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...