since I am a coward, I am taking the soft-sleeper car, which is not that much cheaper that a plane ticket. But ok, it's gonna be an adventure, I am kinda looking forward to it, but the greatest challenge was getting the tickets. Because buying train tickets in China is a science, no, more like alchemy. First, tickets go on sale 10 days before the departure date. Either you go to a ticket booth or travel agency somewhere and pay a little fee or you try to buy your ticket at the train station where there are huge lines and absolute chaos (if you want to get an idea of what I mean, watch "Last train home" that's running at Cinema du Parc right now - but I don't really recommend the movie. It's by the same director as "Up the Yangtze" and made exactly in the same "fake documentary" style, the characters are completely one-dimensional and all you get to see are a factory and a train that the migrant workers take home for the spring festival, I was very bored). Since I was in Montreal on the "ticket release day", I asked one of my students to buy the ticket to Ganzhou for me. That was no problem. Buying a return ticket, however, turned out to be more tricky. Because if you want to buy a ticket for a train that leaves from a different city (being Ganzhou in my case), you have to go to the train station. There is no other way (unless you travel in the same province). And there is a much smaller contingent of tickets. So to cut a long story short, my friend was not able to get me a return ticket. They were already sold out when he made it to the ticket window. They were also sold out in Ganzhou. So here I am with a ticket to Ganzhou but no return - no train home!

And I did what the cowardly Westerner does - I bought a plane ticket, instead of just going to Ganzhou and hoping to get hold of a returned ticket or taking the hard seat train and sharing with all sorts of... ehm... smells. The fast connection was sold out, so I am doing the silly thing of flying via Shanghai (again) - I'm getting to know that airport pretty well. I have to be back on Tuesday to teach, I would feel pretty irresponsible if I just hung out in Ganzhou and waited for the next available train back. And also... 6 hours flight instead of 18 hours train sounds like a good idea. But maybe I'll enjoy the overnight train so much I won't want to travel any other way :)

It's good to be back though, despite the cold. Man, I missed Chinese food! :) Montreal was nice as well, but I also realized that I am not ready to go home.

圣诞节快乐！

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you're having at least as much snow as we :) And in case you haven't been following - that's not my living room in Nanjing, it's in Montreal. The scroll has been hanging there for two years already.

I arrived here half a day late because I got stuck in Chicago overnight. At least they put me in a hotel. But I didn't make much use of it, because I really wasn't tired. I had managed to sleep on the plane from Shanghai to Chicago. So there I was in my fancy hotel room (without mini-bar! argh) and a $10 dinner voucher that I couldn't spend anywhere. Not that I would actually want the dinner you can buy for $10 at the Chicago airport. The 80yuan coupon I got in Shanghai, on the other hand, was thoughtfully invested in dumplings. So when I finally got to Montreal (funny aside - my plane neighbors on the last leg of the trip had also come from China. Everyone seems to live and study there these days. If you aren't yet, you're missing out on a trend) I was pretty jetlagged and had no concept of time whatsoever, but I had the most pleasant immigration experience ever. I was apparently the first new permanent resident of the day :) The rest of Thursday was spent as usual - planning a dinner, going shopping and ending the evening at BU (our favourite wine bar). Ok, I admit, without a three hour power nap I wouldn't have pulled through this day. Friday evening we had some friends over for Christmas dinner, which involved - of course - a roasted honey-glazed duck (with orange-chocolate stuffing) and, a first-timer for us, pan-seared fois gras. I think we did pretty well, although we got better and better when practising with the leftovers. I have to say, finishing a whole liver is quite a formidable task. I suppose I could also mention the scallops with quince chutney and orange-endive salad or the ginger-honey parfait with rosemary figs, especially the latter one was quite interesting. The figs were caramellized and the whole thing came with a drizzle of pepper-rosemary-honey syrup. The syrup by itself tasted rather awkward, but turned the parfait from nice into surprising.

Anyways, getting to bed at 3am when having been up since 5am (thank you, jetlag) is quite rough on a rapidly aging woman, so I pretty much collapsed after that and spend all weekend doing nothing. Worst of all - my stomach rebelled and I can't really eat anything anymore. Maybe the first two days with above mentioned dinner and a lunch that involved oysters and braised rabbit was a bit too much. It might also have been the cheese, which I'm really not used to anymore. So, we found the perfect cure and that was our Christmas dinner:

Just kidding.



The duck wings, pork tongue with spicy cucumber and steamed dumplings were our lunch. If you are in Montreal, you should definitely check out the new location of Qing Hua on 1676 Lincoln (close to Guy Concordia). The interior is not really authentic Chinese anymore, it's now spacious and cozy, you don't have to share tables with strangers anymore and the waiters are really courteous, but the food still is.

True gems

Sorry for posting so many new entries at once. You see, the reason I haven't been writing much is not that nothing has happened, but that I can't access blogger.com from home and I haven't been frequenting my favorite cafe as often anymore. Too busy and I also like my home quite a bit these days...

But I had an amazing Sunday afternoon today and have to let you in on my story. Again, it is thanks to Liu Xing that this day was special and right now I am filled to the brim with warm and fuzzy feelings for the Chinese and I feel really privileged to be among such amazing, kind-hearted people. But first things first. I had mentioned to Liu Xing that I wanted to buy some Jade as souvenirs and she offered to take me to a store a friend knows the owner of. All the much better, we would also go for lunch together. So, we get to the store this Sunday and my jaw drops to the floor seeing the price tags. Holy shit, I knew jade was expensive, but this was more than I had expected. This must mean the earrings I bought last time in Beijing are fake :) Anyways, we agreed to meet her friend there, so we start browsing the shelves and I learn to appreciates the different shades of green and get an idea of what makes certain pieces more expensive than others (the intensity of the color, the translucency, the clarity of the stone, but also the craftsmenship in carving). Liu Xing's friend arrives and delivers some poisettas to the store. The price drops by 20%. Finally, her friend calls the boss. We wait for him. I get offered more pieces that they had been keeping in store. Just as we are being served hot water, the boss arrives. He is a Nanjing University graduate, probably in his 50s, looks more like an engineer to me than a jewellery store owner. After a little chatting, he's very pleased to hear I am studying Chinese and working at Nanda, the price drops to 50%. I am extremely happy, but also a bit embarrassed because I bought some of their cheapest stones. They are really pretty though, just not dark green but more white with a green tint. But honestly, you can easily leave 10k there for only one little green pendant.

So, it was time for lunch, and the boss suggested a noodle place nearby. I thought we were just taking Liu Xing's friend, but the boss also joined us. The noodle place turned out to be a Shanxi (a province in north-central China) restaurant. Wen they said "noodle" I imagined everyone of us to get a bowl of noodle soup, but the boss is friends with the owner of that place, so we got the chef's recommendation. And, well, there were noodles, three different kinds actually - long, rather thick egg noodles in a soup with peppers and beans, short irregular shaped egg-noodles fried with carrots and bacon (a bit like "Spaetzle") and some buckwheat noodles, that looked like short cannelloni and came standing upright in a steamer together with a sauce for dipping. Everything was drowned in garlic :) But that wasn't all! No, there were spicy wood-ear mushrooms and fried sausage as starters, garlic greens with chicken stir-fry, cabbage and the best - lamb chops with cumin. Wow, that was good lamb. Not the old mutton one gets most places, but really young and tender, delicate flavour lamb. We also got a corn-chowder as a side (could have used some salt for my taste, but I followed the others in spooning sugar into it). I had never had Shanxi food before, so that was definitely an interesting experience. And I could tell from Liu Xing's grin that she was just as happy as me to be treated to a nice, expertly chosen lunch. Because it turned out - the boss paid! I tried my best to take over the bill, thanking him profoundly for coming over to the store and giving me a discount, but he didn't want to hear about it. So, at the end of the day the lunch bill wasn't quite as high as what I had paid in his store, but he cannot have made much of a profit from me. I am really deeply embarrassed now for having stolen the time of three people to buy a little souvenir, but none of them seemed to mind terribly. That's what I mean when I say I feel really privileged to be among these people. I feel like I'm no longer just a 老外 Laowai (foreigner).

Chinese climate politics

Nowadays the German media is surprisingly China-phil. What's behind this new found love? Do tagesschau and Zeit believe they can actually influence the public opinion about China's climate policies and that in turn the (German) public opinion will push our politicians to reach out to the Chinese in Copenhagen?

http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/solarstadtrizhao100.html

http://www.zeit.de/2009/50/Regierungssysteme?page=2

For the less fortunate among you who are not fluent in German (ts, where is the time of Goedel and Wittgenstein, when every half-way intellectual learned German as a little child, along with Greek and Latin and French and... nevermind), one of the articles praises the town Rizhao in China that runs almost entirely on solar power (I assumed it to be a desert town; picture my surprise when I found it to be on the coast, about halfway between Beijing and Shanghai), the second one (from the Zeit - sorta the German version of le Devoir ;)) discusses China's dictatorship, pardon my language - strong central government is what I meant to say, as a benefit for climate change - only with a strong government, they argue, can you impose inconvenient rules and force your citizens to save energy and care about the environment. America and Europe i are apparently too democratic to save the planet. China certainly isn't the big planet saver yet either, but they might have a point. Incidentally, the article from tagesschau (the biggest German news show on public TV) comes out pretty well in google translate, while the Zeit is apparently too intellectual to be understood by a simple translation algorithm. Aren't we something? :) I can't help but be a bit bothered by the absolutism in both articles - not too long ago all you would hear in the German media was criticism of China's lack of openness and democracy and its terrible environmental track record. So, lack of personal freedom is a good or bad thing depending on the phase of the moon? Sorry, but that's not quite up to the standard we claim to impose on our unbiased media.

Thanks to IKEA I'm enjoying Gloegg (hot mulled wine) and ginger bread cookies and it's not even too cold at the moment, so life is good. Next week I have my Chinese final exam and although I know I don't have to care, having scored so well in the midterm, my ambition has been awakened... it should be possible to also score the best grade in the final, no? Wanna place bets? :P I'm not sure I will get my grades though, as I'm already leaving next Wednesday.

And in totally unrelated news... Washington DC's city council has approved a gay-marriage bill!!!! Yay!!! Who would have thought? It still needs to be signed into effect, so there's still the chance for some mormons to stage a protest. But even if they manage to pump enough money into a counter-movement as they did with prop8 in California... DC is not a state and therefore doesn't have a state constitution one could amend to make gay marriage unconstitutional! So, what would they amend then? :P

Food! Foodies! Duck!

Do I need to say more? :) Seems like my prayers have been answered, finally someone has taken pity on me and made it a project to introduce me to typical Nanjing food. The saint is LiuXing , my language partner. We have become quite good friends actually, laughing about each others mistakes is kind of a bonding experience I suppose :) I guess we started off on the wrong food (now that's a Freudian slip if there ever was one :P) - me cooking pasta for her and making her taste a piece of German style cream cheese ("Schmelzkaese"), because that was the only cheese-like thing I could find and really, I can't blame her she hated that. So, after that she always found excuses to not join me for dinner (I attributed that to this "diet" she keeps talking about). I finally managed to drag her out for lunch, because we were on the way to a pharmacy. Sometimes I do really need an interpreter's help. Pharmacies here are really interesting - apart from selling also "traditional Chinese medicine," which nowadays also comes in forms of pills and syrup (and according to the Chinese I talked to are not really potent anymore because they are not prepared fresh), they sell all sorts of stuff over the counter! Like birth control or, say, anti-depressants... wouldn't you think it's generally a good idea to see a doctor for that? Pharmacies here are more the European variety, not the American drug-store type that sells everything from aspirin to cat litter; some of them have showcases with dried ginseng roots, bird's nests, seahorses and the likes. The "traditional" medicine is characterized by coming in "green" looking packages, somehow reminiscent of homeopathy. No idea if that stuff actually helps. Whenever I was sick, I would get some of that on top of antibiotics, but I was never very convinced of either one helping much. But I can say this - if you ever contemplated eating patchouli - don't!

Anyways, back to the important matters. It was so sweet of Liu Xing, she had even looked up the translation of the specialty she wanted me to try - duck blood silk noodle soup. And she was afraid I might not like it (being a disgusting cheese eater and all). It was so much better than the duck blood soup I had tried in the canteen. I'm still not a big fan of the blood, it doesn't really taste like anything and has a weird consistency (sorta gelatinous, but less elastic), but the liver in the soup was nice. And the added bonus? This place also makes a sort of pastry that comes filled with either meat or bean paste, it's like a puff pastry but instead of butter - you guessed it - they use duck fat! Yum! I think they also sell a few other noodle soups, but the duck blood soup is really their trademark dish. Everyone who came in just said how many bowls they wanted and it was understood to be that soup. A very popular place for lunch, it was packed, but also tiny. There were only 4 tables with 6 seats each. For such a small noodle joint it looked surprisingly new and clean. Most restaurants here look run down when their not totally new. Even the fancier ones... it seems after a while, neglect creeps in and they just leave the beer cases in the entrance way or never bother to remove stains. When it stops attracting customers, it closes down, something else opens and the game begins anew.

In almost related news, I recently watched "Julie/Julia", about this woman who cooks her way through the Julia Child cookbook in one year and I really enjoyed it!Meryl Streep gives a pretty good Julia Child and I certainly gathered a new appreciation of what she did for American food culture. I also want to de-bone a whole duck now...

Still alive

No, the wolves didn't get to me in the end. But with a cosmology workshop going on and the crazy Italian being in town, I didn't have much time to write. The snow has thawed, the dogs finally came back and we're on our way again...

Last weekend brought a trip to Suzhou - the, or I should say one of the, Venice of the east. Well, I'd say it's more like the Mestre of the east (the industrialized suburb of Venice). There are some canals and lots of gardens (that's what it's famous for), but it is not exactly cozy. Some pictures of the "Humble Adminstrator's garden"...

suzhou

not so humble after all. Fortunately, my friend had insisted that we go to a small village and although I think he expected something more remote, where people still stare at the foreign "white devils" and not a cute renovated river town where you have to pay 80 yuan just to get into the old city, it was worth it (well, it was worth the 2 hour train and one-hour bus ride in any case). Tongli is much more like Venice. Especially in the sense that if you stray away from the main tourist road you find yourself in a residential area without any visitors and people look at you as if to say "what do you want here?" Oh, and there are also gondolas. And yes, the gondoliere (whatever that is in Chinese) also sings. Also terribly wrong. Instead of palazzi you can visit courthouse gardens and a "sex culture museum." That was quite interesting, actually. According to the exhibition there, homosexuality was never prosecuted in (ancient) China. I wonder if that's really true. Some of the paintings at least made it clear that it was not an absolute taboo.

Another cultural experience included a trip to the "Nanjing Massacre Memorial" Hall. It was not quite as depressing and gruesome as I had expected after several warnings. The architecture is quite oppressive, dark and looming, but in a modern, stylish way. The inside is m mostly a history museum, not just about the massacre itself, but also about the history of Sino-Japanese relations. The International Safety Zone is described as rather "unsafe" (Japanese would still invade the zone under the pretense of looking for hiding soldiers and weapons). But the fact that the Chinese Republican army basically abandoned the civilian population of Nanjing is only mentioned between the lines. Japanese atrocities are of course described in detail and condemned. It's certainly a political statement, but I think you can't blame the Chinese. Interestingly, the exhibition is in Chinese, English and Japanese; I guess they are making a point that no Japanese should be able to claim to not know about it.

I've also managed to get closer to my students. They seem to have accepted me as one of their own, in fact so much that one of them asked me a question in class... in rattling Chinese! I just stared at him horrified and then burst out laughing. I even had three of them over for dinner - my Italian friend just had to cook pasta for someone :) without cheese, of course. And then imagine what happened - one of them doesn't eat duck! Can you imagine?! I was just speechless. Incidentally that was the same guy who tried to talk to me in Chinese.

Surprises come in weird disguises. Today I met with an elderly physicist from the purple mountain observatory, who wanted to ask me questions about string theory! I wasn't all that thrilled at first, but we ended up having a rather nice discussion for 2 hours and then went for dinner together. Finally someone who wants to go to real restaurants! And it turns out, this guy, who is probably around 65, has studied Kung Fu for several years! I had already given up on ever meeting anyone who knows anything about traditional Kung Fu. Dinner turned into a discussion about proper iron palm technique (if you do it wrong, you ruin your eyes! seriously) and Qi as an effective theory :) Maybe I should mention that this guy grew up in Taiwan, I guess it's more likely to find traditional Kung Fu there. I was so happy that I even ignored the mediocre dinner for 100yuan. The roast pigeon was good though.

I have to say, I feel a bit let down by the food here. Somehow I expected less mediocrity. But then, why should China be different from any other place? There are always people who appreciate good food and those who don't. And I can't blame my students for not having the money to go to good restaurants. And if a place is really cheap, it means the ingredients aren't the freshest and they use inferior fat and spices, also here. It's just that all the Chinese I met in North America seem obsessed with food! In about the same degree I am. So I thought it must be infinitely better here than in any average Chinatown in the west. But I have no luck finding the really good places. Sometimes there is the occasional lucky find like the spicy eel in Suzhou or the Sichuan style smoked tofu in Tongli, but most of the time when I go out for dinner, the food is average (if I go with Chinese) or bad (if I go with the other foreigners). The sad truth is, I have been to a number of restaurants that were worth than the campus cafeteria!