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Last snack in China

Nicholas really enjoyed the candied crabapples. They also sold candied grapes, as well as other mysterious things.

Random thoughts

• It is still rather difficult for someone who does not speak Chinese to get around in China. If you stick to restaurants and hotels that are priced like their American counterparts, then you can count on English-speaking staff. But almost everywhere else it is Chinese only. The situation reminds me of when I visited France in the early 80's. By now, you can use English in most French cities; I expect the same to happen in China over time.
  
  
• I was quite surprised by how well professors and retired professors are doing. In the West, it is an axiom that people paid by the government have incomes that do not keep up with rising living costs nor with incomes paid by the private sector. The Chinese government, which I guess is flush with cash, has been able to break out of this pattern. Every professor, retired or not, I spoke to expressed great satisfaction in the way their living conditions had improved rather dramatically in recent years. This was a sharp contrast to how most American professors feel about their economic status.
  
  
• It was explained to me that the economic status of universities is inversely related to their academic status. What I observed firsthand was consistent with this. The top universities, such as Peking University, are national universities, so they receive all of their funding from the national government. Based on what I saw, the national government is providing plenty of funding, so Peking University is not doing so badly.
  
  However, local universities, such as Shanghai University, which are viewed as being ranked much lower academically than Peking University, receive funding from both the national and local governments. Since both have lots of money, these universities are able to build large new campuses and pay their professors much higher salaries than Peking University.
  
  Finally, the so-called normal universities, whose original mission was to train teachers, get even more funding, because they get money from the Ministry of Education, as well as the national and local governments.
  
  
• Am I wrong in believing that the cities are much cleaner places than they used to be? Although you still see and, worse, hear people spitting, the streets and sidewalks seem much cleaner and almost completely free of litter.
  
  
• I also found the quality of service in restaurants, stores, and hotels to be quite good. The waitresses, in addition to being young and pretty, were almost always very friendly and patient, especially after I explained that I could speak only a little Chinese and read none.
  
  The most notable exceptions were the taxi drivers. Although some were helpful, there were too many who did not know what they were doing, tried to hide it, and were quite unhelpful. I think they need to be trained more systematically in both knowledge of the streets and proper customer service behavior. In particular, if a taxi driver does not know where the destination is, he should admit it and not take the customer. The one bad experience that we had was a taxi driver who took Lauren and Nicholas to the entrance of Qinghua University instead of Peking University, despite her saying repeatedly, "BeiDa". He simply had no idea where BeiDa was. Lauren was quite fortunate in that someone off the street who knew where BeiDa was willing to get in the taxi and guide the driver to the right place.
  
  
• I found no firsthand basis for the claim that the Chinese treat badly people like me, who look Chinese but do not speak or read the language well. In fact, no one seemed surprised or annoyed, and everyone tried to be helpful. And it was not because they thought we were Japanese or Korean, because I almost always explained that we were from the US. This did sometimes lead to some puzzled looks.
  
  

Last meal in China

For lunch we returned to the small restaurant next to our hotel. We get both good food and good service there. Since Lauren hasn't been feeling that well, we got a chicken stew. Last time we had a black chicken stew, which was very tasty but came with only a few very bony pieces of chicken with very little meat. This time, we opted for the "yellow" chicken and got lots of meaty chopped pieces of chicken, including bond fragments. And they didn't leave out any of the best parts, you can see below.

Lauren did not like having the chicken stare at us from the pot, so we put the head in a small bowl (above) and covered it with a napking.

We also found at least one foot. This soon joined the head hidden under the napkin. Normally, I like eating the foot, but this time there was too much other food to eat.

We also had lamb stir fried with leeks and stir-fred snow pea greens.

Last dinner in China

We decided to have Peking duck yet one more time. Chuanming Zong recommended one called Jiu Hua Shang, and a math department secretary thought she knew where it was, so she wrote something in Chinese for me to give to the taxi driver. But the directions turned out to be rather vague and when we went to the designated location, we were unable to find the restaurant anywhere.

So I asked the taxi driver if he knew of a nice Peking duck restaurant. I told him we had already been to Quanjude and wanted to try another one that was good but not as expensive. He responded that he knew one near Qinghua University (so also near Peking University). He drove us to a complex of big office buildings, pointed to one and said, "do you see it? It's right there!" I couldn't see anything but trusting him, we paid and got out. Walking up the steps to the plaza in front of the building, we discovered we had been tricked. Yes, there was a Peking duck restaurant but it was another Quanjude!

Walking inside, we discovered an elegant fancy restaurant, much nicer and quieter than the crowded and noisy downtown one. So we knew we weren't going to save any money but we figured we might as well enjoy it. We ordered a deluxe version of the duck (no idea why it is deluxe but we figured we might as well have the best), duck hearts, Chinese broccoli (jie lan), and another green vegetable (darn, I forget the Chinese name). They told us the duck would take an hour and brought the other food first. Nick ordered an orange mango drink which turned out to be freshly squeezed orange juice mixed with mango juice without any sugar or other sweetening. He liked it very much. We decided to indulge in a 288 yuan 10 year old bottle of "yellow wine", warmed up. It was wonderful. All of the food was delicious. The duck was sublime. As a bonus, they brought both wheat and corn flour wrappers (Lauren is allergic to wheat). The restaurant was near closing time, so it was fairly empty and quiet. We had a nice long relaxing dinner. We got a certificate; the restaurant claims that every duck served is assigned a serial number (since the mid 1800's!).

So despite being deceived, we ended up enjoying ourselves completely. And, as a bonus, it was a very short ride back to the hotel.

Math in Chinese

I had to find the math department on my own today. With the help of an American I found, I found the building. But the building is quite large and has many departments.

As I was looking around for the school of math, I realized to my embarrassment that I do not know the first character for the word "math" in Chinese (su xue). When I saw the character, I could see why it is hard to remember but I still should know it.

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A quiet day at Bei Da

Yesterday we saw Stephen off to shanghai. Since Lauren wasn't feeling well, we stayed on campus. As usual, we had a late breakfast. I carefully checked the hours of the hotel restaurant. The sign said it served lunch until 2 so I figured lunch at 1 would be a safe bet. Foiled again! At 1 the waitresses explained the due to the new year holiday (??), the cooks had left early.

Now I was really pissed. I went to the hotel front desk and asked where I was supposed to eat lunch. The clerk explained that within 2 minutes walk of the hotel were 3 other restaurants! Since all are in nondescript buildings with no obvious signs outside, we had never noticed.

We had snow pea greens which were great, ma puo tofu which was too sweet and tasted ketchupy, and a lamb stew with vegetables, which I missed but Lauren said was good.

I had to rush off to meet zong chuanming. More about this day later.

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Sophia

After we arrived in Beijing, I started looking around for tips on how to get to the Great Wall. I went to the www.tripadvisor.com forums and found that some tour guides came highly recommended. Sophia (above right) was available, so we retained her for two days, one for the Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven and one for the Great Wall. She has lived up to the recommendations I read. We're going to use her again on our last full day.

It's really nice to visit places and have an English-speaking guide be able to explain things and answer questions. Sophia also helps you bargain with the vendors, order food at restaurants, and facilitate all other interactions. Having your own private guide also means you get to set the schedule. This is helpful for us because we like to start later and see *less* things than what is on a scheduled group tour.

A bonus is that her husband turns out to be a very good Chinese artist. She took us to his gallery, and we bought lots of paintings, some for ourselves and others as gifts.

Weapons of mass destruction

Hot pot photos

Great wall

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How to bypass Chinese censorship

One not cheap way to access blocked internet sites is to use my blackberry.

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Peking University hotel

We're staying in the Shao Yuan Hotel on the Peking University campus. It's perfectly nice, but to be honest somewhat downscale from the hotel we stayed in Shanghai. There are some awkward aspects.



First, we cannot connect our laptops to the internet. I am using a computer provided in the hotel room. It manages to serve most of our needs but is somewhat inconvenient to use. But since I cannot reconfigure the machine, I have lost the ability to view this blog again. I find it ironic that the most restrictive conditions are found on a university campus here.



Second, we are finding it difficult to sync ourselves with the hotel restaurant hours. Yesterday morning we tried to get breakfast but discovered that they stopped serving at 9am. Luckily, there is also a coffee shop that serves food later. Then we tried to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant around 7pm, which seemed safe since the listed hours are until 9pm. But the waitresses with embarrassed expressions on their faces told us that the kitchen was having trouble serving all the existing clients and was very slow. I told them we were happy to wait but eventually they explained that the restaurant would close before we would get served. So we were forced to find something else.

We asked the hotel front desk if there was a hot pot place nearby, and it turned out that the restaurant directly across from the university gate is a (very raucous) hot pot place, where I suspect very few foreigners or young children go. For whatever reason, we were stared at (just like in 1979!) when we went in. The menu was completely in Chinese, but luckily we got a waitress who was very patient and helpful. Eventually, we learned to walk around the restaurant and point to what others were eating. We had lots of lamb, fake crab legs (the waitress chose this for us), spinach, another leafy vegetable, sliced potatoes, flat clear noodles, wood ears, lotus root. Unlike other hot pot places, the sauce is given to you premade and was not to the taste of my family. So we asked for soy sauce, and everybody improvised a bit. The hot pot itself was the traditional metal one with a chimney in the center containing hot burning wood charcoal. We drank lots of beer, coconut juice, and I also had jujube juice (whatever that is). I thought we had ordered way too much food (3 large plates of sliced lamb!) but managed to finish all of it. It wasn't the best food we've had but it was quite an experience.

Lastly, the hotel is somewhat far away from the center of the city, so it is less convenient for sightseeing and meeting people. But it's not a big deal, and we are having a blast here, despite the cold weather.

Summer Palace

After the Olympic Park, we found a taxi and headed for the Summer Palace.

Here, we're standing by a "ding", which is what my Chinese first name is.



We bought a fake fur-lined soldier hat. We bargained the poor guy selling them from 50 yuan down to 15. I think he was desperate to get rid of his stuff and out of the cold weather. Later, we were told that he probably made only about 2 yuan on the sale.

Unfortunately, all of the tourist sites in China are now overrun by people peddling all sorts of souvenir items, many who seem rather desperate. Some of them will follow you for quite a distance trying to harangue you into buying something. Later, we bought two more but paid 20 yuan, which is the more normal price.

Olympic Park

On our first full day in Beijing, we decided to go see the Olympic Park, especially since Stephen's company played a role in designing and constructing the Water Cube, which is the venue for the swimming events. I figured that the Olympic Park construction should be nearing completion, so it would not be difficult to go there and see the new facilities. Boy, was I wrong.

The taxi dropped us quite far from the facilities. We tried to enter the Olympic Park through a gate, but the guard refused to let us in, even after Stephen tried to show him his work id. So we started to walk around the area. We soon discovered that although the gate was well guarded, nothing else was. The fence surrounding all the construction was full of gaps, and lots of Chinese were blithely walking through them into the construction area. So we did, too. So despite the security we soon found ourselves walking through an active and rather dangerous construction site. Most of the workers appeared to be from the countryside and unwilling to tell us to leave. The few security guards we saw seemed to be more interested in preventing people from entering than ejecting people who were already inside.

Here, we're looking at the main stadium, which is meant to look like a bird's nest.

The four gray slab buildings on the left were a bit of a mystery, since the middle two slabs would obviously get virtually no sunlight. When we got closer, they appeared to be housing, perhaps for the athletes?

This is the Water Cube. The exterior appears to be made of a plastic membrane that has been stretched over a network of curved frames. From some angles, it looks flat and rather uninteresting. From others, it looks like a wall of bulging glistening bubbles. Weirdly, it looks better in photos than live.

In the middle of the Olympic Park was this small traditional Chinese complex of buildings. We have no idea what it is.

Construction workers walking into the Water Cube.

Pu Dong

The edge of Shanghai used to be the Huangpu River. Along the river is the Bund, which is a wide walkway with large 19th century European style buildings (probably built by Europeans) all along it. Across the river was just farmland. This has now been developed into a district called Pu Dong with big office buildings, shopping malls, and a television tower called the Oriental Pearl. The pictures above show Pu Dong from the Bund. Pu Dong looks, well, unreal. It looks like a futuristic computer generated graphic image from a movie like Spykids 3. The colors and shapes of the buildings and structures are just so outlandish.

Old Acquaintances from Shanghai

Unfortunately, this is not a very good photo taken using my Blackberry. Last Thursday, I was scheduled to give a talk at East China Normal University, which was arranged by Ben Chow who is on the faculty there. I was picked up by Zheng Yu (rightmost standing) and Shen Chun-Li (second from left standing). I met Shen in 1979, when he was still a graduate student at Fudan. He was one of the more outgoing and friendly people in the department, so I remembered him quite well.

When I met Shen at our hotel, he asked me if I would like to see Gu Chao-Hao and his wife Hu He-Sheng (sitting in front). I immediately said yes. Gu has been a friend of my father since high school. He and his wife were math professors at Fudan for many years. I also first met them in 1979; I think I might have seen them one more time at my parents' house. Gu had broken his hip recently, so he has been recuperating in a hospital. I was delighted to see that both Gu and Hu seem to be in rather good shape. I was also delighted to see Xu Wen-Hao (leftmost standing) there, too. Xu was, as I recall, the Party representative in the Fudan math department in 1979, and he was assigned to accompany my father and me when we traveled around China. As I recall, we went to Beijing, Kunming, Guilin together. He might have even come with us to Wenzhou and my father's village. He's very friendly easygoing guy and helped us a lot during that time.

These four people (Gu, Hu, Shen, Xu) were the four people from my visit in 1979 that I most wanted to see again. So it was wonderful when this really happened, almost by accident.

It is cold in Beijing

Yes, we were warned. Those who did were right. It was very very cold today. We froze today walking through the forbidden city and the temple of heaven park.

I am behind in my blogging. Lots more to report on both shanghai and Beijing.

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Sim cards again

So we learned why some sim cards cost more than others. Lauren's, which we "overpaid" for at the airport has worked consistently everywhere. On the other hand, stephen's and mine worked only in hangzhou and shanghai but not in Beijing. So beware! Stephen and I had to buy new sim cards in Beijing.

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Yongfoo Elite

We visited Stephen at his office today. He works for China Construction and Design, Inc.
We took some of his co-workers out to lunch. It was, I think, the only time I have been successful in paying for someone else's meal.

In the evening, his boss took us out to dinner. Another architect was also invited. Since both had spent a lot of time studying and working in the US, both were completely fluent in English. Their English was orders of magnitude better than any of the Chinese mathematicians here and better even than some Chinese mathematicians who live and work in the US. I never had the slightest temptation to speak any Chinese with them.

Dinner was a real experience. It was at Yongfoo Elite, which is an old western style villa that was once the British consulate. Within the walls there is a large garden and a mansion decorated with old art deco furniture from Shanghai and Europe. The dinner was kind of a modern fusion Chinese cuisine served Western style, meaning in individual servings for each person. I didn't take any pictures (as I was leaving I saw a sign forbidding photos), but I recommend checking out the web site to get an idea of what it is like.