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!