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 :)