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...