The Myth of Trousers

I bet none of you had to kick aside a tumble weed and bat away swarming flies to get to your toilet this morning, now did you? Things here are going pretty well. We tried to go out to the field the other night to learn the rodent trapping techniques but our trapping experts don't seem to want us around. So when we're not offing animals for specimen preparations or building cages to house some of them, we're just sort of sitting around. I'm glad I brought two 400+ page books to read because I'm flying through them. Internet is agonizingly slow, so I've been checking email and posting here once every 2 days or so, and can't tolerate doing anything else online. Today we made a big trip to the county city, which is bigger than the one street town where we shower and only about half an hour away. We got some supplies and feed for housing rodents and fed ourselves a hearty Sichuanese lunch. Apparently one of the diners in the restaurant exclaimed "I didn't know foreigners like spicy food" when we walked in the door, which I thought was kind of funny. People are really curious about me. Most stare with a blank look that borders on disdain, but there are often smiles when they realize uneasily that they've been staring. Older women and children smile the most, and the children are fun to play with. They're really curious and a little afraid of me at the same time, so I played a few games of peek-a-boo with some girls who looked to be about 9-ish. One woman in her early 20s almost got hit by a car because she was gawking at me while trying to cross a busy street. I felt kind of bad about that one. There are no tourist destinations here, so the folks in the smaller town have never had a foreigner come through, and the city only rarely sees foreigners.

I think I'll also take this as an opportunity to introduce you to our "cast of characters". Shaoyuan is a graduate student at Harvard who works with our colleague over at Organismal and Evolutionary Biology on the Cambridge campus. He's a bit taller than me and skinny as a
rail, but you wouldn't believe how much food that guy can put back. He's super enthusiastic about everything and talks a mile a minute, always getting himself a bit ahead of the task at hand. He's from a town in southern China that is apparently known for its quick people.
We've been having nightly lessons to practice his English pronounciation. His vocabulary is quite good, but his tongue gets caught up on a lot of words. When I want him to slow down and listen
to me, I just get him to try to repeat the word "Thursday". Yesterday his favorite word was "anesthetization", and he has a curious habit of whistling "The Star Spangled Banner".

Ms. Xia is a graduate student and also my roomate for the duration of this trip. She's very pleasant and smiley and loves poking fun at the guys with me. Her English is quite good, but she's so quiet sometimes that it can be a challenge to figure out if she's understood me without assuming she didn't and risking offending her. She's the one who made sure we were prepared for the apocalypse out here by packing snacks and bottled water to supply a small nation.

Mr. Liang is our group leader. He's in his 50s, smokes 2 packs a day, and has a fabulous comb-over. In the beginning he was always joking around and laughing, but within the last few days he's turned into a grump and has cast a cloud over the mood of our whole group. He was
apparently having difficulty getting his daughter moved to a good school in Beijing, but fortunately that's been resolved. I think we're starting to see a bit of his jovial side again. He speaks no English, so it's a bit tough on me when he's in a bad mood and growls in my direction, but it sounds from the others that it's probably better that I can't understand the words coming from his mouth. He just turned and smiled at me, though, so I think things are getting better.

Mr. Bayor is the chair of the field station. He's a bit of a rotund guy with deep dimpled cheeks. He also speaks no English and more or less ignored me for the first week, but since my birthday he's been making more of an effort. Through Shaoyuan he told me last night that he's going to be traveling this fall to 8 European countries for an agriculture and environmental conservation trip, and he's been making more eye contact with me lately. It's little things like that that make it a bit easier to connect with people here.

Mr Sidi is our cook. He's got to be one of the kindest people on the planet - very quiet and gentle. He's probably in his early 60s and has three grown sons and a daughter. He lives just a little bit up the road, and he's here with our meals on the table breakfast, lunch, and dinner and runs a farm in the in-between hours. He rolls out dough and makes handmade noodles and dumplings. I love dumpligs - they're like little silky pillows of secret yumminess. You never know what's going to be inside of one, and they're quite thrilling if you're an adventurous eater. His have been filled with lamb, garlic, green onions, and lots of yummy spices. They're great dipped in a bit of vinegar and pepper sauce.

So those are the major players. Oh yeah, I just realized that I titled this "The Myth of Trousers" without explaining why. That was on a sign on the side of a building in the city we visited today.
Don't know what the sign was for since the rest was in Chinese, but I love the funny and random uses of English here. And I wanted to let you all know that your pants are not real. Sorry...

My First Chinese Birthday!

Today has been a great day, and I'm very touched by the hospitality of our hosts. I woke up this morning to a breakfast of noodles for "longevity", and was soon wished a happy birthday by my colleagues. Soon after that, 6 men from the Ministries of Forestry and Conservation arrived to check in on us and see how our progress with the field work is going. I'd known for a week or so that something was in the works for my birthday, because my colleagues kept dropping little hints, but I had no idea what. Turns out that in addition to checking on our work progress, all of these people had come here to celebrate with me :) We all loaded into 3 cars and drove further up the road to a farmhouse where a huge spread of food was waiting. Lamb, dried beef, dried
cheeses and yoghurt, dumplings, blood sausages (which I didn't ask about until I'd eaten one - Natazsa: I've eaten dorsal mesentery :) and lots and lots of fruit. And lots and lots of alcohol. We were about 12, and I think we went though at least 6 bottles of Baijun. I didn't fare too badly - everyone else is sleeping it off right now, and I think i paced myself just right so that I don't feel as rotten as they all do. The plate with two glasses went round and round the room, and we all made little speeches about how much we appreciate each other's support and collaboration in this project. They were all so warm and kind to me, and I actually teared up a bit when the cake came out. They'd even gotten candles and a crown for me! Then more people entered the room, and it turned out they were performers! There was a man with a traditional Mongolian stringed instrument and another man with an accordian. I got a little bit of video of them playing to share with you all when I get back. It's really fantastic music, and so much fun with everyone singing along. Then appeared the third performer - a woman in an ornate green satin dress with a beautiful headdress that had two strands of pearl beads draping from the temples. Her role seemed to be to sing and make us all drink more. At this point, we'd been doing rounds from small shot-glass sized cups, but this woman wasn't messing around and produced a silver bowl. She held a blue scarf draped between her hands and balanced the bowl in one palm. She sang a traditional ceremonial tune and bowed to each of us in our turn, offering the bowl. The expectation is that you finish the bowl at the end of the song, but you can sip bits while she sings. Dr Yang's young graduate student made the mistake of emptying the bowl before she'd finished the song, so he got a second pour to finish as well. I was allowed to just take little sips, which is probably what saved me from the fate of my companions. While I'm up typing this, my colleagues are all sleeping it off. Poor Shaoyuan had the worst of it. He insisted on drinking what was offered him, even knowing that he's not capable of drinking that much. I'm checking in on him every once in awhile, and he's doing alright. He's going to feel pretty rotten when he awakens, but fortunate it's only 5 pm, so he's got a chance to recover by dinner. The weather has turned a bit better, and I think we may be able to get out and do some of our own collecting tonight. We did wake up to an unexpected surprise this morning - the locals who have been helping us with the collections went out last night and caught about 19 animals. So I got a couple more litters of embryos dissected this morning as a great present!

Friendly Rodents

So we're in the desert. We arrived on Thursday and were immediately welcomed buy rounds of the local rotgut. It's called baijun, and it's distilled from some sort of desert fruit. It's strong but not too bad. The tradition is that the host pours two thimble-sized shots.You're only expected to take one of the two unless you want to flaunt your "manhood" and do a double. One is more than enough. After a few rounds that set a nice buzz, we retreated to the rooms that will be home for the next month. The bed's not too bad. More like a wooden platform with an inch of padding, but I tripled a comforter to made it more padded. The toilets definitely leave something to be desired. It's an outhouse of sorts with a brick enclosed concrete platform suspended about 12 feet above your "nature". There is a slit cut in the concrete about 5 inches by 2 1/2 feet through which to do one's "business". I'm becoming one with my hand sanitizer these days .

The first night we set out with our cook and another local man. The locals are of Mongolian descent and are very calm and reserved people. My favorite is the oldest of the bunch. He's tall and thin and wears a sweater vest. He's got dark leathery skin and eyes that disappear behind huge square-framed glasses when he smiles. You can tell that he's excited about catching the rodents - probably sort of takes him back to his boyhood. So the first night we drove out into the sand
dunes and stopped along the way to cut 12 foot branches from some tall shrub growing along the side of the dirt road. For those of you who laughed when I used the term "whacking rodents", I'll have you know that's exactly what happened. They shine a flashlight at the jerboas, and when they're stunned by the light they get whacked with the leafy branches at the end of the stick. It's enough to stun them just long enough to catch em. It's apparently also a semi-lethal blow, because
of the 3 we caught, one came to an untimely demise in the process and the other two died in transit back to the field station. Night two was much better. The local guys attached wire loops that strung a cloth bag to the end of long sticks. They used the car headlights to drive around the dunes, and when they spotted a jerboa, the guys on foot trapped it in the net. They caught 17! Of the 7 females that I dissected, we got 2 litters of 3 pups each, so not to bad for a night's work.

We kept several of the adults to put them in cages and try to house them in captivity. First they spend the night in live traps in our ad hoc procedure room. Several escaped in the night which made us worry that they'd be impossible to catch, but they're remarkably tame! They're wild rodents, but you can reach right down and pick them up. They even climb up on your feet, and one hopped up into my hand when I placed it in front of him! They're soooo cute. They walk and hop around on their enormous hindlegs and only use their forelegs to eat and dig. I want to bring one home!!!

Pickled People

It's real, but it isn't what you think. Someone out there is out to keep me from seeing the preserved remains of the world's famous communist leaders. When I was in Hanoi, Uncle Ho was "on vacation" in Moscow, and this time the mausoleum that holds the body of Mao is closed for reconstruction until September. Boo. Ah well. We spent most of the afternoon walking around the Forbidden City which was amazing and probably more fulfilling than seeing a dead guy. I can't get over how huge that place is. It stretches for maybe a mile or so north south and reportedly has over 9,000 rooms. The whole thing isn't open to the public, but the majority of it is, and it looks pretty cool. It's fun to imagine the emperor perched high at his post watching the formation of his troops and ministers in the courtyards. Everything looks like is has recently been or is currently being freshly painted - probably in preparation for the throngs of foreigners that are expected to descend upon the city next year. Another interesting little tidbit - the opening ceremony of the Olympics is slated to begin at 8 pm on august 8th 2008. Apparently 8 is a very lucky number in chinese tradition, so they're milking this one for all they can.

This is going to be a long entry since it's been a couple of days, and with the speed of this internet connection, I'm not sure how often I'll have the patience to wait for this. As it is I'm typing in Notepad so that I can just copy and paste when the stupid thing finally loads.

I had my first "wow" moment on this trip yesterday, and it wasn't nearly as beautiful as the one from my last trip. It did almost bring me to tears, though. We drove yesterday for about 6 hours, and the sky was thick brown with dust from the desert plains. Really quite nasty. Even in the car with the windows up and the AC off, my eyes, nose and throat were getting gritty with sand. At one point it started to rain, but the rain was actually coming down as mud. I can only imagine what a month in the desert is going to do to my mucus membranes. Anyway, that wasn't the wow moment. That came as we rounded a corner and crested a hill into a small town that had a major coal burning power plant. I'd already seen a bunch of mines and towns with huge piles of coal, and he dust from that adds to the nastiness that's already in the air. But seeing this coal burning plant was something else. Several square miles of smokestacks billowing plumes of black smoke. It was figuratively breathtaking in a very not so good way and did almost make me cry. The sky in that immediate area was even darker than where we'd been through already. And then as if by some ethereal coincidence, the sky cleared right over the site of a nuclear plant with 3 reactors generating thick white plumes of steam. One would think nuclear energy would be a nice, clean alternative to the coal burning plants that predominate in China, but given their history of safety standards, maybe not so much. I'm a huge advocate of wind power for this country. That's a resource that is in absolutely no short supply. Holy cow the winds can whip you right off your feet here. It is pretty amazing, though, how many nuclear plants there are in China. I think I've seen about a dozen already. The largest had 8 active reactors, and the city of Baotao alone had at least 7 independent plants with no fewer than 3 reactors at each one. It's incredible, really. Hopefully they're all for power...

So we're spending the night in a city called Erdos (or Urdos, depending on the sign). The cool part about this part of the country is that in and around Beijing the signs are in Chinese and English, but soon after you cross the border into Inner Mongolia, the signs switch to Chinese and Mongolian. Not so useful to me, but interesting nonetheless. I am also witnessing firsthand the mass migration of people from the countryside to the cities. Everywhere you look in the countryside, there are ghost towns of villages that you can tell once had active storefronts. Of the dozens of houses, maybe half a dozen or so still
look occupied and pretty run down at that. Then you get to a city of any significant population, and greater than 80% of the structures are new construction - as in the last 5 years or so. I'm convinced that this country must have about 99% of the construction cranes in the world. Shaoyuan claims (and I haven't seen the numbers myself) that in the last 20 years, 200 million people have relocated from rural areas into the cities. It's almost creepy to drive into a city that looks like it just sprung up overnight. So that's Erdos in a nutshell. We spent the day here so that we could grease the palms and bellies of some local officials. We had the most obscene amount of food for both lunch and dinner today with some folks from the Forestry Ministry, the Wildlife preservation group, and some guy who is apparently a hot shot discrict secretary. He was clearly the most imporat person at the table, as well as the most self-important, if you ask me. He sauntered into the room, sat down, yammered on and on while people fake-laughed at his jokes, and didn't look anyone in the eye at all. Just a weird vibe. However, I couldn't understand a word of the conversation at either meal, so what do I know? :) All I could do was sit and eat and drink and be told to eat more and drink more. It's really isolating and kind of strange to be in a room full of animated conversation and be of no part in it at all. And a little frustrating since I would like to know what their thoughts and plans are on this whole project and how they forsee accomplishing our goals. And additionally, I can tell that Shaoyuan is explaining the purpose of our work, and when he tells me what he's said all I can do is smile and nod since the translations in both directions are so difficult. I'm just feeling a bit intellectually distanced, but I think it'll all get much better when we're in the field actually doing the work and I can at the very least get my hands busy again. That's it for now. The blog page still isn't loading, so I think I'll be having Darren log into my account and post these for me. I seem to be able to access gmail but not blogspot so well. Take care and write to me when you can. I miss everyone - most especially my coffee crew! Oh yeah, and Jenna - if you're reading this (or if someone is who points here this way): I have found Shoe Mecca. Each department store in this town has an entire huge floor of the absolute cutest shoes ever that puts DSW to shame. And remember that this is coming from a woman who doesn't get so excited about shoes! Shaoyuan says that Beijing has the same shoe selection but cheaper than here, so I think I may come home with a new pair of shoes :)

An early birthday for me..

... and a bit unexpected. I have to buy myself a new camera because mine in fried :( Not exactly the best way to start a trip, but at least it happened in Beijing and not in the middle of nowhere. The chip seems busted. Ah well. It lasted a good 4 years. Probably time for an upgrade anyway.

Yesterday I made enough paraformaldehyde to fix a horse. That probably doesn't mean much to a whole lot of you, but it excites me in a weird way. We're pretty much ready to go now. Traps, lots of food (for us and rodents), DEPC water, PFA, tubes and tubes and tubes... After the prep work, I caught the train downtown and walked for about 2 hours to get down to the Forbidden City to meet Shaoyuan (he took his wife to catch the train to her hometown). If it's true that the best way to learn a city is to get lost in it, then I must know Beijing pretty well by now. I had no idea how EVERYTHING on the map is very very very tiny compared to real life. And to you Texans out there - you aint got nuthin on China. Nothing is bigger in Texas compared to this place.

I was doing fine on time until I got to Tianmen Square. The Chinese flag in the square is lowered every day at sunset and is cause for a huge spectacle. They shut down all foot traffic past the flag as a crowd of several thousand forms. I had to take the underground passages to get around everyone. But not until after I snapped a fantastic shot of a guy posing in front of the police formation. That's one thing I love about Asia. People here will pose for a picture in front of just about anything. As a result, I've started a bit of a collection of my own pictures of people having their pictures taken in front of random things :) So after a bit of a walk around, Shaoyuan took me to some famous restaurant where we had the most AMAZING duck I've ever eaten in my life. That line ought to make Darren jealous since duck is one of our favorites. It was so juicy, and the skin was the most perfect brown crispy deliciousness. And we had a beer with dinner which only the tiniest sip made Shaoyuan turn the brightest shade of red. Ahhh, the glories of alcohol dehydrogenase :) That's it for now. I'm going to help get things ready to leave tomorrow and then we're going back down to see the inside of the Forbidden City and visit Chairman Mao's pickled bits. Later...

Good morning!

All I've managed to do so far is eat and sleep, and I have been wonderful at that. Ms. Xia (a research associate in our collaborating lab) brought me to lab yesterday morning to get started on the preparations for the field work. That didn't take very long, so she took me to an outdoor recreation store (like REI) and then to a tourist souvenir market. I quickly decided that I needed lunch and sleep, so after trying to choke down a bacon, egg, and pickle (!) sandwich, she took me back to the hotel for a "nap". Said "nap" turned into a 5 hour sleep. I woke up in time to catch dinner, read a bit of my book, and go back to sleep for a full night. I think I've shown that jetlag what's for though. I will have to say that Shaoyuan knows good food. With the exception of that questionable sandwich (for which he wasn't present, and I should have known better since the menu was in english), all of our meals have been fantastic. I had a really fantastic pork and tofu dish last night, and brunch today was a bowl of spicy chow mein noodles with mushrooms and chicken. I may still lose a little weight on this trip, but it won't be for lack of trying to keep myself full at all times. I've also learned from every country I've visited that it's better to go to places with no english menus and point if you have to. If you're willing to risk eating calf intestine, you're likely to get a fantastic meal.

I feel like my english is a bit strained from speaking so slowly and simply to everyone. Our collaborators do speak pretty good english, but I'm trying to simplify my vocabulary to get my point across. It seems like that's carrying over a bit to writing here and in my emails to people. Ha!

I woke up in China today

Which is good since that's where I went to sleep last night. The flight was frickin long, but uneventful. I didn't find out until I got to Logan airport that my flight was to La Guardia and then out of JFK, so I had to catch a cab across Brooklyn. Then it was a bit of a game of musical chairs to get my seat. I boarded late so that I didn't have to take part in the herd of chinese folks. Read some of my past trip to China to see what I mean about people "lining up". So I was supposed to be in Seat 42A, but there was a guy in that seat. He was supposed to be in 41A, but there was someone in his seat who was supposed to be in 40A. I decided "screw it" and ended up in 40A. That apparently very much confused Shaoyuan when he came looking for me midflight and I was not the person in 42A. I was dead to the world for most of the flight anyway, so I didn't notice much of a thing. My brain is sort of mush right now from the jetlag, and we've started right to work in Dr. Yang's lab getting things ready. I'm taking a quick break to update you all. I got to see the Olympic stadiums this morning. They're super cool. And the institute of zoology is really nice. It's a new building with new lab space. I love new lab space. We're going to finish getting things ready today and tomorrow and maybe have a bit of time to see the Great Wall and the Imperial Palace before we head off for Inner Mongolia. No Jerboas yet, but there is a great big Tibetan rabbit sitting in the corner of the desk watching me type. It's Dr. Yang's pet, and it's a little snotty and keep sneezing. Kind of funny to see a rabbit sneeze. I'll try to keep you all updated. Thanks for the emails!

I'm off again

Hello all,
I leave town again tomorrow morning (May 10th) for China. I'm going to be spending a couple of days in Beijing and about 4 weeks in the desert in Inner Mongolia. I'll be working with a team of colleagues to collect rodents of the family "Jerboa". Image search them - they're cool. If you're interested in looking at the satellite image of where we'll be - it's roughly 38 degrees N 108 degrees E. I've developed a new fascination with Google Earth :) I'm not sure exactly where we'll be and how well connected we'll be, but I'm going to do my best to update this as often as I can get online. If you look at that satellite image, you'll get the correct impression that it probably won't be often. Also, I remember from my last trip that China has this pesky little habit of blocking access to any "opinion" sites, so while I can access my email and post to this blog, I won't be able to see what I've written once it's posted. Please forgive me if I repeat myself!