Things are finally turning around

I've learned something very important about Chinese people on this trip.  They're often *very* shy.  Painfully so sometimes.  If you've been reading along with my adventures (or lack thereof), you'll probably have noticed that I mentioned very few here, outside of my team, speak English.  That's actually not true.  Most of the students working here actually do speak English.  Several of them quite well.  It turns out they've been watching me and listening to me speak with my colleagues too scared to approach me themselves.  For two weeks.  Two solid weeks of wanting to say "hello" but being too afraid to get the word out.  One girl confessed that even once she decided she wanted to talk to me, it took her three days of actively trying to get up the nerve.  Her mother also works here at the field station and is the one who eventually forced her to come to my door.  They went to the market and brought me a beautiful selection of plums and apricots.  The first fruit I've had in weeks.  It was delightful and so nice of them.  So now I have new friends and get to sit at the "cool kids table" for meals when the rest of my team is out in the desert.  I don't have to be the leper anymore. Though there is still one girl who looks like she wants to faint or vomit every time she sees me.  I've heard she's the last hold out, so I'm waiting for her to build up the courage.  I just keep smiling when I see her so maybe she'll decided I won't bite ;)

We also have several other new friends that we met in town yesterday.  The guys and I walked into town for ice cream after our rodent fest, and while we were making our selections and paying, an older man walked up to me, stood there for awhile, and just stared.  It was a little awkward until Shaoyuan started talking to him.  He's an 80 year old Korean War vet, and it took me a while to realize that he was a vet on the *other* side of the war from the American vets.  He said he was outside the market when someone told him there was an American walking around, and he had to come see my "big nose" for himself. He'd heard that all Americans have big noses.  He determined that yes, my nose is big.  I thought that was funny. Then on our way out of the market, a young guy hanging out on his Honda scooter started asking Shaoyuan a bunch of questions about life in America.  The guy has watched too many movies.  He has the common misconception that a lot of people in developing countries share.  They think that all Americans are rich and can afford whatever we want.  He said that because American salaries are so much higher than in China, we must have a lot of money.  He and Shaoyuan argued about it for awhile, and then I was brought into the conversation.  I told him how much we pay for rent in Boston, and the poor guy almost fell over.  He thought that must be for a luxury apartment in downtown and couldn't believe when I told him, no - that's for fairly beat up old place in a residential area a half hour bus ride from downtown. Then he hit me with the doozie.  He said that he thinks all Americans must be able to walk into a hospital and be treated for free.  I feel a little bad about how hard I laughed at that one.  I think I made him feel a little bad, but it was just so absurd hearing that impression when we have one of the most expensive and poorly managed health care systems in the world.  Anyway, we ended up on a conversation about music, and it turns out he's a musician.  So we talked for awhile about different types of music.  I'm glad I'm in the nation of piracy, cause I just downloaded a p2p program and am in the middle of acquiring a significant collection of American music to burn for this guy.  He came by the station tonight and brought me an assortment of his favorite discs - an Uzbek trio of young women, a Kazakh band, two discs by a famous Ughyur musician, and a copy of his own band's CD.  He's a super nice guy, and you can see a bit of quiet frustration in his eyes - a sort of sadness.  He's really passionate about his music, even lived in Moscow for a year searching for inspiration to create something unique.  His band's disc is actually quite good, but it hasn't sold well, so they're all in a bit of a depression over it.  He sounds like he's got a good attitude about continuing to do it because he loves it though.

On a different subject - food. I finally got real milk!!!!!!!  Turns out the sour milk Shaoyuan brought me is very popular in China, so he thought I'd like it.  I felt a little bad about that.  I do sort of like it, but it isn't quite what I was craving and had in mind when I said I wanted "milk". Americans and Chinese just have very very different tastes on a lot of things.  But I did get pure, real, normal milk today, so that rocks my world.  What doesn't rock my world? Bitter melon.  That was on the dinner plate tonight.  Stir fried bitter melon and pork.  I couldn't even pick out the bits of pork, because they tasted like bitter melon.  Which is the foulest, least edible plant to the planet.  If you're not sure if you've tried bitter melon, you haven't.  If you had ever had the stuff, you'd never forget it.  You know how your tongue is divided into the different tasting centers?  Imagine that every single taste bud *except* for the ones that detect bitter have been obliterated, and the bitter ones have overcompensated for their absence.  Imagine the complete absence of the taste of anything *but* bitter.  And then amplify that 100,000 times.  It's shudder inducing.  Lemons are not bitter.  Lemons are sweet by comparison to bitter melon. There is nothing I can think of that is even close enough to evoking the experience of bitter melon. It's almost worth a trip to your local chinese market just to buy one and try this experience.  I've seen them in the US.  Go ahead.  Try it.  You know you're curious...

Crazy Going Slowly Am I

I had to look back on previous posts to see when was the last time I left this immediate vicinity.  May 14th.  That was two weeks ago today.  I've walked to the nearby town a couple of times, but that's it.  And to add insult to injury, I was talking with the vice chair of the field station today who was shocked that I'm stuck here.  He assured me that this area is fine for foreigners to visit with no problem.  He said there's no reason for me to be stuck here all day - they have international visitors every year and have even had people go wandering off to work in the depths of the desert by themselves with no Chinese colleagues with no trouble.  He very kindly offered to take me up to the mountains tomorrow when he and his team go to collect data, but I had to turn him down since our rodents arrive in the mornings.  He said that if any police question me for anything, it would be to make sure that I'm safe and haven't been robbed or anything, because apparently the police would get in trouble from their supervisors if anything happened to me.  He thought the whole thing about me being stuck here was hilarious and offered to speak to Professor Zhang about it and reassure him that I am fine to travel around this area, but now I'm afraid of offending anyone if they felt questioned about the decision to keep me here all of the time.  Apparently no one actually spoke to anyone at the field station about me traveling in the area - I'm stuck here on the paranoid gut instinct of the retired professor in charge of our team. I respect him enough to not question his decision, but it frustrates me knowing that I don't *have* to sit in my room all day.

  *BUT* at least I'm not stuck with three other people on the international space station with no functioning toilet in zero gravity.  Things could be *far* worse :)

So yeah, that's it.  The rodent collections are going fabulously well.  We've encouraged the economic development of a Kazakh family who runs a collection of desert field sites under the Ministry of Forestry.  They live about 60 km away deep in the sands.  There are about 8 men, and they've got 4 all terrain desert four-wheelers.  They've gotten quite excited about this whole rodent catching business, and they seem to be perpetually on a mission to better the previous day's numbers.  The first day they got 4.  The second day they got 14, but they were all killed fighting amongst themselves, so we paid only a pittance since the understanding was that the animals would be provided alive.  They learned their lesson after losing so much money, and so by the third time they captured a bunch and housed them all in individual compartments so that we got 20 live animals.  Last night they caught 30, and tonight they're hoping for 40.  Of course, they're getting paid about $7 per animal which is not a bad deal for them.  So we all win!

If you wanna see something *really* hecka cool, this is a pic of the Mars Phoenix lander being photographed by the Mars Orbiter.  I've seen it online described as "a speeding bullet being photographed by another speeding bullet." Science rules.

P.S. to Jenna:  We might *actually* have to get on Facebook now that the Chinese Prime Minister has his own profile.  Or we could set the standard to "I'll do it when Cliff gets his." :)

Unsatisfied cravings...

Sometime last week I wrote that I was thrilled to have gotten instant coffee and a Chinese confection impersonating chocolate.  The Nescafe is doing its job of staving of my severe caffeine withdrawal (which I just learned Johns Hopkins considers a psychiatric disorder), but it's just not the same shiver-inducing satisfying experience as a authentically good cup o'joe.  The Dove tastes like chocolate-flavored soft wax, but the "French" sounding chocolate is actually somewhat satisfying.  Unfortunately it comes in two wafers each about five microns thick, so that's pretty much gone already.

My new craving is dairy.  Probably because I haven't *had* any (other than the occasional ice cream) for about two weeks.  I want a tall ice cold glass of Grade A Vitamin D Whole Milk.  Or a big bowl of plain yoghurt with fresh berries and granola.  Or a selection of smelly cheeses. If you read in my blog entries way back to sometime around October of 2005 when I was in Vietnam, you'll see the effects of the last time I had such a craving.  I went about a month without cheese (travesty!) and finally landed myself in a seat at a decent Western-style restaurant near the water front in Hoi An.  They had an appetizer listed that was a selection of five different imported cheeses.  Each was only a small wedge, but it really should have served at least three or four people as an appetizer.  I consumed the entire thing by myself as a main course and was "backed up" for days.

So the boys, in their kindness, brought me about a dozen tetra pack cartons of "milk" last night.  I got all excited and took two to the kitchen this morning to have them put in the fridge to chill.  Thrilled with anticipation, I unwrapped the cellophane from the straw, punctured the little foil dot, and took a long draw.  There's nothing worse than your taste buds expecting one thing and being met by something *completely* different. Of course I can't *read* the Chinese to see what they brought me, but this is not milk.  It's something "like milk" thats incredibly sweet and flavored in some key lime sort of way.  And not in a natural, "mmm, tastes like key lime pie" sort of yumminess.  In a chemical, saccharine, this-isn't-quite-right-in-any-dimension sort of way.  So bummer again.  Maybe I can go with them to Fukang for the next fueling and hit up the grocery store for something more like dairy.  I remember from backpacking through Asia before that you can at least find the "Laughing Cow" cheese wedges in most places. I'm Dying Here!!  But no fear - I have my daily multivitamins, and I'm eating well, so I'm not getting nutritionally deprived.  Just have an itch that needs to be scratched.

Thanks for all of the birthday wishes.  It was a nice, peaceful day.  I was a little bummed for most of the day thinking that I was going to be all alone.  I ate all three meals by myself for the first time since I've been here.  Usually the gang is here for at least lunch or dinner.  So I'd gotten into my jammies, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and settled in to read myself to sleep when there was a knock at the door.  Shaoyuan had gotten a beautifully decorated cake and arranged our group of guys plus 4 other folks working here to join in the celebration.  He asked me to bring my bottle of scotch and whiskey left over from the other night, so I did, and I had to go around the table one by one and toast each person.  I survived that experience better than I'd expected.  We found ourselves doing whiskey shots a few nights ago (which is why the bottles were "left over"), and that didn't end so well.  Word to the wise - don't drink with Chinese.  It's a competitive sport here.  For a country with such a high incidence of alcohol sensitivity, those who can drink do so liberally.  Every conversation over booze starts with "how much can you drink?"  and ends way downhill from there.  But last night was nice and tame for me.  I managed to take just sips while the rest indulged.  Unfortunately my translator, Shaoyuan, got a little too smashed to continue translating for me, so the night ended up like watching a foreign language comedy with no subtitles.  At least it was a comedy and not a bad war drama :)  To the best I can tell, the men were all trying to challenge the young masters student, Shutao, to woo the other lady at the table - a spunky young student who was coyly laughing at the whole thing, but you could tell she was getting a little annoyed by their persistence.  There was something about the guys trying to get Shutao to give her one of the sugar flowers from the cake top.  It went on and on and round and round until she finally scooped up both flowers herself and stabbed the plastic knife through the center of the remaining cake with a very triumphant "There! Now shut up already!"

Show this woman the door...

...and shove her through it.  This post isn't going to be about me or China or anything related to travel.  It's going to be one self-indulging political rant about the US Democratic primary race. Because I just woke up to this spectacular gem:

When asked why she's staying in the race, Clinton's response was, "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right?  We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it."

Then she apologized saying she didn't mean her comments to be offensive.  Really?  For reals?  I mean, you invoke the assassination of a well respected and rallying political figure as a reason for staying in the race, and even if I give her the benefit of the doubt that she didn't mean that she's holding out hope that Obama gets assassinated, that's still one of the most cynical reasons I can imagine for staying in the race.  Never mind the fact that at this point *if* something horrible were to happen, she'd be the clear and obvious choice for the party's nominee *even if* she had bowed out weeks and weeks ago. And if she'd done so a little more graciously, and that awful scenario had played out, she might have had a chance to win the general. 

It's not until very recently that I've taken this opinion of her.  I started out in this race pro-Obama but willing to vote for whomever the nominee turned out to be.  I've thought that the unprecedented voter turnout in states across the country and the fact that now people realize that Puerto Rico, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands have a say in the primary races have been very positive for political activity in this country, and I've quite enjoyed the fact that every state is having a say for once rather than just the ones that go first.  But that was before she got desperate.  I'm tired of her and her supporters shouting "Sexism!", and I'm tired of women vilifying other women for not voting for the woman candidate.  I saw a beautiful blog posting from a young woman recently who said it really well - modern feminism means that I can vote for whomever I want to, because I do know that we've reached a point in American politics where gender is not going to keep a woman from holding office.  Her progress in the race to this point has evidenced that.  But I don't want her in office just because she's a woman, because she's not the woman I want to reflect on when 20, 30, 40 years from now I'm thinking back to the first female president.  

The remaining needed delegate count stands at Obama: 56 and Clinton: 246.  I have a feeling we're going to see a significant shift after the news lull over the holiday weekend, hopefully involving some previously pledged Clinton supers swinging to Obama to make a statement and shrink his numbers further, and I hope *that's* what makes it clear to Clinton that her time is up.

Still not much to say...

Hey folks. Me again. I'm really just writing to let those of you following this know that I'm still here and still alive. My days are otherwise not all that interesting. Let me introduce you to my little routine:

I wake up, go to breakfast, eat alone, come back to my room, read emails from folks in the US who were awake and active whilst I snoozed away, get some sciencey reading and writing done, read my book for awhile, doze off again, go to lab to process embryos that were collected the previous day, go to lunch, then come back to my room to read again while the rest of the team naps all afternoon. Finally, when Shaoyuan wakes up enough to help with the rodent killing and dissecting, we process the animals for the current day. Then it's dinner time, and I come back to my room to read some more before falling asleep again. Rinse and repeat.

It is nice that after a week and a half here, people are finally starting to warm up to me. Shaoyuan is the only person in our group who speaks English well enough for a conversation. The masters student and our driver speak about as much English as I do French (stop laughing, Patrick and Jerome :) The semi-retired professor doesn't speak any English, so we communicate through smiles and head nods. I guess this is a good opportunity to introduce you to the crew. There's Shaoyuan, who many of you know or have heard of. He came with me from Boston and is a graduate student at Harvard. Then there's the masters student, Shutao, who is a funny kid. He has an awkward habit of laughing at things that one wouldn't find appropriate to laugh at. I think maybe it's a nervous thing. And when he laughs, his mouth gets big, and his eyes squint shut, so he looks kind of like an anime character. I know that the driver's family name is Ma, but I don't know his given name. He and I were never formally introduced, but he's been very nice. He's young - early 20s - and is one of those guys who is so skinny it's like there's a black hole in his belly button. I think he's actually concave. He plays a cool eclectic mix of music in the car, so that's fun. He and Shui Tao brought me flowering cutting from some desert shrub yesterday. It was very sweet of them, but the thing smelled so strongly that it gave me a headache, so I had to carry it outside and get rid when they weren't looking. The retired professor who is an "expert in rodent ecology" is Dr. Zhang. He kind of reminds me of Yoda - very smooth skin, loose jowls, and hooded eyelids. And he's the wise master. He seems to talk very prophetically and with emphasis but quietly. And he's funny. Or at least he seems to be - I can't understand a word he says, but he seems to get everyone else in stitches.

So that's the team - five of us. Add to that another two dozen people who are working at this field station. Only one of them has been able to speak to me. I don't know who he is, presumably a professor somewhere. He speaks pretty good english though, and he came into the lab the other day while I was working. But I haven't seen him since - he appeared one day and seemed gone the next. I think more people speak english than they let on. Every once in awhile, I hear someone say "sorry" or "you first" when we're jostling around in the kitchen, but no one has had the nerve to come up and talk to me. Chinese people are very very shy with foreigners. I think it's because the schools here teach English reading and writing, but not speaking and listening. So a lot of people know a fair bit of english but don't have the practice and the bravery to approach a native speaker. So when "the guys" are out in the field and leave me here by my lonesome, I usually go to the cafeteria for my meals and sit alone, feeling like that kid in the school lunch room who has "cooties" so no one want to sit with them. At least I've moved to the smiles and nods with most people. They don't ignore me but don't quite feel comfortable enough to join me. I understand. So I take my book with me and try to read while maneuvering chopsticks and do my best to avoid slopping meat grease all over myself and the pages of my book.

Nothing like rodent carcasses before bedtime...

Yep, just spent the last 3 1/2 hours killing and dissecting rodents, all by myself, ironically listening to "Modest Mouse".  I didn't even think about that coincidence until now.  You see, we've had a routine established here.  A routine that seemed to be working quite nicely.  Since Shaoyuan seemed to make it clear that in China, animals don't have any rights and therefore he wasn't going to put much effort into finding an IACUC-approved method of euthanasia, I'd decided to let him handle their writhing, kicking, and screaming little bodies.  Then he does his morphometric measurements and hands them off to me to cut open and see if there are any embryos.  It was a fairly efficient assembly-line type system.  But then today I wake up, and the guys are all gone.  This happens. Alot. So I had breakfast alone. Again.  They showed up for lunch.  Then after lunch, I went into the lab and started to process the specimens that we collected yesterday thinking Shaoyuan would appear at some point, but he must have decided to nap.  By 4 o'clock I had a pretty raging headache so decided to come back to my room, pop a couple of Advil, and drink a bottle of water.  Next thing I know they're all gone again without a word to me. Crap, we had 11 rodents, all female, that had to be processed today.  So I figured I'd wait until dinner to see if they return.  No show.  So by about 9:30 pm, I'm up to my knuckles in rodents. And swatting mosquitos.  To the science folks - be thankful most of you aren't being eaten by mosquitos while working at your microscopes.  I have a bite on each butt cheek, one on my wrist, another on my face, my ear, two on the left elbow, and one on the right.

So I've killed my share of mice before.  Even had to cervically dislocate a mouse on our kitchen floor who escaped a snap trap injured but not yet dead.  It sucks.  Not much fun, but I can do it without getting too squeamish about it and without getting upset over feeling them struggle under my hands like I used to.  But the screamers are no fun.  At least mice don't scream.  Jerboas scream. "Do you hear the lambs, Clarice?"

A-n-y-w-a-y.  Enough of that.  At least it's done.  Aside from that, it's been a pretty somber day.  I guess you all heard that the three days of mourning started today.  It was pretty surreal to see it all on TV.  We're kind of in the middle of nowhere, so there wasn't much fanfare here, but apparently at 2:28 pm in every city all across China, everyone stopped whatever they were doing for 3 minutes of silence.  The news has shown throngs of people with heads bowed and the mournful sound of sirens, train, boat, bus, and car horns. And tonight there are candles lit all over the country.  There are a half dozen outside our dormitory.  Not sure who lit them, but I just saw them as I was coming back in from lab.  This catastrophe has really hit the national psyche hard.  Everyone is talking about it.  The same news program is on 27 of the 46 satellite TV stations that we get here showing the destruction and the rescue efforts 24 hours a day.  There was a 24 hour telethon that ran over the weekend.  Apparently a lot of people took the weekend to drive supplies to Sichuan to try to help. It's pretty remarkable.

A word on the earthquake...

I don't know what you guys are seeing back home, since I'm only able to access the cable news websites and not see foreign news television. I really wish I understood Chinese right now, because all I can convey is my impression of the images. The devastation is breathtaking. Entire villages without a single structure intact. The death toll keeps rising, and I saw on CNN online today that they're predicting 4.8 million homeless. That's equivalent to the entire population of the state of Colorado. If that's too much land mass to wrap your head around, it's also roughly equal to the combined populations of the cities of Chicago and Houston.

Say what you will about the Chinese military, but there is one huge advantage to having an efreakingnormous domestic military presence - mobilization. This is what you call a "top down" approach - a far cry different from the bottom up "It's not my fault. You should have asked for help" approach. It has been five days since the earthquake, and the response is phenomenal. Every image on TV shows scores of uniformed personnel literally crawling all over the place. They're busting tail to rescue people, assist the survivors, and contain this situation - air dropping supplies and parachuting people into regions that aren't accessible by road (due to landslides and destruction). There must be hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground there. And the news is showing crates and crates of supplies, medicines, people donating blood. It's a huge force.

Then add to that the moral and public support. Both President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao have been on the ground meeting with the local people and the rescue teams. Not flying over and surveying the destruction in an "Air Force One" style jet. Not driving through the streets in a motorcade. Walking. Through the rubble. Talking to people. Seeing the devastation first hand. You can see on the faces of the people what that means. You can see the old woman in the wheel chair realize that her president actually does care. It's not an all smiles photo-op. It's a comforting moment of support between two humans.

Then add further on top of that the nation-wide support. Again, I wish I understood Chinese, but in the last 24 hours I've discovered two different telethons being broadcast. One was on last night as I was drifting off to sleep and is still on 12 hours later. They've had T-shirts printed, signs made, dances choreographed, songs written, slide shows generated, and all the while a phone number ticks across the bottom of the screen. People I'm with here have been talking about how to help. This is one of those disasters of such an unfathomable scale that it's comforting to see a place where it can be handled with grace and efficiency.

Now contrast that to the gut wrenching and heartbreaking conditions in Myanmar right now.

I. Have. Nothing. To. Say.

You know those days where you find yourself completely alone until relatively late into the day.  Maybe you've been cleaning house all day, or writing your thesis, or just decided to stay in bed all day watching movies or reading books, and no one has called? Then finally you find yourself needing to go to the grocery store or your partner or roommate comes home, and you discover that you've forgotten how to speak?

I may not post for a few days until I have something worth saying.  Know that I am fine.  I'm not going anywhere, I'm not sick, and I can't see a way of getting into an accident unless I slip on the stairs or choke on a fish bone.  I'm not particularly sad or upset.  More like overwhelmed by melancholy. Which I believe technically means the same thing but carries a bit more of a positive connotation according to the American Heritage Dictionary Definition Number Two: "Pensive reflection or contemplation."

Welcome to our town...

I'm not actually sure of the name of this place.  The research station is owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and is located in Fukang County.  The county seat, Fukang, is about 20 km to the south, in the foothills of the Tian Shan Mountains.  I haven't really seen it - we stopped for lunch on our way here the first day, but since then have been here in this "village" of sorts.  This area is considered an "oasis" even though it's on the edge and not technically *in* the desert.  It's interesting - if you look at the satellite maps of this place, there are a bunch of little rivers and streams that come down from the north face of the mountains to feed this area.  So there are all of these little "river delta" looking fans that are populated with farmland.  There is a desert to the north and another to the south of the mountains, and it seems that every inch of farmable space along this razor line is populated.  And this area isn't what you think of as "traditional" farmland.  It's all "collective" farmland.  So this town is one of those collectives.  There are a dozen or so little shops along the "main street" (read: only street) and the big enclosed market with produce vendors, and hair salon, and a mishmash of other shops.  Then the rest of the area consists of several dozen five-story apartment buildings.  They're the sort of apartment complexes that you would seen on the edge of any big city in the US, but they're literally in the middle of nowhere and house the farm workers. There's a sizeable school that probably has several hundred students.  I asked if I could help with their english classes but was told that I wouldn't be allowed on campus.  They're no so fond of strangers - just like any school in the world, they're just protecting their students.  Too bad - I've heard that most students in China don't practice spoken English, and many of them are learning English from Chinese teachers who themselves may have never spoken with a native English speaker. 

All around the perimeter of this town there is the old collective housing - single story row houses made of brick and mud falling into a dismal state of disrepair.  It appears that there are still quite a few people living in them.  The new housing must be full or too expensive and not subsidized or I can't imagine why people would choose to continue living in a home that looks at risk of collapsing around you.  Many of them already have been reduced to a pile of amorphous rubble.

The fact that this is a farming collective serves to be a bit of a problem for us.  We had great plans to hire a lot of local people to work in shifts collecting rodents for us at night.  We're paying per animal, but it's apparently not enough compared to the farming salary.  So there are a few workers at the forestry bureau who have been working for us.  I hope this lasts.  It's really hard work chasing after crazy hopping rodents for four hours in the middle of the night, night after night.  I can't blame them if they decide that this is for the birds, but it's really our only way to get them alive.  They're apparently trap-shy and won't walk into live traps, and kill traps sort of defeat the purpose of collecting live embryos.  Wish us luck.  So far we've gotten about 35 animals but only 9 embryos.  That's not a great percentage, but for some reason the majority of today's capture were boys.  Hopefully tonight will be better. I'll stop there at the risk of this blog turning into a repeat of my lab notes, which I can imagine that very very few of you are remotely interested in reading.

So that's it.  A grand cumulative one square mile of dense housing with not much to do.  I ran the entire length and back again this morning.  I'm trying to go running in the mornings to keep the stir-crazies away.  It made me feel a lot better.  Just a bit of time outside by myself where I feel a bit more free.  Even if my shock collar will likely off me if I cross the invisible barrier.  Oh well.  The birds here are cool.  There is some species that I can't identify that sounds like a cuckoo clock.  And there is some flowering plant somewhere that has the most amazing perfume.  

A note added in proof - I have chocolate and coffee!!!  Okay, so I never ever ever thought I'd be excited by the idea of Nescafe and will probably gag a bit in a re-reading of this post once I return to the land of espresso roasts, but it's quite a feat to even find instant coffee in this place.  My plan of bringing a small coffee pot and ground beans from home fell through when other plans took priority at the last moment.  But even instant will do for now.  As for the chocolate, we'll see.  I got two bars of "Dove", but they're made in China and something with a French-sounding name, but that's also made in China.  I do hope it's not like the gag-inducing Indian chocolate I've had.  Lab folks, I'm sure you remember that bile-flavored putridity. 

Day 3 of captivity

Hey folks, me again.  The gang just left for their evening collection, and I'm left behind once again.  They all look so funny with their insect gaiters, mosquito nets, safari hats, and canvas expeditionary bags.  I think Shaoyuan discovered an outdoor supply store in Urumqi and went hog-wild to look like a real field biologist.  I must get more group photos in this getup. I'm thoroughly entertained.

So the great news is that on night one of collections, we got 9 animals.  They're of the five-toed rather than three-toed variety which isn't ideal, but they'll do.  Heck, I'll take what I can get.  They seem to think if they move over to another area with less vegetation then they'll be able to get the three-toed ones.  We'll see.  Of the nine, 5 were female, and one had three little 'bros.  Not a bad start at all I would say.

When not dissecting rodents, I've been busying myself reading, writing, and perusing the web.  I found my new favorite website : www.thingsyoungerthanmccain.com  It's entertaining me right now beyond belief.  I love the "kodachrome is younger than McCain.  And it's nearly dead."  I know it's insensitive if one were to take it seriously, but I'm enjoying the snarkiness.  A little light humor in the wake of the insufferable election campaign is a warm welcome.

I'm also attempting to rent a movie from iTunes, but while I do have an internet connection that is far better than what we had last year, the download rate is still agonizingly slow.  I started downloading "Atonement" at 11 yesterday morning.  36 hours later, it still says it requires another 20 hours or so.  I guess that will severely limit my movie watching capabilities.  So far the chinese TV stations have shown Elizabeth, and I've watched Terminator 2 twice.  There have been several other movies, but all overdubbed in Chinese - not too helpful to me.  That's okay - I don't need to rot my brain with too much TV anyway.  It's just a nice break from reading until I fall asleep.  So considering the time it takes to download rentals, if anyone has "must see" movies that I can find on iTunes, I'd appreciate the suggestions.

Safe and Sound

I just read that China had a big earthquake today and have already gotten one concerned email, so I'm checking in to let you all know that we didn't feel a thing here.  The earthquake was south of us in Sichuan province, so that's sort of like feeling an earthquake in LA all the way from Seattle.  No rocking and rolling here.

All in all it's been a pretty uneventful day.  The rest of the team left just after breakfast to meet with the local forestry bureau officer to enlist his support and help organizing a team of rodent collectors.  They think they will be able to start work tomorrow night, so I should have the first round of animals on Wednesday.  That will keep me very busy and keep the cabin fever at bay.  I got some laundry done this morning with much effort and exaggerated gesturing.  The woman who seems to run the operation of this place, Guo, doesn't speak a single word of english and doesn't read the romanic spelling of Chinese, pinyin, which is how my pocket translator is organized.  So that was pretty useless - I can look up questions but then I can't understand the answers.  She got very animated and pulled out a pen and notebook to try to explain the washing machine to me in chinese characters, but it's just like doodling artwork to me.  Fortunately we're both excellent mimes, so we managed to get the job done with a lot of laughs.  She's very very sweet, so I think I'll get along here just fine. As a bit of trivia - I bet the only people reading this who know I placed 8th in a miming competition are my parents.  My performance was "washing the dog". See, mom and dad - that was a useful skill after all!

Then I read most of the rest of the day - The Brothers Karamazov.  I have to give a shout out to my last rotation student, Johanna, for spending some time with me in the used book section at the Harvard book shop the morning before I left.  She did an excellent job helping me to find big thick books with thin light pages that would be difficult to read very fast.  So I have about 5,000 pages of classical literature and the diary of Robert Oppenheimer to pore through in the next 6 weeks.

Then this evening when the menfolk returned, we went into the town for ice cream and a walk around the "market".  It's not much of a market - a bunch of small shops in a big open building.  Toiletries, grains, some basic equipment and household supplies.  Everyone seemed to be playing some game or another - mahjong, cards, Chinese checkers (though I guess they don't call it "Chinese" checkers here). And there was a pool table!  So Shaoyuan and Shui Tao played a quick game of pool before we wandered back here.  At least there might be that to do - a game of pool for about 11 cents isn't such a bad way to pass the time!

Under house arrest...

So who's going to stay up all night to entertain me?  Turns out this field station is not a bad place if you have to hang out for a month.  I've got my own room with internet and a private bath with a hot shower.  Those are the pros.  The cons are that the satellite TV gets every Chinese station *except* for the one in English, and I'm confined to this place during the daytime.  At least for now.  I was just instructed that it's okay for me to leave at night, but when they go out during the day to survey the area and visit with the local villagers and officials, I have to stay here.  So I'm suddenly *really* glad to have internet and a tome of literature to pore through in the next month.  That's why I need you folks to stay up all night to keep me occupied.  Not all at once.  I can sign you up in rotating shifts if that's easier. Sign up for gmail and log on from time to time between the hours of 9 pm and 11 am EST.

For those who don't know the saga of how I got here this year, it's a long story of complicated politics.  Essentially, China is freaking out that a whole bunch of people are now coming into the country, and they can't control everyone's movement.  There are four provinces that are considered special protected regions - Tibet (of course), Gansu, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang.  Of course the animals we're studying are only found in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang.  So we initially had a lot of difficulty getting me into the country and struggled for about a month to get an invitation letter for a business visa.  The paperwork that was required to let me do field work in rural areas would have taken forever to pass through all of the bureaucratic channels, so we are working at an international research field station sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  That gets around the politics of me being here, but it doesn't get around the politics of my travel in the area.  Because our colleagues here are responsible for me, they're worried about getting in trouble and so have asked me to more or less stay put.  I don't have to be unseen, but I have to keep a pretty low profile.  

So we did arrive this morning from Urumqi.  It was only about a two hour drive.  That's a very very good thing since the jeep that was waiting for us this morning wasn't big enough to fit all of our supplies.  Also a good thing because as soon as we got all the way here, Shaoyuan realized he forgot parts of the collection nets and the 4 big flashlights for catching animals.  Kinda important items, I would think. So apparently Tuesday morning we'll be visited by a couple of people from the lab in Urumqi, and they're supposed to bring those things plus what wouldn't fit in the first trip.  But of course that sets us back another couple of days.

The good news is that it sounds like there are a lot of jerboas in this area.  This is another region that has had a rigorous pest management program over the last several years.  Unfortunately that means the numbers aren't as plentiful as they once were, but the few local people they've spoken with so far seem to think it will be no problem to collect animals.  We did see footprints in the sand, so that's a promising sign.  I'm ready and waiting and feel like I'm just tap tap tapping my nails on the bench. We'll see what happens...

Back on the crest of the wave

I got an email from my friend Chris (hi Chris :) this morning commenting on the roller coaster of "I love this place" and "this place is frustrating" blog entries of the last few days.  He nailed that one.  It is totally an up and down experience - often even within the same day.  Today was a lot better in general though.  I did spend about 3 hours in various banks while Shaoyuan tried to figure out the best way to get access to the money he needs, so that kind of sucked.  Not sure why I had to hang around for that.  But the rest of the afternoon and evening I spent wandering the city with my new student friend and another female friend of his.  Both speak excellent english, and Jacob's friend Maripet is actually an english teacher.  We also discovered that each of us has a birthday coming up within about 10 days of each other, so when I return to Urumqi I think we're going to get together again for a belated birthday celebration for all of us.  That will be fun.  Maripet is awesome.  She's super nice and easy to talk to, and we all three had a great time talking and wandering for about 4 hours.  They took me back to the big international bazaar which is really more of a tourist market.  Every stall is a repeating element of another - jeweled boxes and mirrors, Ughyur knives, scarves, spices, nuts, raisins, enamel coated vases, traditional instruments, petrified wood chunks, wood sculptures, fur hats, etc, etc.  

We walked down one side street where there are a bunch of street vendors who are "medicine men".  Apparently they can touch your wrist, feel your pulse, diagnose your illness, and prescribe some wretched herb or dried animal bit tea that will cure what ails you.  I'm a touch skeptical.  But it was really cool seeing their wares.  One guy had two small buckets of scorpions.  I couldn't get an answer on what those are supposed to treat.  I'm not sure if you're supposed to eat them or let them sting you, but I can't see that either is pleasant.  Then there were dried snakes and flattened lizards, bits of horns and various unidentifiable roots and plant parts.  There are Chinese medicine stores all over the place here, but they all have a much more formal and aesthetic appearance - more like you're visiting a museum with specimens in jars.  This felt more like going around the corner to your neighborhood dude who's gonna give you a bit of snake to chew on.

I won't be foolish and comment on politics while in China, but there is a former department store that is now a bunch of rundown stalls.  As we walked past, my friends whispered that it used to belong to a Ughyur woman.  Google search Rebiya Kadeer to see her story.  There is an excellent recent article from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Maripet is Ughyur as well, but she looks very different from most of the other Ughyurs here.  She has long dark auburn hair that is very curly, fair skin, and pale brown eyes.  I asked if she has any western heritage, and they both laughed.  She gets asked that all of the time, but to the best of her knowledge all of her ancestry is Ughyur.  The Ughyurs have been here in some form or another for over 1300 years.  It was really interesting walking around with them, because they both switched flawlessly between Ughyur language talking to each other and some of the shop keepers, Chinese talking to other shop keepers, and then English when speaking with me. My brain would fry if I even knew three languages to try to switch between.  

It was really hot today, but I've been assured that it gets much much hotter.  As high as 45 degrees C.  I can't even fathom that temperature in Fahrenheit, so I had to look it up. It's about 113 F.  That's the hottest I've experienced in my life, so I'm not anticipating this being much fun.  Today we sought refuge under a tent and had slices of watermelon and fresh home made ice cream.  That rocked pretty solidly. I think this has been a pretty spectacular end to my first stay in Urumqi, and it kept me from going on a homicidal rampage which would be certainly punished by death.  I already know that's not the way I'm destined to go.  Give me enough time in China, and my demise will come either under the wheels of or inside of a Chinese taxi cab.  The drivers here are mad and the only thing worse than the drivers are the folks on foot.  People step off the curb and cross in the middle of traffic, against the crosswalk sign (yes, they do exist!) and almost get hit left and right.  Because the people walk out so frequently, the drivers are very assertive and stop for no one.  Add onto that the fact that less than 50% of seatbelts seem to work in this place, and you're asking for disaster.  I try not to think about it too much though.  It's otherwise quite paralyzing.

By the way, I learned a cool new fact for all you science junkies from Jimmy Hu this morning.  Did you know that Tom Cruise very likely suffers from a mild form of holoprosencephaly?  He's got a single fused front incisor! Google search it - it's true! I personally think he might suffer minor brain damage as a result, and maybe that's why he's a little batty.  This fun fact brought to you by our favorite zany kiwi grad student :)

Resisting the urge to crush heads

This place gets so painfully frustrating sometimes, and today is one of those days.  I made it a whole week before going crazy.  That seems like a pretty major accomplishment.  Today I ran into the first of many big cultural gaps.  We are working with a 70-year old retired professor who is an "expert" in rodent biology.  He's supposed to help us find the right field site and organize local people to collect the animals.  So today we were discussing collecting animals, and I asked Shaoyuan to ask him about identifying burrows and digging up nests.  I'd really like to be able to collect postnatal animals to look at elongation and fusion of foot bones.  There is an extensively thorough paper from 1937 on this particular species that describes their ecology, burrow structure, behavior, etc, and I was asking him whether he thought in his experience that we would be able to go out in the early morning before the heat and sun smooth the sand to find the entrance to the burrows.  This paper suggests the openings are easy to find because there's a mound of damp sand and footprints at the entrance. Whenever I asked Shaoyuan to translate my question, rather than ask the professor, he just responded that no, we can't find burrows that easily.  I got frustrated thinking he was just getting uppity with me, and then later he told me that I pushed too hard with this professor and risked offending him.  Apparently we aren't supposed to read and reference literature because citing references makes the senior faculty feel like the literature is more informative than what they have to say. What matters most is "field experience".  Nevermind the fact that this paper was written by researchers who spent years studying this exact species. I do respect his experience, and my questions were phrased as "this is what I've read but how does it relate to what you have seen".  I totally understand, but this was my first moment of feeling completely powerless - that I can't be part of these discussions because I'm supposed to just sit quietly, smile, and follow along hoping that this guy can help us, but I can't share any of what I've learned from reading or our own experiences and those of others.  Oh, wait, no, the fact that we're still sitting in Urumqi until Sunday was my first moment of frustration.

Then there's the issue of euthanasia.  I had a major head crushing desire this evening when I, once again for about the third time, asked for a canister of CO2 for euthanasia.  It isn't Shaoyuan's priority, so he's been putting me off and forgetting.  Today I find out they can't get a canister in Urumqi and don't know where to find one in the field location.  The other chemical compound that we could use is considered a controlled substance and unaccessible in China.  So Shaoyuan wants to teach a student to do cervical dislocation.  Last year we had a great technician who could do it very efficiently and quickly, and he tried and failed to teach Shaoyuan.  He kept having to finish off the animals for him.  The problem is that doing a cervical dislocation in a mouse or rat isn't that hard, but the cervical vertebrae of a jerboa are fused by ossification.  So you can imagine you can't just pull the tail and snap the neck.  You have to get your thumb up under the skull and separate the atlas from the axis at the very top of the neck.   The most frustrating thing is that I keep getting laughed at for caring whether or not the animals die quickly without suffering too much.  He told me (which I already knew) that people in China don't care much about animal suffering.  That's fine for them, but I don't want a bunch of kicking and gasping rodents on my hands.

But I'm starting to just not even care at this point.  I want to be in the desert collecting animals, doing my dissections, and making progress.  All of this sitting around talking and slowly collecting supplies and dancing around what are our expectations versus what our colleagues think they can accomplish is exhausting. I keep feeling like we risk the whole relationship by saying "we want as many animals as we can get" because they worry that it's too much pressure on them if they can't do it.  I just want to scream "for gods sake, let's just *try* already!"  I'm writing all of this to get it out, because it's raging inside of me, but on the outside I have to maintain a perfectly placid and zen-line approach in my interactions with everyone when I really just want to bash a few skulls...

Loving XinJiang

This place is great.  I got a bit of a tour of the area around the University last night led by two students.  One is Ughyur.  In fact, that's how he was introduced to me.  "This is our Ughyur student".  Made me think how odd that would sound in the US where no one is introduced by their race or nationality, and in fact people don't even seem to fee all that comfortable describing someone as being black, latino, or asian.  His name is Ughyur and difficult for me to pronounce, so he told me to call him Jacob. Anyway, this particular student went from totally creeping me out to becoming my favorite in a very short time.  When we were first introduced, he went a bit too wide-eyed and watched my every move very quietly in a borderline stalkerish sort of way.  I quickly realized that he's very soft spoken and shy, but his english is the best of anyone in the lab.  I think it helps that the Ughyur language is Turkish-based, so his pronunciation is much better than the Chinese.  And his vocabulary and comprehension are a lot better.  So when he was watching me and lingering around, he was just looking for an opportunity to practice his English.  So I've spent a fair bit of time talking to him in the last two days, and aside from Shaoyuan, he's the only person with whom I can have a substantial conversation.

So he and this other student, Guan Bo, walked me down the main street here last night.  It's such a bustling and lively town.  There are people from all over central asia, so you hear all different languages from Chinese to Ughyur to Russian and hear a lot of different music being blasted into the streets from CD shops.  We stopped in one shop, and he picked out a CD of traditional Ughyur music for me.  It was about 10 pm, and the sidewalks were packed with people and street vendors.  There is a lot of fruit here, and it all looks magnificent.  I'm going to have to eat a watermelon slice by moonlight before I leave.  And there was one guy with a bicycle that had a cotton candy machine on the back.  Not really a machine like we're used to thinking of, more like a platform with a torch and a fan.  He scraped sugar into the flame and then used a stick to spool the cotton candy out like a big sugar moon.  No coloring nothing fancy, just cotton candy at its essence.  Too bad I let my mind take over my heart and decided that much sugar before bed was a bad idea.  It looked delicious.

Past the street vendors was the entrance to an underground marketplace.  Literally underground - it's a pedestrian walkway under the street that is lined with shops selling scarves, perfumes, etc. We wandered through that to the other side of the street where the international bazaar started.  More shops and street vendors. And people selling fresh pressed pomegranate juice - yet another thing I must try next time I get a chance to wander out. And the market is all around a square next to a beautiful mosque that was built of tiny little sand colored bricks, and the windows of the towers were aglow with a pale blue light that looks like heaven is shining through.  It was one of those wow moments of traveling that takes your breath away.  I asked if you can hear the call to prayer in the mornings, and Jacob said no, it's illegal.  I'd forgotten for a moment that I was in China.  In fact, it is a strange place like that.  It doesn't really feel like I'm in China anymore. Until you see the police and military hanging around.

Another funny thing about this place is that since there are so many people from so many different places, I don't stand out as much.  Every once in awhile, I see someone from a distance who I think might be a westerner, and it turns out they're Russian.  I can definitely tell that they're Russian, and I wouldn't say that I look Russian, but a lot of the Chinese here seem to think that I am Russian.  I've had Chinese shopkeepers try to sell me things by speaking to me in Russian.  It's hilarious.  I'm sure they're saying the same think they would say in English. "Helloooo ladeeey."  Being Russian suddenly makes me feel a bit more exotic than I truly am.  And that also probably explains why most people here don't stare at me as much as in other parts of China.  

Then back to the lab.  It's so funny here.  I've been introduced to everyone so effusively.  Everyone calls me Dr. Cooper.  The students are stumbling over each other to help me, so I've had 5 offers of help making DEPC water.  We went to lunch yesterday with two of the students, and I had to come up to the room for a moment before meeting them in the restaurant.  When I approached the table, they both stood until I was seated.  One of the students insists that I let him carry my backpack, which makes me a little nervous knowing how much money I'm currently carrying.  I have no problems trusting him, but I'm more paranoid about pickpockets and have only let him carry my bag across the campus - not in town. Shaoyuan and I each gave a seminar tonight.  They scheduled us for 8:30 pm - the latest I've ever spoken, and hopefully the latest I ever will.  We were in the conference room for 2 hours - in part because they had so many questions for us.  I wasn't expecting many myself, since I spoke in English, and I imagine it's difficult for them to phrase questions in English, but there were a dozen or so questions and twice as many for Shaoyuan (who spoke in Chinese).  I'm thrilled by how interested and excited everyone has been.  It's making for a much better trip this year than last.  Now if we can only get animals!

Hanging out in Urumqi

I like this place.  We only just arrived yesterday evening, and we haven't seen much of the city at all, but it seems like a really interesting place so far.  I keep hearing about the "minority people" who live here, but it's sort of like walking around Dorchester or Harlem and calling folks there "minorities" - it's all relative.  There are apparently 26 non-Han Chinese groups in XinJiang, and it does look like more of a smorgasbord of people.  I'm starting to pick out some of the different types.  At least the Uyghurs, Khasaks, and Russians don't seem too hard to spot.  The Uyghur men have mustaches.  Once in awhile I think I see a Westerner, but I think those are the Russians.  The language diversity is cool.  The signs are all in Chinese and Arabic with a bit of Cyrillic here and there.  Not much English though. And I've liked the food quite a lot, but I seem to like the food just about anywhere :)

We've spent the day so far at XinJiang University with our colleagues planning for the field trip.  This seems like it's going to work out quite well.  We'll be traveling with an older retired professor who is an expert in rodent biology.  He apparently knows the rural areas enough to help us find the right sites and get us set up at a field research station.  Our supplies are scheduled to arrive from Beijing tomorrow, so we should be able to get solutions made and be on the road in the next couple of days.  I'm itching to get busy.  We've been in China a week already, and it just seems that everything happens so slowly.  Meanwhile, I'm helping to edit the English grammar for a PhD student here who is about to submit a paper to a journal and helping some of their young masters students to practice their conversational English.  I am supposed to be giving a talk tomorrow on our research, but I'm not sure how much folks will understand.  At least a lot can be conveyed visually.  Still, it's been a lot of fun, and everyone is very kind and enthusiastic.

 This is an incredibly well-equipped lab, too.  The Dean of Life Sciences essentially has an empire of about 80 people - several professors and a ton of PhD and masters students.  And they seem to have every bit of equipment you could ever ask for.  Some of it is a bit outdated and dusty, but it all seems to be well maintained and well used.  They're very interested in what we're doing which is nice and quite different from the folks we worked with last year.  

Alright, that's it for now.  Hopefully more later when I'm not so distracted by this obnoxiously slow internet connection.  I'm trying to get the Harvard library server loaded so that I can retrieve a few references I need, and it seems painfully slow. Ugh...

Silkworms, scorpions, and seahorses, oh my!

I have seen the route of food poisoning, and it lies in an alley of new food stalls in Beijing.  There is a big shopping area near Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City that has exploded in the year since I was last here.  The main throughfare is blocked off to auto traffic and is a big wide street lined with shopping malls and high end foreign brands.  There are at least three enormous stores selling all things Olympic kitsch you could ever ask for.  There seems to be an insatiable hunger for trinkets, stuffed animals, semi-precious stone encrusted figurines, laser etched gold figures, and even a little keychain with one of the Olympic characters holding a gun.  Still trying to figure that one out - marksmanship, perhaps?  Anyway, down one alley that didn't exist last year, there are all of these new food stalls with rancid looking meat on sticks and bugs.  Lots of bugs.  Clearly a tourist attraction.  Not sure what the appeal of bugs in big tourist sites is, but okay.  Then behind the food stalls is another alley of cheap souvenirs.  They're all the same.  This is the third time in three years that I've been to China, and it seems that every town everywhere has the same Chairman Mao alarm clocks, decal coated tea mugs, Chinese emperor chess sets, jade bracelets, etc, etc. There is nothing left for me to buy.  Except for a cool shiny beetle encased in a plastic pendant.  The woman in the shop wooed me with "Hello Laydeeee.  Amber. Real." Hehehe.  

    I stopped in the Foreign Language bookstore even though I'm carry a small library of great epics of literature.  I can never pass up a bookstore.  This one had two full walls of every Rough Guide and Lonely Planet known to man.  For instance, did you know that the Rough Guides has published a volume each on the Brain and on Genes and Cloning?  No?  Me neither.  Those are places I'd like to visit.  Oh wait, done that :)  But standing there seeing all of those books describing all of the places I have yet to see made my heart to a funny little twist.  I've decided that I like this life I have, but if I could come back and do it all again, I'd want just enough  money to rough it in all the cool places around the world.  Don't need to be a kajillionaire, but it would be pretty nifty to not have to work and just go live.  Everywhere.  And write about it all for any of the armchair travelers out there to come along.  Oh well...

   So some of you might remember last year when I wrote about the vast conspiracy to keep me from ever visiting any of the pickled communist dictators of the world.  Well, it continues.  Good news is that Chairman Mao is back from his "Russian vacation", but his mausoleum is only open Tuesday through Sunday.  And guess what today is.  Yup, Monday.  Oh well, I guess there's always when we come back.  I wandered around Tianamen Square a bit and then up the avenue that runs alongside the Forbidden City.  It was a long walk, even for my magic traveling shoes, and my dogs are barking. I've also discovered that all of Beijing is currently nasally challenged by a battle with some little white fluffy tree bits that are permeating the air.  The odd thing is that I can't seem to *find* the trees they're coming from, but it's everywhere, and it gets up your nose really easily.  And speaking of trees - I saw a tree getting an IV drip.  No joke.  There was a bottle hanging with some clear liquid and a drip line with a needle jammed into the bark.  Poor tree.  I hope it feels better soon...

Ready to Roll

Beds in China are commonly very hard, and my poor old back is sore.  This is the first comment of my posting because my bed is the part of China that I'm most familiar with right now.  I've spent way too much time in this hotel room in the last 2 days, and I'm starting to go a bit nuts.  Yesterday it did end up raining all day, which it really really needed to do.  I think it was actually raining mud - the air was so thick and brown right before it started.  But since it was nasty out, we opted to stay in.  And I slept most of the day.  Today I was eager to get out and do something.  We had to go to the Bureau of Forestry to pick up some lab supplies we ordered and have those plus a box I brought shipped over to Urumqi.  For those not familiar with our saga - we're working with a different group this year from last year, because we encountered a "conflict of financial interests" with the group we worked with last year.  This year, we were originally supposed to work with folks from the National Academy of Forestry in Beijing, but the processing of my visa paperwork was apparently too "politically sensitive" and difficult, so those collaborators pulled out.  After a brief third collaboration with the Chinese version of the CDC in XinJiang, we are now set to work with XinJiang University.  But since as of about 3 weeks ago, we were working from Beijing, we went ahead and ordered lab supplies through the office in Beijing.  So now all of that has to be shipped.

The guy who showed up to pick up our things didn't have the box that was requested to package some of it, so Shaoyuan and I had to hop in his little van and go with him to his "company".  Ironically, we ended up just a few blocks around the corner from the hotel where we stayed last year.  Oddly, we turned down an alley into another alley and pulled up to a house.  That was the shipping company - 5 young guys running an EMS mailing station from their home.  It's supposed to arrive in Urumqi in 3 days, so we'll see what happens.  I do a lot of following and smiling without really knowing what's going on here.  Note to self - must try harder to learn Chinese.

So then after a trip to an outdoor store for boots for Shaoyuan and pants for me ($11!!!), he convinced me that he just wanted to come back to the hotel.  I wanted to try to keep him awake since he slept all day yesterday and didn't sleep last night at all.  He was in pretty bad shape today.  But I didn't hear from him for dinner tonight and decided to just leave him alone.  I think he's going to be miserable again tomorrow.  Oh well.  I could get out and do some sightseeing by myself, but I saw so much last year.  I'm kind of done with Beijing.  We're going to get out and about tomorrow, and I've requested Beijing duck for dinner tomorrow.  Mmmmmm, Beijing duck.....

I saw Santa Claus!

So I flew Continental from Newark direct to Beijing this time.  Never flew Continental internationally.  Didn't even realize Continental flies internationally.  Apparently they do, and to a lot of destinations.  And it was a nice flight.  So everyone always asks "which direction do you fly to China?"  It *is* pretty much exactly on the opposite side of the northern hemisphere from Boston, and last year we went west up over Canada and the Bering Strait.  So that's what I thought would happen again this year.  Noooooo, we went right up over the top of the world!!  It was the most awesome thing.  I can now say that I've seen the North Pole.  Albeit from 31,000 feet in the air.  And whatdyaknow, there was Santa's Workshop!  Okay, so maybe not.  And so maybe I'm not sure that I saw the precise location of the North Pole since it's not like there's a big red flag that marks its location.  But the little airplane on the little map on the little screen in the back of the seat in front of me went right over a dot that said "North".  I looked out the window as we passed over Baffin Bay and the west coast of Greenland, and you could see icy mountains and glaciers.  And the North Pole is just a big sheet of ice.  It was a little worrying that there are "rivers" running through the polar ice where you can see it's splitting.  Of course I don't know what it looked like decades ago by comparison, so maybe it's supposed to be pretty chunky.  I'm sure it shifts around a lot.  And it never got dark for the whole flight.  In fact, the window was screaming hot, and it was so bright out that I felt bad about peeking for too long, since folks around me were trying to sleep.  But it was soooo cool.

We arrived at our hotel around 3 pm, and I have internet in the room for the next 4 days.  Thanks to everyone who responded to my email.  The 25 or so of you kept me busy this evening :)  I'm going to try to respond to everyone who writes to me while I'm away.  It's great to hear from people, so I will reward your efforts.  Still waiting on the other 86 of you  ;)  hehehe...

We leave on Tuesday for Urumqi (apparently pronounced "wulumuchi"), the capital of Xin Jiang Province.  Our plane tickets are supposed to arrive at our hotel in the morning.  I'm looking forward to this.  Xin Jiang is supposed to be much much much much more beautiful and interesting than Inner Mongolia.  Mountains surrounding the desert.  So even though we'll still be in the sand dunes, there might be something a bit better to see on the horizon besides more sand.  And the food is supposed to be really good - middle eastern influenced, since we're closer to that part of the world.  So I'm looking forward to some good kebabs and naan.  I'm sure the liquor will be the same rotgut as last year, so I picked up a couple of treats at the duty-free shop.  I will be sharing a nice bottle of Talisker with whomever my companions happen to be come my birthday.  If I'm going to be turning 30 in the middle of nowhere, I want something to make the experience that much more enjoyable :)

I'm going to try my best to sleep.  The air here is warm and thick and has formed a curtain of brownness.  It's supposed to rain tomorrow, and I sincerely hope that it does.