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.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

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.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

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.

Traffic

Walking the streets of Shanghai is scary as hell, but the natives appear to be completely fearless. Cars seem to view traffic laws and lights as suggestions only. There is right turn on red, but apparently no obligation to stop first. And yet you see pedestrians jaywalking right into oncoming traffic and then standing in between two lanes while cars whiz by in both lanes.

Christmas in China

Last night we went to a hot pot place. Hot pot restaurants, where you cook your food yourself in small pots of boiling broth, are extremely popular. When Stephen tried to make a reservation, he was told there was at least a 2 hour wait. So we decided to go elsewhere but Stephen gave them my cell phone number in case a table opened up. We went to another restaurant that served both Chinese and Western cuisine and had just ordered some steaks (with some apprehension) when I received a text message from the hot pot restaurant saying that we could come now. We sheepishly abandoned the steaks and ran to the hot pot restaurant.

We had a great but not too heavy meal with slices of lamb and beef, various types of seafood and vegetables, cellophone noodles and rice cakes, and the long-stemmed skinny mushrooms that we have often eaten. And several bottles of Suntory beer. The waitresses were very friendly and helpful. I continue to be impressed by the customer service we are getting everywhere, despite our limited ability to communicate in Chinese. Stephen seems very comfortable here, even though he still speaks a microscopic amount of Chinese.

The only thing that marred the meal was that the restaurant played nonstop Christmas carols. It was as if we were eating inside some American shopping mall. If you can't escape the cheesy American Christmas carols in China, where can you? China seems to have adopted the American secular and commercial version of Christmas. There are decorated Christmas trees and poinsettias everywhere. Lots of waitresses and store clerks wearing Santa hats. But absolutely no sign of the original religious meaning of Christmas.

Shanghai University

Today I went to Shanghai University to visit Leng Gangsong, He Binwu, and their group in convex geometry. The university was relocated to a huge campus north of Shanghai around 1995. All of the buildings were built around then. There is not much else near the university. All of the professors live nearby.

I took a taxi from my hotel. It took about half an hour and cost about 80 RMB. Leng and the others were waiting for me at the front gate. When I saw Leng running towards me, I realized that he was going to pay for the taxi. So I hurriedly handed a 100 RMB to the driver and got out of the cab. Even then, Leng ran to the driver's side, collected the change, and then proceeded to force me to take his 100 RMB note. We Americans are ill-equipped to defend ourselves against such aggressiveness, and I was eventually forced to take the money.

I gave a short talk discussing some connections between information theory and convex geometry. It was a relatively short talk, and I spoke as clearly and slowly as I could. But, except for Leng, the audience looked completely bewildered and lost the entire time. But afterwards there were one or two students who asked me some good questions, so I didn't think it was a total loss.

Afterwards, 7 of us had lunch together at a university restaurant. Leng kept telling me that the food in Shanghai was not as good as in Hangzhou and that the food at the university was not as good as elsewhere. I kept replying that it was still better than anything I could get in the US. It really was a delicious meal. We also drank "Shanghai Lao Jiu", which means literally "Old Shanghai wine". It is a Chinese wine that tastes somewhat like sherry. Following Chinese custom (which Stephen had to explain to me), I drank only when toasted or when I toasted someone else. Luckily, I had come prepared and swallowed a Pepcid AC before the meal. This reduces the effect of the alcohol.

After lunch, Leng suggested that we go hang out in his office. I said OK. Then he had a better idea. How about we go get a "foot washing"? I said, "Sure!" So He, Leng, and I took a taxi to a foot washing place. So here you lie back in a comfortable lounge chair, while an attractive young woman takes off your shoes and socks and puts your feet in a wooden tub filled with piping hot water. After a while, she comes back and carefully washes your feet. After that, she gives you a very thorough and enjoyable massage of your feet and lower legs. The whole thing takes 60 minutes. During that time, He, Leng, the girls, and I chatted. They are regular patrons, so they knew the girls. Leng told me that he often goes in the evening with his wife.

I also asked Leng which of his other past visitors he had taken to the foot washing place but to protect the guilty I will not reveal his answer. Another amusing thing he said was that in general the local Shanghai population did not frequent such places and viewed them as a waste of money but in Hunan where Leng, He, and Mao Tse-tung are from such places are quite popular.

I find it difficult to imagine how non-Chinese speaking visitors communicate with Leng and his group. No one seems to understand or speak English well at all. I asked how Richard Gardner communicated, and it appears that he would write things down. I had to do the same thing when I asked Leng about the Math Olympiad which he coaches the Chinese team for. When I said "Olympiad", neither he nor He had a clue to what I was saying. So I wrote the word on the blackboard, and they understood.

I also found being able to speak only a little Chinese almost more of a handicap than speaking none at all, because Leng would speak freely to me in Chinese, and his Chinese is so heavily accented that I could barely understand anything he said. He (the other guy, not Leng), on the other hand, spoke clear unaccented Chinese.