A little trip back in time

Sorry for the long dry spell. I am terribly busy with Chinese class, teaching, research (gasp!) and apartment hunt (It's not really clear when, if ever, I will get the promised campus apartment, so I started looking off-campus - fortunately we're just covering "我想租一间房子 I want to rent an apartment" in my Chinese class!)

Shanghai was quite a trip. I have to say the city failed to win me over (again), but the conference was certainly a cultural experience. Socialism is alive! At least in the opening ceremony and the hotel...



It turned out not to be the only foreigner. There was also a French dude who gave one of the opening talks. But all the other talks were in Chinese, sometimes even the slides! Agh! I entertained myself making a list of simple characters that kept popping up and I feel I should know. Most likely the way they are used in physics is very specific and has not all that much to do with their original meaning.

My hotel had really awesome service - they give you a wake-up call even if you didn't ask for one! The first at 5:20, and just to make sure another one at 6:50. Needless to say I unplugged my phone. And the breakfast... my god, that wasn't even canteen standard. It felt like prison food. Metal trays and rice gruel. Ok, there was also other stuff, but it was awful. I'm sure tis place was charming when it opened in 1980 or so. The whole area was probably in the middle of woods back then. Now it's in the middle of the most unpleasant construction site. A three kilometer walk from the next metro station (google maps put it right next to the metro stop, I think that is why the organizers chose the hotel; also, it's really big, but half of it doesn't seem to be in use anymore) and I am pretty sure all those styled girls in extremely tiny clothes sitting around bored in hair salons (with naked girls painted on the walls) weren't waiting for customers to cut their hair... Now, if you think this is just the western snob whining - the Chinese complained about the hotel just as much. I wold like to say it was a bit run down but at least clean, but also that would be a lie. I wonder how those footprints got on the wall...

The conference was kind of funny. It opened with handing out awards, where some old distinguished physicist handed over a plaque to some younger researcher, while they were playing march music. The weird thing was, that the old dude got more applause than the one who was being awarded. Then there were three opening talks (apparently, the opening session is just for show, uninvited questions are not appreciated there). There awere 1,500 participants! That then split up into 17 parallel sessions. It's clear that physics in China focusses on condensed matter, applied research, but not so much on fundamental research.

Had a nice lunch one day - this place (just some little dive outside campus) specializes in steamed food, but that doesn't mean bland and healthy. Au contraire! It was all pretty oily. There was pork belly with kale, eggplant with chilis and lettuce on rice noodles. But the tea there is undrinkable, because the tab water tastes so bad. I actually smelled worse after a shower than before! The campus of Shanghai Jiaotong University is really neat - huge, brandnew, full of big lawns you can actually walk on!!! And the vending machines sell not only snickers, dried fruit and kleenex, but also condoms! :) Still, the dorms seem to be one-gender-only. So, where are those kids supposed to do it???? On the lawn?????

My first day in Shanghai I just wandered around in the rain (realizing that my expensive supermarket umbrella actually leaks!) until I was really tired of being soaking wet and just sat in a tea house and read. Saw some fake old stuff, some run-down old stuff, some shiny new stuff and some already run-down new stuff. That's Shanghai for you. I think the only point of going there is to forget that you're in China. I didn't actually see the big skyscrapers because it was so rainy, they vanished in the clouds.

One of the other afternoons I skipped the talks and walked around the "French concession," which is even less Chinese. If I was living on a western salary I might enjoy the boutiques and cafes. At least now I know where to go when I get sick of China... no, wait. If I do, I'll just go home! Actually, the best time I had when just hanging out on Jiaotong University's new campus. Many departments haven't moved into their buildings yet, so the whole place was pretty empty. And it's so huge that you can really get lost. It was the first time since getting here when I felt quiet and relaxed.

Now I'm actually happy to be in Nanjing. Even if I moved back into the hotel. But I guess the trip to Shanghai just made me appreciate Nanjing all the more! :)

Sorry, this has to do for today. I'm really exhausted and still have Chinese homework to do. Maybe next time I'll write something about the class I'm teaching. Until then... enjoy the pictures! Here are some more from a Saturday spent with my boss' family:

Pictures!

I finally managed to upload some pictures. So, here's the

Campus

and my

Hotel

These

First Impressions

are from downtown, a little south of the campus. And here you can see my excursions to

Old City Wall and Jiming Temple

Fuzi neighborhood

Work's catching up with me

Things are brightening up - my boss arrived and finally there's movement in the matter of getting me an office and maybe even an apartment. Although I might have to stick it out in the hotel for another week or two. Laundry is becoming an issue (everyone told me I should just buy new clothes here, but so far I haven't seen anything I would like to buy - I'm really not a fan of pink with glitter and laces or hearts and teddy bears or nonsense English words on a shirt, or if it is wearable it's some ridiculously expensive brand that would probably cost me less in North America; no sighting of a fabric store/tailor yet). But I have found out about a place on campus, where they wash a basket load full of clothes (standardized size) for 7yuan. Better then the hotel option, where every single article of clothing is around 10yuan.

Time to say something about the campus, isn't it? It's actually pretty nice, especially the northern half (the campus is divided by a road and a very communist looking gate in the middle). The southern half is pretty much only dorms and the cafeteria, the northern half is full of old, romantic buildings and neat little parks. Most of the parks are landscape architected, but there are also some lawns that would be perfect for practising Kung Fu on them... if it wasn't for the "keep off the grass" signs. Damn. Well, maybe I could pretend I have no idea what they're saying, as they're all in Chinese. As soon as I have my own place I will get a bike, which will make parks much more accessible. There are quite a few not too far away. Hopefully I'll post pictures soon, I finally managed to buy a USB cable for my camera, having left mine at home, how clever. I need to take some more pictures of the dorms though, they are quite - ehm - impressive. Obviously (from the laundry that's hanging in the windows), the dorms are single-gender only and don't come with much comfort. I have often seen people with wet hair (sometimes in their pyjamas), carrying a basket (they all have the same, there is apparently only one place here that sells them) with towel and toiletries across campus; so apparently they don't have showers in their building. Also, I've been told that 7 undergrads or 4 grads share a room, which only has enough space for the required number of bunkbeds and maybe one or two desks (that's why you see students sitting in empty class room to study and do homework). Another funny observation - at lunch and dinner time there are armies of thermoses assembling in front of the cafeteria, waiting to be refilled with hot water and carried back to the dorm. I once stayed in a hotel in Beijing, where they also delivered a thermos with hot water to your door every morning. But nowadays, these fancy places have electric kettles.

Work is interesting. At least I feel useful. I have a list of four of five grants to apply for, I've turned into THE money maker for the group :) One of them is called "Foreign Expert Grant" - don't I feel special now? :) It's about serious money, at least by Chinese standards. It's really impressive how far 5000yuan/month can get you if you don't need to travel out of the country or have to buy delicacies like cheese and chocolate. A plane ticket Nanjing - Beijing, for example, is about 600-1000yuan, the luxury sleeper car train is 700yuan (divide that all by 6 to get Canadian or roughly American dollars). Decent imported chocolate, on the other hand, costs 35yuan/100g. Belgian beer (Chimay) is 40yuan for one tiny bottle (but I won't complain, it's nice to know that I can get it!) and, funny aside, among the German beers they have Koestritzer Schwarzbier :) Maybe this is my chance to try it! Speaking of German food, I paid a visit to the famous German bakery, recommended by so many people (they actually made it a selling point of their job offer!) with the very German name "skyways bakery." I didn't try their bread, but - low and behold - they have German style cheesecake (Quarkkuchen) and sour cherries! They also sell cold cuts (not made there but plastic packaged) and there was a sign "fresh mozarella every Friday! Fresh cottage cheese every Saturday." Well, if I ever start craving Western food (apart from coffee and chocolate), I now know where to get my fix of liverwurst and the likes.

My boss has already sent me to three conferences, all still this year and in Shanghai. So I'm leaving next Wednesday for a for four day trip, hopefully by the time I get back there's news about my apartment (which will be totally empty anyways, thank goodness there's IKEA here). But until then I'm busy with preparing my first class and writing another grant proposal.

Sorry, no exciting news about food today. I had another cold, which kinda spoilt my appetite, so I mostly ate in the cafeteria. Today we went out for lunch because it was one of the student's birthdays, but instead of choosing a fancy restaurant (the professor was paying!) he chose a simple Wonton place. The wontons were pretty good (thin dough) and came in a tasty soup with some veggies or noodles. But the prof was almost disappointed that she got to spend less than 10yuan/person. She would have liked to go to the hotpot restaurant just south of the campus, which, incidentally, is a branch of "Little Sheep" that also has branches in North America. Some day I have to find out if the food is really the same.

Shopping Extravaganza

I guess I was asking for it - I went to the most touristy part of Nanjing today, which is around Confucius temple, more south of the center. But man, it is really pretty there. Nanjing really is a river town, and not so much because of the Yangzi (which I haven't even seen so far, it borders the city in the very north), but more because of the little streams and canals lining the city. It seems, Qinhuai river, which lies on the western outlines of the ancient city wall, was always more the center of commerce and (according to a book my Chinese teacher gave me as a farewell gift) also prostitution - one couldn't live without the other ;) Reproductions of those "pleasure boats" are now for hire and can take you on a day tour of Qinhuai river. The dock at the Confucius temple didn't seem very busy though, most people were just strolling. And even though the streets were crowded, the souvenir stores were rather empty and of course I was a prime target. I have such a weak spot for Chinese kitsch, like scrolls with Chinese characters. I can't wait till I have my own apartment and can stuff it up to the ceiling full of kitsch! :) I'm still very shy about haggling, and it wasn't made better by the fact that when I inquired about such a scroll, I was told 480yuan. The Chinese who asked just 5 minutes later was told 360yuan. Now, that's deflation! Maybe I should have waited around longer. I think I'll keep the real haggling until my Chinese is a bit more fluent and I know how to properly act offended :)

My other foreigner sighting today consisted of another German (they are really populating the city!) who seemed to be taking his girlfriend and prospective mother-in-law out for a coffee to Häagen Dazs. It was kind of funny how his girlfriend was speaking German with him and Chinese with her mother, but the man and the mother couldn't communicate at all. Ehm , well, how I happened to be there... funny story. I was totally prepared to just sneer at it, as I always do with Western chains like McDonald's and KFC (the latter even seeming more popular than the former), but then a little red sign with four white letters caught my eye and my feet just magically wandered into the place. There was nothing I could do to resist an Illy coffee! It was really pretty good. And once I was there, of course I had to try their ice cream, didn't I? Apart from being horrendously overpriced (well, I guess it would have cost the same in the West), it just didn't win me over. After a summer of homemade ice cream, that shouldn't have come as a surprise (how about it, Elsa - macadamia nut ice cream? :)) Needless to say I spent more money on the coffee and ice cream than I had spent for lunch, even though today I went to a restaurant off-campus. I'm getting kind of tired of the canteen and I can't get used to their crazy times - I have to have lunch before noon and dinner before 6pm, otherwise they're sold out.

For the first time I'm really not sure what I ate for lunch. I'm guessing potato. Yes, I know, you'd think I'd recognize a potato. Well, at first I thought radish, but it didn't taste like radish at all. There were thin slices (about the cross section of a big potato) in a hint of batter, deep fried for only a few seconds, so they were basically still white, and then the whole thing was downed in a very sweet sauce - I'm guessing mostly honey and dried flowers. It was really quite amazing, the sauce had a distinct flowery taste. And it was very fresh, so the deep-fried batter was not soaked through but still crispy under the sauce. My other dish was very tender pork with lots of fresh mushrooms. I was sad I couldn't finish them all. So, after today's lunch and coffee extravaganza, dinner is from the supermarket - Suntory Beer (running for title of "worst beer ever" - buah) and sticky rice (wrapped in banana or lotus leaves). Yep, that supermarket has pretty much everything. Maybe I should get one of their turtles and raise it as a pet :) Speaking of which - I saw a store today selling live dogs... just kidding. It was actually a pet store... or was it? ;)

The horse nuzzled my shoulder

... someone felt compelled to inform me today in big letters screaming from his chest. Either that's some cultural reference totally lost on me, or someone is having a lot of fun selling these kids shirts with random English stuff on it. Or what's up with "Three plus one equals five"? Is ignorance really the message you want to send when you walk around a university campus? Or maybe this is some very subtle way of criticizing the Chinese educational system? Speaking of which, when planning my class (I'm going to teach "Geometry and Topology for Physicists" again), I was told not to schedule it for Tueday or Thursday after lunch, because that's when the mandatory classes "The socialism of physics" and "Scientific method and Marxism" or something along those lines are held. Just in case you were wondering how "socialist" China still is. LingFei was kind of laughing when he translated that for me. I don't want to bring up another GDR-analogy, but those of you who grew up there probably catch my meaning.

Today's duck story is totally fake. I mean, there was fake duck - in the Buddhist temple where I had lunch. The picture on the menu (a funny aside - the menu covers were in Russian!) didn't look all that compelling (it resembled the cold duck meat appetizer, which I wasn't in the mood for), so I went for the fake eel instead. It was pretty good. Didn't taste fishy at all, but I liked what they had done with the texture. There were little rolls of tofu skin and mushrooms (the latter making this tasty), wrapped with crispy seaweed, which gave a pretty good imitation of the crispy fried skin of an eel. And the tofu-skin-mushroom mixture had an interesting fibered texture, pretty close to fish meat, not so close to fatty eel maybe. But I have no complaints. Ok, one maybe - the sauce was a bit generic. Can't even tell you what it was. A bit like fish fragrant (ginger, garlic), but with something red and sweet in it. But the really great thing about this lunch was the location. The restaurant is on top of the hill on which Jiming temple sits and the view was just spectacular. Over the City Walls (on which I wandered around for half an hour or so without encountering any other person - it's a quiet oasis of overgrown stones from the Ming dynasty, built 1366-1386, two thirds of its originally 33km still standing, which makes it the longest city wall ever built worldwide, at least according to Lonely Planet) onto Xuanwu Lake (which is also a big park, or rather the islands in it are). Jiming temple (鸡鸣寺 = rooster crowing temple) is the biggest active Buddhist temple in Nanjing and there were quite a few worshippers there today. Surprisingly (at least to me) most of them were young people. The temple has about six different halls with big golden Buddha or other Deity statues in them. Most buildings in their current form seem to be from 1984 and many of the statues were donated by Thailand. There is also an impressive gift shop, which shows you what the junk you get in Chinatown as souvenirs should look like :) There was some nice jewellery and impressive amber and jade carvings. I didn't ask for prices, but I somehow got the feeling at least the gemstones were genuine (and I guess the monks (into whose housing courtyard I accidentally wandered - oops - thankfully nobody saw me) spend their days carving those gemstones while tourists invade their holy halls?). I can't tell if it's a place for rip-off. I saw some tourists buying stuff, but they were all Chinese tourists! Today was another Caucasian free day, even though I ended my walking tour in a Costa Coffee shop, paying 25yuan (=$4) for a "ka bu qi nuo" (sorry, I don't remember which characters they used, I'll copy them down next time). They are so nice there. Even before I can tell them I want "一小杯 yi xiao bei" (a small cup), they ask me "for here or to go?" I really have to find out what a teapuccino is - but it's a pricey experiment. Do I really wan to spend 30yuan on it? Maybe the Mangofresco sounds more promising...

Bad joke

A man with a duck on his head walks into a doctor's office and the duck says... ok, maybe today's duck theme is a bit far fetched. But I did - you might have guessed it - pay a visit to a doctor's office. Did I mention how terribly efficient the Chinese are? Have you ever tried to go and see a doctor without an appointment (at 2:30 in the afternoon) in, say, Germany, the US or Canada? Well, once I had my temperature taken by a nurse at the entrance (swine flue prevention, I assume), purchased a patient booklet and wrote my (Chinese) name on a registration card, there was no wait whatsoever to see *one of* the doctors (actually, she was reading a newspaper and had absolutely nothing better to do than wait for a patient). Needless to say that without LingFei I would not have been able to describe the doctor the circumstances of the light fever I've been having since Monday. Oh, right, and I have a little cough, which won me another ticket for a chest x-ray. At this rate I'll have lung cancer by the time I come back. I tried to argue that I just had a chest x-ray taken less than a week ago and she said "well, you weren't sick then, were you?" (free translation). But first I had to go back downstairs to the cashier and pay for the x-ray and blood test (apparently a sterile needle costs 0.3yuan=5cents; this puts my mind at ease about the woman I saw squatting on the lab floor scrubbing test tubes with a brush in soapy water), then take my receipt to the appropriate room (again, no wait worth mentioning and I got the results within two minutes), take this back upstairs to the doctor, tell her what antibiotic I'm allergic to (she had never heard of it) and get a prescription for a new antibiotic (which is in the same class as the one I am allergic to - oops) as well as some "Chinese medicine." You can tell the Chinese medicine from western medicine by the packaging - Chinese medicine is in green and gold, looking very natural, herbal, zen and whatnot, western medicine comes in a sterile white package :) And the Chinese medicine reliefs weird symptoms, you never knew you could have (LingFei was a bit hesitant with the translation, something about liver fat and a bloody tongue? He said "well, it's Chinese medicine" as in "you're not supposed to understand that"). All in all I paid 60yuan(=$10) for the doctor and the medication and was done in 90minutes. I'll get reimbursed for most of that once I'm properly registered with the university payroll. Now, this was the university health center, so I guess you'd expect them to be efficient. No idea what a regular doctor's office is like, and I certainly don't want to find out what a hospital is like. This clinic already reminded me of traumatic childhood experiences (ok, fine, one) in a GDR hospital. Don't expect to be pampered into forgetting you're sick. No, it has to smell like disinfectant and be really gloomy. People are efficient, not friendly. And the smell of the bathrooms... holy shit! Er... no pun intended.

First encounters

Sticking with the theme of this blog - I really can't promise I'll manage to do that with every entry - I had duck dumplings today (tasty) and the Nanjing famous "duck blood soup" (weird). Now, that's not actually a soup based on the red liquid, but the congealed blood is cut into slices and goes together with some rice noodles in a soup stock, beef in my case. The whole thing was topped off with a chili sauce, that they squeezed out of a plastic tube - my least favourite part. It wasn't too spicy, but a bit sour (a bit like tabasco, I suppose). Well, considering I ate this in the campus cafeteria, I shouldn't be too surprised it wasn't gourmet food. But I think my plan of just pointing to everything with the character 鸭 (duck) on the menu will pay off in the long run.

My foreigner count (i.e. sightings of other caucasians) was really low ever since leaving Shanghai (I'm confident I was the only "white" person who stepped off that train), but suddenly jumped because I came across a group of a dozen Germans (of all people). They seemed to be visiting the campus with a guide - prospective language students maybe? And when I went to the office for foreigners, I saw a whole pile of applications (for resident permits), all with German passports! They are everywhere! :) People in the university are definitely used to foreigners, nobody stares (ok, I don't exactly stick out, as I'm black-haired again at the moment and not exactly tall). And even off-campus I only encountered one old and obviously confused guy who seemed intrigued by my different-ness and kept following me around a store. In general, there are two different reactions when I try to go out shopping or eating - either people are very eager to help the foreigner (I am often enthusiastically greeted with "good morning" - at all times of the day) or they ignore me in the hope I will go away. I think the latter behaviour is an attempt to "save face", because that person feels embarrassed that he or she doesn't speak English. They usually become very friendly when I tell them in my poor Chinese what I want (or simply point). Often I am showered in a lengthy explanation of what I ordered there, to which I can only smile, nod and say "好阿 hao a" (that's ok). I bet the lady at lunch was trying to warn me about the duck blood :) Unfortunately, my Chinese is now at a point where I can formulate questions (and practise them for a minute in my head), which makes people believe I actually understand Chinese! So, from the answer that follows I often catch next to nothing. Oh well. Not too long ago that's how I felt about my French :) So, there's hope! Ok, limited hope maybe...

One funny thing I noticed about the other foreigners (apart from that group of Germans) - they all seem very eager to ignore me (so, ok, I am the one who's staring at the "white devils"). If I might venture a guess, I think we'd all like to believe we are the first, the rare exception, to go out and seek the "real China." We'd like to pretend the others don't exist. Let alone do we want to associate with them and fall into the trap of only hanging out with other Europeans or Americans. Sounds all like a noble and romantic idea, but frankly, if the university here wasn't prepared for foreigners, if the students didn't speak such good English, and if the authorities hadn't already implemented procedures for foreigners to set up residence here... I don't know how long all that burocracy would have taken. I would have to study Chinese for at least two more years before I'd be able to understand and fill out all the forms that were placed in front of me. So, yeah, I hate you other 外国人 waiguoren (foreigners), too, but deep down I'm grateful for those who paved the road.

Oh, and on a totally unrelated note - I solved the secret of the individually paid water bottles. They're on sale! 2.20yuan instead of 2.80. And I supposed to prevent people from stockpiling, there's a limit of one bottle per purchase. If I wanted two, I'd have to pay the full price for the second. So, the nice cashiers always get impatient, but still charge me for every one individually, so I can save 6mao (10cents). Maybe I should be nice and avoid the rush hour for my shopping. Today I got some promising looking fruit at the supermarket and guess what, it's all locally grown ;)