One step closer to home...

Well, it's been an eventful past few days. The guts have decided to behave themselves again, and I just managed to stomach a whole sandwich and a handful of fries.  That's important.  It's tough to make a recovery when you can't eat enough to maintain your strength.  It's also sort of a crap way to spend my birthday weekend, though everyone around me was really kind and made it as fun as possible.  On Saturday, I re-visited the English training center where I went last week and had another chat with their students. The best question this time was "Do you believe in UFOs and life on other planets?"  That continued on to "How big is the universe and is it shrinking or expanding?" and "What's beyond the edge of the universe?" They were also very sweet and arranged a cake for my birthday, and several of them sang songs.  In English and terribly off key.  Is was an incredibly sweet gesture, but something more traditional would have been nice.  Then my friend Nigar danced a Ughyur dance for us.  That was really special.  I got it on video, so I'll have that memory for years to come.  Unfortunately my stomach didn't cooperate and started to cramp again, so after grimacing through a round of photos I managed to get back to my hotel and crash for the night.

The day of my actualy birthday, Sunday, all I wanted was to go to the Fubar and chill with some good Western comfort food and relaxed company.  I didn't want to have to smile and show my happiness.  I didn't want to have to make or receive speeches about how much we're all appreciated for the hard work we've put into this project.  But that's Chinese custom, and therefore I had to seeing as my birthday was also happened to be my last night in Urumqi with our colleagues.  So I pre-arranged an "out" with my friend Hiroshi that would let me escape the banquet early while allowing my colleagues to maintain face.  I told them that a party had been planned for my farewell and birthday weeks earlier by a college classmate who lives in Urumqi (true, Hiroshi and I did go to Cornell at the same time but didn't know each other).  I then informed the professor that I asked my friends to wait for me since I had a very important banquet to attend with my colleagues. That made him feel important, it made me look good for keeping my appointments, and it got me out of dinner after only about an hour and no baiju.  I was particularly happy about that last bit.  I've been hugging the sink a little too much lately to want any Chinese rotgut in my stomach at the moment.

At dinner, I made my best attempt at a good show to keep up the honor and happiness. It was my farewell dinner, but it was also a welcoming dinner for a professor visiting from Shanghai.  He seemed to be a nice guy.  He spent 7 years at Rutgers as a postdoc.  He name dropped someone at Rutgers, and I didn't clearly understand the name with his accent.  He gently scolded me in that "you should know him because he's done blah blah blah" sort of way.  Okay, fine, maybe.  So later we were talking about his work, and he said he worked on genomics as a postdoc and is now working on plant and algal genetics and is interested in alternative fuels.  I said "Then you must know George Church who is at Harvard and works on blah blah blah" - all stuff that is directly relevant to his field.  He stumbled just a little and said "I'm not always so good with names."  I just smiled and said "I understand.  I'm the same way sometimes."  And with all of the pretention off the table we had a nice coversation about crop-based energy production and energy input versus crop yield for rice versus corn - his plant of choice.  I think I did well for my host professor.  He is establishing a collaboration with this guy to work on plant engineering, and having a bright young researcher from Harvard make a good impression on his guest was important to make him look good. I think it also went a long way toward strengthening our working relationship since he suddenly seems to be a bit perkier and more enthusiastic when speaking with me.

The escape to the bar was a little tricky.  One of the students was tasked with getting me into a cab except that she flagged one in a turning lane in heavy traffic and had to jump in with me.  She kept dropping hints on the way to the bar that she would like to be invited in to my "party", but I just kept playing clueless and said "I'll pay for this cab so that you have enough money to get home."  I hated to send her off that way, since she's a really sweet gal, but it would have looked *horrible* for her to find out that the "party" was me, Hiroshi, the other surly Irish owner Manus, an aged and decrepit old cat, and the resident drunk who laughs at all the wrong moments and keeps falling of his bar stool.  But all of that sounded like heaven to me, because I could belly up to the bar, toast myself with a weak vodka and soda, and enjoy the specially requested tomato soup that Hiroshi so thoughtfully had his kitchen staff prepare for me.  Not a bad 31.  And no harm, no foul.  Everyone is happy and feels honored and respected.  It's one thing to "know" the customs.  It's another to be able to manipulate them...

And now I'm in Beijing. It was kind of funny to get on a flight full of Ughyurs in the western frontier excited for what is probably their first trip to the big city.  I think they were all part of one big group, since the whole plane seemed to know each other.  I seemed to be the in-flight entertainment.  I kept getting funny looks and big smiles and heard "hello" and "thank you" from random directions once in awhile.  But all I wanted to do was sleep since I had woken up with stomach pain the night before and hadn't slept well.  My seat mate had other ideas.  I requested a window, but when I got to my row there were two men sitting in the window and middle seats.  No way, dude.  That's *my* seat.  So I politely pointed at his seat and handed him my boarding pass.  He pointed at the aisle seat, and I smiled but shook my head.  So they moved.  And then he tried to chat me up for awhile.  Not in any verbal language that either of us understand, but in a combination of fractured english, attempts at chinese, and lots and lots of hand gestures.  "Where am I from? How long have I been here? Where am I going? Am I married? Do I have kids?" Standard questions.  And then he indicated that he's married with two kids.  Very nice man.  With very sharp elbows that he proceeded to jab into my protruding ribs every time he wanted to get my attention.  As I said before, all I wanted to do was sleep, but he made it his duty to be sure I woke up for the drink cart and meal.  He got agitated with the flight attendant when he thought she was overlooking my empty water glass.  He gave me all of his cherry tomatoes as well as his travel companion's when he realized that's all I was eating from the dinner tray.  And at one point in the flight when he got up, he put his flight blanket over my lap.  But then I didn't see him again.  He must have disappeared to sit next to some one else, because we landed and he never came back.  It made me a little sad that I didn't get to say bye to Mr. Sharp Elbow Man.

I am now in the lap of luxury and loving every moment of it.  I decided that after "roughing it" for two months and my slow recovery from food poisoning, I deserve a little extra care.  So "Harvard" booked me a room for two nights at the Crowne Plaza by the Beijing airport.  I've seen enough of Beijing in the past that I don't care to do any touristy things and should reserve and increase my strength.  And I'm only about 10 minutes from the airport which makes catching my flight tomorrow a piece of cake.  The room is fabulous by any standards and especially compared to my adequate but meager accomodations recently.  A real king sized mattress.  That is the number one most exciting thing.  I've been sleeping on an inch thick cotton pad set atop a particle board frame (twin sized) that leaves me less than rested and with an aching back and hips every morning.  International cable TV with limited channels, but there's HBO and Cinemax which far surpass the CSPN (Chinese knockoff of ESPN) and the English language government run station that only plays Chinese language lessons and fluff news pieces. Though I may still have to flip back to CSPN for the World's Strongest Man competitions and the Snooker World Championship. I would love for the interior designers of the Crowne Plaza to come design my bathroom someday. It's all sandstone marble with a dark brown granite countertop and an in-set deep white procelain sink.  Very modern Asian and very cool. But my two favorite bathroom features are the enormous deep bathtub that would only be better if it had jets and the proper shower stall (separate from the tub) with two shower heads.  There are few places in this part of the world where you can find a bathtub, and even if there is a tub it is rare that you'd want to get in it. Usually there isn't enough hot water to fill it, or more often the water there is to fill it smells so badly that soaking is not appealing.  And it's nice to be able to shower in a stall without getting the whole room wet.  Most places have a shower head mounted on the wall and a drain that is often at the highest point of the bathroom floor.  Add to that the fact that the sink, floor drain, and toilet often share the same piping system, and it makes for a rather odiferous experience.

The next time you hear from me, I will be back on US soil.  My flight is tomorrow afternoon to Newark, straight over the North Pole, and then I'll be connecting to Boston by Wednesday night.  It will be soooooo good to be home.  Darren and I have spent 5 weeks together since the first of January, so this travel blog is going to come to a screeching halt for awhile so that I can stay home and get back to my normal life.  It's been fun though.  I'm glad to have you guys out there reading along with me.  It makes the world seem a little smaller...

Be thankful for your healthy intestines...

I am so happy to be feeling better today, but it was a little dicey there for a while last night.  I don't know what hit me, but it feels like an 18 wheel semi-truck. I went with a friend to climb the red mountain to a pagoda on the edge of Urumqi and then to lunch before a visit to the regional museum.  Lunch was pullo with carrot salad (cooked) and yoghurt.  Okay, so maybe the yoghurt was homemade which makes it a little suspicious, but it tasted fine.  And the carrot salad was cooked.  And it was a nice clean restaurant (by Chinese standards).  So that's the thing.  We're told as foreigners "if you can't boil it, peel, it or cook it, leave it", and I'll admit that I'm not always as diligent as perhaps I should be.  But it gets exhausting after two months, and you get a little careless sometimes.  I do avoid most street food (except kebab and fresh cut watermelon).  I eat in nice modern restaurants.  But I think the biggest problem in this country isn't even the water or the street food versus restaurant food.  It's the distinct lack of soap anywhere.  It is very very rare to find a bathroom in china with soap.  I carry a little bottle of hand sanitizer, but that's just me.  The guy cooking my food doesn't have his pocket cleanser.  And if he happens to have an infection, goes to the bathroom, rinses quickly with water (at best) and goes back into the kitchen, well, that's when all hell in my digestive system breaks loose.

I started feeling unwell in the evening, and then everything in my stomach came back up.  I called a friend to come over, and she brought me some bananas to ease my stomach and try to soak up the grease from the pullo thinking it just hadn't settled well.  Pullo is rice with lamb, and it's boiled for a long time in a big metal wok with oil.  So it's kind of greasy and heavy and sometimes doesn't agree well.  But an hour after she left, I lost about 2 liters of fluids and suddenly got dizzy and parched.  I called her back because by this point I had lost so much water and wasn't able to keep anything in my stomach and knew I was in danger.  I travel with antibiotics, so I popped a couple of those but knew I needed an IV to replace my fluids.  Mmm, that's fun.  Needles in developing countries.  So when that friend arrived, we called my other friend, who runs the foreigner bar, to ask about hospitals. He's Japanese and also lived in the states through high school and college.  In fact, it turns out that we were both at Cornell at the same time.  And he's been living in Urumqi for 6 years.  So not only does he know the good hospitals in town, he also knows my western expectations of medical hygiene.  So we hopped in a cab and met him and his girlfriend across town at the ER. Well, there was no hopping involved.  There was me doubled over with stomach cramps dragging myself into the cab.

I got checked in, and the doctor, who spoke decent English, started asking me questions. "Have you been drinking?" "No"  "Is your heart pounding" "Yes, a little bit".  So she hooked me up to a heart monitor.  "Hooked me up" is a very accurate description.  I felt like a car battery.  She took four clamps and connected one to each of my wrists and one to each of my ankles.  Then she lifted my shirt and put five little suction cup electrodes in various places over my left torso.  I'm not sure what she read, but I guess it was fine.  Then they did a blood test, which I guess came back fine.  Most of this got explained in Chinese to my friends.  I just sat and let them poke me and stick me hoping that eventually I would rejoin the world of the healthy.  But I did see needle packages opened in front of my eyes.  Very good. 

After the blood draw, I was moved back downstairs where we were told there are no beds.  Instead there was a big room full of sick people sitting in uncomfortable chairs hooked up to IVs.  Then all of a sudden there was not only a bed, but a bed in an empty room.  Apparently Hiroshi's girlfriend knows someone on the staff at the hospital.  That's how this place works.  You get things far easier if you know someone or have money.  So I got a bed, hooray.  And 1 ½ liters of saline plus glucose and an anti-nausea drug which rocked my world.  I started feeling better almost instantly.  Well, almost instantly after the nurse actually found a vein.  My veins are very very small as it is, and I was dehydrated to the extent where they were almost non-existent.  She stuck me in my right hand but missed.  I can't watch when they do this, but after she withdrew the needle and I saw that she was switching to a smaller guage, I said "*I* could have told you that was too big."  Second attempt worked, and by 7 am I was discharged and on my way back to the hotel.  I'm feeling a little weak and empty, but my veins have all reappeared, I can eat small bits of bland food, and my "functions" seem to be slowly returning to normal.  Hooray…

On being American in the Muslim world...

Things have been…eventful lately.  I've been fully immersed in Ughyur culture for both the good and the bad.  First the good.  A couple of days ago, one of my friends invited me to her Ughyur dance class.  That was fun.  We went across campus and up a hill to the arts school where she takes a beginning dance class.  The campus is fabulous – like any arts school anywhere, you see students sitting outside jamming, but the difference between here and home is that they're playing traditional instruments from this region.  First we saw a group of men with one playing the dutar and the others singing in chorus.  The dutar is a two-stringed instrument with a fat gourd-like body and a very long and delicate thin neck.  The sound is very evocative of its middle eastern roots.  And I think the young men enjoyed the audience.  The dance class was fun to watch, since I had been to the big dinner theater here where it was brightly lit with fabulous costumes but a little overly produced.  The authentic experience is in watching ordinary people learn and perform because, as I have been told "every Ughyur person knows how to play dance." Dancing and music are integral to the culture, and it's a deep heritage far different from the concept of "dance" in the US. After the dance class, we came upon another group of men playing a traditional hand drum.  It's round and flat, much like a tambourine except that it's stretched with sheep skin that has metal rings hanging from the edge.  It is played by both shaking and thumping the hands against the sheep skin and has a deep drum-like and metallic rattling sound at the same time.  Very cool.

Then today I arranged to meet another friend in the morning to visit her English class.  She is an assistant instructor at one of the language centers in town, and when her students learned that she had a new foreign friend, they all wanted to meet me.  So we walked toward the center of town into a highrise building, up four flights of stairs into a winding suite of classrooms.  They teach English, Chinese, Ughyur, and Russian, and apparently most of their students are Ughyur with a few foreigners from time to time.  But not many.  Only one of the students had ever spoken with a foreigner, and word spread like wildfire through the school that I was there. Before I knew it I was perched on a stool on a stage with a microphone in my hand.  The questions started simply. "What is your name? How old are you? Why are you here? How long have you been here? Do you like Xinjiang? What do you like about Xinjiang? What is your favorite Ughyur food?"  And then they got a little more complex as students warmed up and felt more bold.  The first challenging question was "Do you believe in God?"  Imagine answering that to an audience of about 80 Muslims.  I gave a delicate and truthful answer about being raised Christian and yet believing that all religions are cultural interpretations of the same "God".  That seemed to go over okay.  Their language skills are just about good enough to understand me, but not good enough to carry on a discussion about the topic.  Then I got "Is Michael Jackson Muslim?"  That was a stumper.  Good question.  Uh, yes? No? How do you explain that the Michael Jackson version of "Nation of Islam" doesn't really have much to do with the centuries-old Muslim faith.

But the real winner was "Why does America hate Afghanistan?"  At first I didn't fully understand his accent well enough to get the question, and my friend started to try to explain it. One of the teachers had a pained look on his face and said "No, no, don't.  Don't tell her." I had caught enough to understand the question and said "No, I want to hear what he asked and would like to talk about this."  I assured everyone that it was okay, smiled at the very embarrassed student, asked for the question to be repeated, and gave a long but simply worded answer trying to explain a little bit about America.  I started by saying that no, Americans don't hate Afghanistan.  In fact, the average American can't even find Afghanistan on a map (laughter from the class).  I explained that decisions were made by my government that a lot of people in the United States don't agree with. I talked a little bit about the election process and how we all get a chance to vote and change our government and that enough people were unhappy with American policy to vote for someone who will hopefully do things differently.  I tried to explain that, contrary to China, the American government can change dramatically in a short amount of time, and that I hope this is one way that we are changing - by having a better relationship with Muslim countries.  But at the same time, I explained the concept of "you break it, you buy it" and told them that we have contributed to an unstable situation and now have to stick around until we can make things right and give the countries (both Iraq and Afghanistan) back to their people.  He seemed okay with my answer, but I'm not entirely sure how much he understood.  He's a beginning English student.  Some of the more advanced students clearly understood and were smiling and nodding at points, so I hope that they can at least discuss it with him.  In any case, I felt bad because he left soon after that.  I'm not sure if he didn't like my answer or if he was embarrassed because the teachers tried to stop him from asking the question.  He lost a lot of face in feeling like he had crossed a line, and I feel bad for that even though it was out of my control. 

Most importantly, it's one little step in the big goal of "winning hearts and minds".  And it's critical if we're going to make progress.  People in this part of the world have a narrow view of the Western world – particularly America.  They believe what they're told and see in movies and on the news, and most have never seen evidence to the contrary.  I hope that through my being open and communicative, I can convince one by one that we're not evil and hateful people bent on a Crusade against the Muslim world. A lot of misconceptions here (and in the US) are due to lack of dialogue and lack of education.  At least this experience ranked second in nerve rattling to the guy in Kashgar last year who told me he hates Americans and wants to move to Afghanistan to marry a Taliban woman and raise sons to kill American soldiers. That was an eye-opener as to just how much damage has been done to our reputation and how far we have to go to win back even basic respect.

Was it something I said?

I am now having to post my blog entries via email, because the dear PRC internet police have censored blogspot.  Hooray.  So in addition to not being able to post, I'm not even able to access my blog to see if this is working.  I'm just thankful that google at least has the email publishing option available so that I can keep this going for my last week here by sending the updates to blogger via email.  Thanks to Darren and his creative creation of my "post to" address.  I married a man who thinks he's funny.  So not funny, Darren...

I spent a great day with my friend Meripet a few days ago – shopping again.  I think I've shopped more in two days than I usually shop in a whole year.  But I'm looking for a dress for a friend's wedding, and it's best to do that here rather than in the three days after I arrive home and before the wedding while recovering from jetlag.  And I found the dress.  And two other shirts.  But the shirts were about $3 each, so that's awesome. 

After dress shopping, Meripet and I headed to the Ughyur market to look for shoes.  She told me you can find guys on the street selling shoes for about $5 a pair.  That sounds like a steal to me.  So we headed back to the area near the university where I was walking with Nigar.  More throngs of people and men shouting "Besh kuai, besh kuai, besh kuai!" "Besh" is apparently five in Ughyur, and "kuai" is the monetary equivalent to buck.  Just about everything is five yuan, which is about 80 cents.  Also awesome.

We cut around a corner away from the busy market street and down a side alley with a bunch of food vendors and ended up in a Ughyur medicine shop.  Meripet thought they might have a particular tea I bought last year in Kashgar. She started talking with the guy and explaining what I was looking for, and he said he knew and started putting together tea and rose and saffron into a giant metal urn that he ground with an equivalently giant metal pestle.  I think that gets used to grind everything in the shop from flattened lizards to bull testicles, so it'll be interesting to see what this "tea" tastes like and what it does.  I wonder if it could be mildly hallucinogenic just from the contact with other weird ingredients.  Unfortunately, the subtle hints of rose and saffron are a little overpowered by the trace contact with cloves, but it was the experience that counts most.  After pouring the strongly scented fine powder into a sheet of paper from a Ughyur magazine and folding it up into a neat little triangular package, he and Meripet started to talk about her health.  I sat watching with interest, precariously perched on a tiny stool next to a bucket of writhing, fighting, and generally pissed off live scorpions.  Apparently they're a good remedy for arthritis.  The guy was explaining to Meripet her early onset anemia, etc and then asked if I would like to have my medical conditions read.  Sure, why not?  So I moved to the stool across the doctor's table, and he took my wrist in his hand, fingers over my pulse, inspecting my nails.  He's looking me over for a while and then said that I have back pain during my monthly cycle.  Um, not so much, but I keep listening.  Then he says that my appetite isn't so good.  This is pretty true.  It comes and goes, and some weeks I am completely ravenous all of the time.  Most of the time I eat little bits of a lot of things, but I'm never really hungry enough to sit and mow through something.  So I'm still listening (all through Meripet's translation), and he said that I have trouble sleeping at night.  But in particular he said that it's because I have trouble turning off my mind.  He said that I think too much in my sleep.  I do have some of the absolutely strangest dreams.  At this point, I asked Meripet to ask him what it is that he sees in me that allows him to say these things.  In some ways it's like going to a "psychic", but I do think that they are just really observant men who pay attention to the tone of your skin, the health of your hair and nails, the circles and spots on your face, and they read all of those little signs that something's not settled.

And then he said that my "womb is cold".  I'm still not entirely sure what that means.  Meripet tried to explain, but I think it's one of those cultural and language things that may have no direct translation.  It isn't a specific temperature cold, but it isn't a metaphysical cold.  He said I should have no trouble having children, but I would still like to know what a "cold womb" means. Apparently it has something to do with me being "out of balance", and I have to change my diet to eat more "hot" foods to warm it up.  Apparently coffee and fried things are considered "hot".  Mmmm, fried chicken…

After leaving the kind doctor to his curled up dried snakes and starfishes, we continued down the street, turned on another block to buy meat on sticks (kebab on real sticks – as in tree branches) and up another street to a really big herbal medicine shop.  This place was like the Costco of herbal medicine.  They had everything – herbs, minerals, corals, teas, lizards, snakes, turtle shells, starfish, seahorses, flowers, roots, tree sap, etc etc etc. And in HUGE jars and bins. I wandered the room asking "what is this? What is this?" and came upon a small table stacked with reindeer antlers.  Very sad, because those reindeer aren't running around in the wild now with no antlers.  They're not running around at all.  Next to the gray fuzzy antlers were three half-liter bottles of a gray liquid that looked like powdered reindeer antler - until I went to pick up the bottle.  I was expecting the bottle to weigh the same as a bottle of water, so it was roughly the same experience as taking a step down and realizing it's a little further than you'd estimated. The bottle weighed a ton.  I had to put it down the inch I'd managed to lift it and try again with both hands.  Mercury.  Great.  I picked up a half- liter bottle of pure liquid mercury.  I said "this is toxic" and they guy said "no, the toxin has been taken out."  Okay.  Mercury is an element. And mercury is toxic.  So how exactly does one take the toxin out of mercury? I mean, I understand that liquid mercury is "less toxic" than mercury vapor, but it's still a little unsettling when you realize you're holding about a thousand thermometers' worth of the stuff.

 

my suddenly overflowing social calendar

This plan of mine to acquire meals seems to be working out nicely, and I'm making tons of new friends. Nigar, the female law student, and I went for dinner two nights ago. She's super sweet and outgoing. She wants to study international law so that she can use her language skills. We met up again today and spent hours and hours shopping in the clothes markets. Not really buying anything, just sort of wandering. Tomorrow and Saturday I have plans either with her or with two other friends. The two other friends are also May babies, so the three of us are going to a nice dinner to celebrate our birthdays. Then Sunday for lunch I am meeting the Japanese owner of the Fubar - foreigner owned bar in town. And Sunday night I am meeting up again with Anwar, the Ughyur student who I had dinner with a few nights ago. So that's the next three days worth of social events and meals already scheduled. Rock on.

So not surprisingly, my outlook on being here for the next two weeks has taken an up turn. Funny since it's usually the other way around and I enjoy my time overseas until the last two weeks when I'm starting to look forward to being home. Since I'm getting out a little more, I'm falling in love all over again. Though I'm still so looking forward to being home. Xinjiang really is a unique place. It is China and therefore Chinese, but it is also an incredible melting pot of diverse cultures and therefore not so much Chinese. The area right here around the school is mostly Ughyur, so you can walk down the street and snack on samsa (like samosas - baked dough wrapped around lamb and onions), kebab and nan, pullo (rice mixed with red peppers and lamb), or stroll through the street carts for noodle dishes, slices of watermelon, nuts, raisins, any other assortment of fruits. The sidewalks are also jammed full of people hawking clothing, belts, watches, shoes, hats, balloons, toys, etc. It's a sea of bodies. A sea of bodies without much concept of deodorant, but a sea of very interesting people nonetheless. I don't blend in but at the same time it's a very international-looking crowd. There are people with light brown hair, red hair, fair skin, light colored eyes. The eyes are incredible. Some of the people around here have dark rings around the iris and a light golden eye color that looks like it glows hauntingly from within. And the sounds are incredible. In addition to men standing on stools shouting the prices for their wares, there are CD stores blaring Ughyur music into the streets. You could easily and quickly imagine you're in an entirely different country. Until you catch sight of the Chinese paramilitary police camped out with assault rifles on a street corner...

And speaking of a melting pot of cultures, the Fubar has to be the most fascinating bar in all of China. I wandered in again last night, and the place had me and the Japanese owner and then also Chinese, British, Dutch, Kyrgyz (from Kyrgyzstan, not Chinese Kyrgyz), a couple of guys from Africa (who claim they're from New York), and I'm sure more that I just hadn't identified. The Kyrgyz were funny. They were complaining that the vodka they ordered came in a glass rather than a bottle, and they weren't served shot glasses. They also apparently order vodka in grams in the former Soviet Union, and it was a big problem with them that things here aren't done the same as at home.

Then there are the Chinese locals that frequent the bar. There are a few women who seem to have claimed the place as their own. They burst through the door in an attention grabbing "look at me" show, speak loudly in english to all of the foreign expats they know, put their handbags behind the bar, and order "the usual". Then they proceed to make themselves an annoyance to anyone who will listen. They are not like the average Chinese and almost seem to be having an identity crisis trying to emulate what they see of foreigners from watching too much television. One gal last night came in with puffy eyes and bedraggled hair complaining about her hard day at work because she had to stay past 7 for a dinner meeting. Another gal a few days ago shoved me over to make room for her friend at the bar and put her hand on my lower back calling me "sweetie" in a very condescending tone. And then proceeded to blow smoke directly in my face. Fun fun. But it's fantastic people watching and an incredible psych study in the rising middle class spoiled brat phenomenon. It is an expensive bar by Chinese standards (about average for an American bar) and so the local patronage doesn't have a lot to complain about their lot in life. But it's also a bar and therefore a place where a certain category go to look for an ear to bend against their woes. True in any country, I guess, but particularly fascinating here.

new food finding strategy

Food. It's the most stressful thing about being on my own here. Getting around is no problem. I can ask someone to write addresses in Chinese that I can show a cab driver. There isn't much that I can't reach on foot anyway. And I have my hotel key card with the name and address so that I can always get to my temporary home again. But eating is stressful. I think about my next meal all day long - can I find someone willing to eat with me? Will I actually be able to suck it up and point at a stranger's plate to say "I'll have that" if I get that needy? Can I be patient enough to find that goldmine restaurant with an english menu or at least pictures of the food at which I can become a repeat customer? Besides the foreigner bar on the other side of town, which I do love but would feel strange frequenting every night of the week. And I have to plan in advance so that I don't get too hungry which always turns me very moody and emotional. So far I'm doing okay, but I keep getting lucky.

This evening I decided "okay, I'm getting brave. Time to get out there and just look for a place on my own." So I wandered down the street looking in the windows of all of the restaurants. Most are too small and local and look a little dark and intimidating. But the big restaurants are full of people who will stare at me - also too intimidating. I had finally settled on a place I'd been to with friends before that has outside seating, so it seemed a little more comfortable. I turned around to go back in that direction when a young man walked up next to me and said "do you have time to talk with me?" English practice. This happens all of the time. Multiple times a day I get approached by young college students wanting the opportunity to practice their English. 99% of the time, they're Ughyur. The Chinese are too shy, but the Ughyurs seem to have much more outgoing personalities. Perhaps because they know their pronunciation is very good. The pronunciation of the Ughyur language is more similar to English than is Chinese, so they do have a much easier time communicating with me. I have had a few women come up to me, but most of them are men - again, more bold and confident. The hairs on the back of my neck are very well tuned, so most of the time when someone comes up to me, I make pleasant chitchat with them for just a moment and then quickly extract myself. I just get a weird vibe sometimes that the first question they want to ask is "are you married?" This guy, Enwar, is the first man I've met lately who didn't give me that feeling. So we spoke for a few minutes, and I told him that I was looking for a place to eat but that I do not read Chinese or Ughyur, so the menus are challenging. He offered his suggestions, and then I just decided to ask if he had already eaten dinner. I clearly surprised him, but we agreed it would be a nice favor to me as well as an opportunity to practice his english, so we settled in a very crowded, very public, and very well-lit restaurant (that's for all of you who are going to worry that I take too many chances :) Over dinner, he gave me a lecture about safety, and then he walked me to the gates of the university but not all of the way to the hotel. He seemed to have a good sense of what was appropriate. It was a nice conversation, a good dinner, and now I have a new friend. Everyone here asks for my phone number, so it's kind of nice that I don't have a chinese number. I give them my email address instead. I've given my email address to half a dozen people already, and none of them have written to me. But it would be nice to keep in touch with a few people.

And tomorrow night I am meeting a woman who approached me yesterday in the same way. She is a law student here at Xinjiang University and wants to go to dinner with me. Score another meal. It's my treat for anyone who wants to come eat with me, since they're doing me such a huge favor. I can't afford to become the Incredible Shrinking Woman in my last two weeks here. And it's far nicer than eating alone anyway.

On the short walk from the university gate to the hotel, I encountered a woman carrying a basket of flowers that was half her height and a third of her weight. Poor thing. She was taking 10 steps and stopping, again and again. So I felt sorry for her and decided to take the handle of the basket to share the weight and get her where she was going. Little did I realize that was going to be clear to the *other* side of campus. At least a half mile walk. I didn't mind, and I'm glad I did. She'd probably be struggling with that basket until tomorrow morning at the rate she was going. But she kept trying to talk to me in Chinese. Not much point to that. I just kept smiling and trudging on with her gianormous floral arrangement, chuckling to myself at all of the strange looks we were getting.

Identity Crisis

The student I came with left yesterday for another collection in southern Xinjiang, so I'm more or less on my own now. I'm still working in the lab here, and I have a little duckling troop of assistants for anything that I need, but for all intents and purposes I'm alone. This is good and bad. Good because the peace and independence is kind of nice. Bad because now I have to feed myself and find ways of accomplishing what needs to be done. First for feeding myself. I do okay for the most part. I can't read Chinese or Ughyur, so menus are a bit challenging since English is a rarity, but I'm easily able to convince some of the students to join me on occasion. I've gotten a couple of instant noodle bowls from the quickie mart across the street just in case I find myself in a bind. And otherwise I'm planning to just go places on my own and point at what other people are having. No big deal. Eating alone sucks though. I think this is why I like street food so much. I love to be able to get something on a stick that is mobile so that I can give myself sustenance while wandering about and not have to sit sadly at a restaurant table in a foreign country by myself. But I will do what needs to be done. The cool thing is that I do know of a foreigner-owned bar/restaurant in town that I've been to a couple of times. That's going to be nice every once in awhile. I met the owners when I was in kashgar last year, and they're cool guys. The food is okay - not great but at least I can read the menu. And they have a full bar which rocks. A full bar including a very well stocked top shelf of scotches. And considering the currency value difference between here and home, I think I may have to make my way through that shelf over the coming weeks. It's a good opportunity to try to new scotches without going completely broke.

So that's all okay, but somehow obtaining money this morning was a colossal pain in the butt. I needed to pay the driver who brought me animals this morning, and my student was supposed to leave me with funds before he took off. He forgot but then told me that I should just use my own money. Fine except that I hadn't yet withdrawn any of my own money because his funds were covering everything, and I only had about $30 in cash. So Mr Ma, the driver dude, took me to the bank this morning. Two hours later, I finally have funds. I was nervous about it being a problem because I wasn't able to withdraw from the Bank of China ATM when I first got here. I emailed my bank, and they said I had input something wrong. So this morning I tried again. FAIL. Ok, no big deal. I knew the money was there and my account is fine, so we took a number, and I went to the cashier window to have them withdraw the funds. I hand over my bank card and my passport. She looks at the back of the card and my passport signature and says "The signature is not the same." The signature stripe on my card says "see id". Something I've been happy with up until now because at home it makes people ask for my license more often. She also seemed okay with this until she looked at the name in my passport and said "This name on your card is not your name." Crap. HUGE problem in China - they don't get the concept of a middle name. My bank card says "Kimberly L Cooper", and my passport says "Kimberly Lynn Cooper". I showed her that the signature in my passport says "Kimberly L Cooper", and the photo is clearly me, but she just kept saying "no no no, it's not the same." I almost didn't get on a flight in China last year because my ticket said "Kimberly Cooper" instead of "Kimberly Lynn Cooper." So I asked to speak with the manager. Same thing. "This is not the same, you can't use it." He said I have to call my bank and get a new card with the correct name. Okay, yeah, let me get right on that. So I kind of lost it a little bit. I managed to keep my temper in check, but not my tear ducts. Something about being soooo tired and ready to be home and then having someone question my identity was just too much to bear. I just wanted money. I didn't want to explain the American tradition of middle names and initials, and it wasn't doing any good anyway. I just wanted money.

Two banks later we finally found an ATM that took my card in exchange for cold hard cash, so all is well. No one needs to panic that I'm destitute in the streets. I'm glad I was with Mr. Ma though. He was our driver last year and is a very nice young guy who speaks quite good English. All very good because he and I were able to communicate to get this done, and he knows me well enough to not freak out when I sort of lost my composure.

Surviving transit

Riding in a car in China is a bit like being helplessly trapped in a rocket playing a game of “chicken” with oncoming traffic on a narrow winding road with bicycles, children, and old people on either side and with the occasional herd of sheep thrown in just for fun. There’s also the bonus that I almost always get the front seat, since I’m considered an honored guest, so I get to be up close and personal with the visions of my life flashing before my eyes. The roads are potholed and bumpy, so often cars traveling in oncoming directions will swerve partially into each other’s path to avoid the same obstacle or to pass another car, and there’s a constant sound of horns warning those slower and more vulnerable to stay the hell out of the way. Add to that the joy of flying in a beat up old car with a whining engine, a seat that isn’t firmly bolted into place so that you can feel your whole body shift with every swerve, and a seatbelt that’s really just for show. For real – I’m shocked by the number of cars with non-functioning seatbelts. And if it does work, and you decide to be conscientious and latch it into place, you often get a hurt “What? You don’t trust me?” look from the driver. Though on occasion when we pass a police officer, the driver will reach over and drape the shoulder harness over himself in a mock attempt to look like he’s wearing it. As if it takes so much extra effort to complete the action. However, by some miracle I cannot recall ever seeing an auto accident here.

From the rural roads to the highway it gets no better. Three lanes of traffic all going in the same direction may, for the most part, solve the problem of oncoming vehicles, but then a new problem arises in that the lane markers are really just “suggestions”. Much like stop lights and crosswalks. Purely optional. In heavy traffic, three lanes can be considered four or five as drivers half merge in and out and between looking for an opportunity to get ahead of everyone around them. Turn signals are meaningless since so many cars are using their hazards and hence have flashing lights that aren’t so useful for warning against sudden lane changes. Or they turned their turn signal on five miles back and forgot about it. Or they just can’t be bothered. And why was there traffic to start with? Because a buswas stopped on the side of the road for a leg stretch, and everyone driving past had to rubberneck to see what was going on. Meanwhile it seems that I was the only one who even blinked at the truly shocking sight of the ride. We pulled up alongside a truck traveling at a slightly slower speed, and I glanced over to look. Sheep. Cool, some guy heading to market with his sheep. Then I realized that the operative word here is “head”. No, not a truck full of sheep. A truck full of sheep heads. Decapitated crania of ovines. Just the heads. More than two hundred of them all piled in on top of each other with no tarp or cover and open to all manner of insects and the hot midday sun. I do not want to know where they were going or what purpose they will serve. But that is a sight that will take a long time to purge from my memory.

Happy Loyalty Day

Today was Labor Day in a significant portion of the world. Yes, I know Labor Day in the US is the first Monday of September. Apparently in the US, as I just learned, May first is “Loyalty Day”. As per Wikipedia: “The holiday was first observed in 1921 as "Americanization Day,” and was intended to counterbalance the celebration of Labour Day on May Day (May 1), an internationally celebrated holiday which was perceived as communist.” Hmmm, Red Scare, anyone? But for us here, Labor Day was yesterday. Xiao Lin, the graduate student from our colleague’s lab who has been assisting us, invited us to her family’s home in Changji which is about 2 hours away just on the other side of Urumqi. So we caught a cab to nearby Fukang where we were met by her uncle who drove us the rest of the way to her parents’ house. I can only describe the visit as one of those never ending meals where your hosts are not satisfied they’ve fed you enough until you’re so full than an emesis is near. We started with a huge spread of two types of chicken, fish, and several dishes of vegetables. I’m a little suspicious of the chicken. If I’m correct, then it was an incredibly sweet gesture. A couple of weeks ago I was missing Darren’s fried chicken and started to wax poetic about the recipe and the texture and flavors of his masterpiece. For anyone who hasn’t had the opportunity to try it, you’re missing out. Melt in your mouth juicy goodness in a crispy shell. Mmmm. So after that conversation, I think Xiao Lin may have said something to her mother because what we had was not quite fried chicken but could be seen as an attempt. It was dredged in flour and loads of yummy spices but not quite fried golden. The reason I’m suspicious is that it’s the one dish they kept pushing my way with glee. It was super tasty.

Then for dinner was home made Xinjiang noodles. I got a chance to watch them being made which was fun. Though I was told there wasn’t enough time to properly teach me. I’m sure that’s true. It looked pretty intricate and like one of those things for which there is no recipe. You learn from your mother who learned from her mother and etcetera up the matrilineage. The dough is rolled out into a long snake, then pulled thinner, then stretched to the final noodle thickness. Then they’re boiled quickly and come out soft and slightly chewy. They go perfectly with whatever vegetable or meat dish is served to accompany drizzled with a touch of vinegar. Yum.

The day had a somber tone though. I had one of those conversations that sometimes happens when you’re an American traveling in a developing country. Xiao Lin’s aunt has breast cancer, and her family saw me as a beacon of hope. It broke my heart to tell them that I don’t know that there is anything I can do. They started by asking if I can buy medicine in the States to send back to them. They said it’s not an issue of money, but they think there must be better treatments in the US. I tried to explain that I can’t just go buy cancer drugs and put them in the mail. Someone in the US would have to see her, and she’d have to be under a doctor’s care there for weeks if not months. After talking to them more, it sounds like her cancer is metastatic already, and her doctors are putting her on a regimen of chemo and radiation. She’s seen another doctor in Beijing who told her that her doctor here is doing exactly what they would do there, but she thinks that Harvard must have advanced technologies that I would know about. She’s worried about the treatment making her really sick and about losing all of her hair. I tried to explain that people in the US with advanced stages of breast cancer also go on really nasty drugs that make you sick and lose your hair. I’m not an MD, so I couldn’t advise with any sort of medical knowledge, but I told them I would at least try to see what I could find out about the best doctors in China – perhaps someone trained in the US. The gentle pleading look in her husband’s eyes when she wasn’t there to see is what dug into my heart. If anyone knows anything that could help, please let me know. I feel the need to try to do at least something.

Jackie was kind of right

This is going to be difficult to write in a way that most people at home will understand, because Chinese culture is just so phenomenally and fundamentally different from anything we're used to. But when Jackie Chan said last week that "Chinese need to be controlled", he was kind of right. I know that sounds bad. I think that's why there has been a backlash against him over it. But after talking to a lot of Chinese people over the years, I think most would agree in principle with his intentions. And if you look at where the arguments against him are coming from, it’s mainly Hong Kong and Taiwan – not so much mainland China. I've had several political conversations about US democracy versus the "Chinese style of governing". I choose to write it that way because many people in the states call it "Communism", but in the words of Inigo Montoya "I do not think that word means what you think it means." China did used to be a communist (small c) country in the times of Chairman Mao, but the current "Communist" (big C) party isn't like the old days. The current government is struggling to balance support for the common people and the good of society and support for a booming capitalist economy. The key to understanding China is in understanding the first part of that. Capitalism in business is something the Chinese want but only if it doesn't negatively impact what's good for society. And democracy is an entirely separate issue.

Start with the communal attitude. If you wake up early on any morning, you will see large groups (as in 20-30 people) practicing Tai Chi in parks and parking lots all around the country. By mid-afternoon there will be public ballroom dancing in those same places. And late into the evening is the exercise time. All of these events are free and open to the public. I'm currently in a really small town, and a few nights ago witnessed a group of 60, mostly women, engaged in an intricately choreographed dance routine with a small ball that was balanced on the surface of a racket. People here do everything in groups. The result of that much interaction as a group is that you think as a group. Not that the individual doesn't have their own thoughts and aspirations, but the connection to the group is such that everything is done in consideration of the impact to society. Sure some of that is the product of generations of "propaganda" such as the national slogan leading up to the Olympics "Work towards a harmonious society", but at what point does something become propaganda because it was initially part of the culture and then the propaganda cements it as essential to the fabric of culture?

Which is where the idea of sacrifice comes from. I was talking with my graduate student last night about the swine flu (the conversation inspiring this post). He said that it is the responsibility of governments to make people stay at home. I laughed and said, "That would only work here". He got very agitated with me and tried to convince me that if it is for the good of society, then people must do what their government says. I tried to explain that yes, while I agree in principle, if the US government tried to mandate that people not go to work or out to run errands or visiting friends and family, the average person would essentially say "screw you, I have a life to live". It would have to get very bad before the individual would see how staying at home is a benefit to *themselves* to not come into contact with all of those other people out there who might be sick. A very different way of thinking from "I must stay home because I might get others sick". That's evident even in the way people in this part of the world treat an ordinary cold. Throughout Asia you will see people wearing face masks. I asked once in Japan why this is the case, and someone explained to me that people who are sick wear masks in public to keep other people from getting sick. But the part of the conversation that took my breath away was when my student used an example: "sometimes when a house is on fire the fire department has to destroy other houses around it that aren't on fire to keep the fire from spreading." I couldn’t believe I was hearing him say that. And it dumbfounded him to hear that *never* would happen in the US.

So back to governing and the Chinese needing to "be controlled". It's not that the Chinese aren't capable of making decisions and taking care of themselves. They have local elections that are more like our idea of "democracy". But the Communist Party determines internally the structure of parliament and selects the president and prime minister from prominent party officials. Chinese citizens don't vote for higher offices. And most of them don't want to. They trust the party to do what's best for society because that's how their culture is structured. They fear that with 1.3 billion voices in the mix, chaos would follow. The personal motivations of 1.3 billion people can’t possibly determine what’s best for the group as a whole. Each province is so different. People in big cities are different from small towns and rural areas. There are 56 minority groups in addition to the overwhelming majority of Han Chinese. The average Chinese citizen believes that democracy would bring the downfall of social stability. And that's what is the most important to them. You can see it in the fact that the #1 news headline before the swine flu was the protests in Thailand. China has lately been obsessed with Thailand as an example of a failing democracy, and the Thai instability has barely made a ripple in US news. You can argue that people think this way because it's what their government is telling them, which is entirely true and potentially a mechanism of self-preservation of power. But it's also a snake eating its tail. The government promotes these "stability" memes to preserve its own authority because preservation of their authority promotes social stability, which is what the country needs and ultimately wants.

And I'm not defending all of the government's policies, I'm just saying that I understand why the Chinese people are generally happy with the way things are. But while their way of governing has done a lot to keep China knitted together and moving forward, they've also done a lot of horrible things. Cordoning off villages to control protests and controlling the media message and the internet (no YouTube). Destroying low income housing in Beijing before the Olympics because it "looks bad" and forcibly relocating millions of farmers from below the high water line of the Three Gorges Dam project. And what I think is the saddest policy is the relocation of millions of Han Chinese to Xinjiang and Tibet to "out-populate" minority groups who they see as a threat to social stability resulting in the watering down of some of the world's richest cultures.

I really do wish I understood and could read Chinese to get a better grasp on this place. It's fascinating. I've been here four times now for a cumulative of about 6 months in China, and I feel like I'm just now starting to kind of "get it".

Today my lunch had eyeballs...

Tiny little shrimps. Some of you may have noticed that my food obsession from Spain has been absent in China. There's a distinct reason for that, besides last year's food poisoning. While there is a lot of good food to be had here, much of it is nothing to write home about. The cook at the field station is actually quite good, which is nice if you have to eat the food that one person is preparing three times a day for more than a month. And I'm lucky - a lot of field biologists and paleontologists get by on canned and freeze dried non-perishable things. We are at least in civilization. But I'm a little repulsed by plates of fatback swimming in grease, and the long slices of some sort of vegetable in a shrimp gravy with tiny arthropods staring their beady little eyes at me. Especially when I've seen piles of these dried shrimps out in the hot sun swarming with flies. But you eat what's put in front of you. Even if it's the freshwater fish that everyone here is so fond of. It's really tasty, but there is no concept of the "fillet" here. Fish is either served whole with the head and fins intact, or it's chopped up into little bits bones and all. I just can't work that hard for my food, and I've been stabbed in the tongue too many times by needle-fine ribs.

But one really good thing is that students here have finally started talking to me. You can set your calendar by Chinese shyness - 2 1/2 weeks after arrival. The same happened last year. I sit in the cafeteria, walk through the labs, wander the grounds of the field station, and people smile with a tiny bit of fear in their eyes. Then eventually a few will start to say "hello", and finally they are brave enough to show that they really can speak and understand me. They spend those first two weeks afraid that their pronunciation and grammar isn't good enough and worried about bothering me. So two of the students - they're plant biologists working on other projects, not with us - brought me fruit the other day as an opportunity to reach out and be brave. That was really sweet. And it'll fend off the scurvy...

Ironically, those here who talk to me the most are the ones who know the least English. One is Ms. Guo who runs this place. As in she's always clipping around in heels, barking orders, changing sheets, and vacuuming hallways. She's super loud and smiley and seems to absolutely love me even though we can't understand a word the other is saying. She's the one with whom I pantomimed through a laundry washing last year. Another is a woman who seems to be here with her boyfriend. I don't know her name, but in my head she's the nagging girlfriend. She's always squawking at her super shy boyfriend and getting him to wash her dishes. She speaks absolutely no English, but she sometimes follows me around watching me work and talking up a storm as if she expects me to suddenly understand Chinese. She's been trying to teach me some Chinese words, but I'm afraid I'm a horrible language student. The third super outgoing non-English speaker is the laughing Buddha. I also don't know his name, but he was here last year. He's the one who got me in an awful lot of trouble over a bottle of scotch and a bottle of whiskey. Ouch. One should never do shots of really good expensive scotch. And one should always be wary of the words "how much baijiu can you drink?" Unfortunately my colleagues now know I have a pretty hefty tolerance, and they often answer that question for me before I get a chance to understate my "talent".

Mauled by Chinese teenagers

Today was the first day since I was sick that I felt well enough to go for a run which was good since I was starting to develop a little bit of cabin fever-induced depression. All is well now though. I strapped on the sneakers, traded glasses for sunglasses, plugged in the iPod and took off past a busload of Libyan agriculturalists. Self-conscious much? Fighting off side-splitting pain, I must have had an awful grimace, but it didn't seem to deter the group of school kids leaving the local museum, and they greeted me with waves and "hellos". Little did I know they would lie in ambush as I made my circuit through town. I raced a man with a propane tank on a bicycle down a stretch of road, then made the turn down a tree-lined street beginning to sprout its green. Past a public toilet (aka "brick sh*t house") that reeked so foul from 100 yards away I would have to be splitting in half from the most earth shattering bodily functions to enter, and past a man pissing on the side of the road who had decided to take the better option. Around another corner past the coal-fired power plant (I think that's what it is) where there is a conveyor elevator running from a pile of blackened earth to the upper reaches of a building that stands next to a smokestack belching foul fumes. Past the water jets that spew what must be the heated water that serves to cool the power plant. Everything around it is lush green from the extra warm moisture but dusted in black and stinking of the garbage dump nearby.

I was just thinking "This sucks. I must find a new running route cause this is the pits" when the trap was sprung. My predators were waiting on the corner of town they knew I must pass to go back in the direction from whence I'd come. The field station sits at the end of a road shared by the school, and I usually cut across the park on the corner. But without seeing the throng of kids, I decided to round the full length of the sidewalk, and when they saw me approaching they came running shouting "hello" and waving hands. So I shook a dozen hands, said "hello" answered "where are you from", heard them say "you're beautiful" and posed for photos. But they wanted more. So we ran into the park and I was at their whim to play a game. I'm not sure of the name of the game, but it was tons of fun. I was their protector, and they all lined up behind me, about 12 of them. I was supposed to keep them protected from another of their teachers. The long chain of students spiraled and whipped behind me as the man tried to get past to tag one of them and pick them off one by one. Fortunately for my screaming lungs, their English teacher arrived with curiosity to see the new treasure her students had found. So again with the questions, "How long have you been here? Where are you from? What do you do? What University are you from?" Oh that last one was a doozie. I demurely said "Harvard" knowing it would get a reaction but unprepared for the ear-piercing shriek and applause emitted from the bunch.

At around that moment the 10th graders arrive to flank my rear, and I was surrounded. 50 eager teenagers all talking at once. Only one had ever seen a foreigner. And again with the questions. And again when I said "Harvard" the latter half shrieked. And one of the new arrivals said what I really and truly thought sounded like "you have big ass". I must have looked shocked, she looked embarrassed, I smiled, paused, thought for a moment, and realized she was saying I have big *eyes*. Oh yes, much better.

They all wanted my MSN, email address, phone number, wanted to know how long I'm going to be in town, and if they can come visit me at the field station in my free time. I think I just gained a whole new group of friends which may make this place a little more bearable. And they're adorable. One of the girls ran across to the market to get me a bottle of water, and a dozen of them walked me to the gates of the field station. They were protecting me from the crazy lady. There was an old hunched woman in the park who picked up money that fell from the teacher's pocket during the game and agrily refused to return it. And I made an oops, kind of like cursing in front of your friend's kid. I taught a whole group of youngsters the word "crazy". I told them it wasn't a good word to use but then heard one of them refer to the old woman as crazy about five minutes later. Kids are sponges.

I'm glad the timing was good because we're now in the grip of another dust storm, and the sky has turned from blue to gray to brown.

Sheepies...

No jerboas today because there was a big rain storm last night. It actually started as a tremendous dust storm - quite a problem in this part of the world with an infinity of sand to the north. I was sitting peacefully at my desk yesterday evening when it suddenly sounded like the end of the world outside and I turned to see that day had turned to brown night. I feel sorry for the folks who were out in a fields at that time. But the wind ushered in a big rain at around midnight that calmed down the particles in the air, and today was quite a lovely day. But since the sky was falling right around jerboa catching hours, no animals...

We made good use of the day though. After much effort, hair wringing, and gnashing of teeth, I convinced Shaoyuan that we should make contact with the people who collected 5-toed jerboas for us last year and start getting them thinking about doing the same again this year. So we walked into town this afternoon and asked a driver to take us to the home of a nearby Kazakh family. They're sheep herders and also get paid by the government to monitor the lands for illegal activities. It's all public land, but there is some illegal poaching and harvesting of wild herbs. So the government pays local people to monitor the land and also lets them raise their own animals. The guy said they sold 300 sheep last year. He has no formal education of his own, but he's done well enough to be able to send all three of his kids to good schools. That's another thing about China - there is the "one child" policy, but it applies primarily to the Han Chinese. Members of many (if not all) of the ethnic minorities are exempt from this policy and are allowed to have multiple children.

We sat and visited in their house for a little while, and then his oldest son asked if we wanted to go see the sheep. So we drove out further into the desert to a place where we had to scramble over a sand dune and walk down a little valley to a flat clearing where there was a corral full of baby lambs and a yurt. The adult sheep are grazing freely, but they keep the babies closer. Then I guess the adults come and go to nurse the little ones. And they have a horse for herding the sheep when they're off grazing. The oldest son came on horseback to meet us at the top of the dune and let Xiao Lin and I take turns in the saddle for a few pictures. And his mother invited into the yurt to sit on carpets on the ground and have salted tea with sheep's milk. Awesome. I know folks at home have trouble with the concept of salted milk tea, but it tastes great. Especially in the hot desert when you're feeling a little parched all of the time.

Speaking of feeling dehydrated...I have a cold. Blech. It was great to get out and get some sun, because my energy is a lot better now than when I woke up this morning, but I've been drinking liters of water and it all seems to be coming out my nose. I have a good feeling this won't last long though. It's just an ordinary cold - not another case of the Chinese Green Nasties.

A little bit of thumb twiddling...

The good news is that the animals have started to come out and are beginning to breed. The bad news is that they aren't in great numbers yet, so it's going to be a little bit of a waiting game. The nights are still quite cold, so I think they're staying down in their little burrows and are only coming up in short stretches to feed and scurry home again. The folks collecting for us have been out about 4 hours in a night and are only seeing a handful of animals compared to 80 in a night when we were here later (when it was warmer) last year. But this means we'll get the early embryos when they're ready to start collectively "doing their thing".

In the meantime I'm finding ways of entertaining myself. I've learned from these field collections in China that I'm really good at being alone. Much better than I ever thought I was actually. I'm quite content to sit here and read some science for awhile, catch up online with friends, read a book, and just chill. The student I work with, on the other hand, is a little bit needy. So he comes round several times a day wanting me to entertain him. Which usually involves getting into some sort of argument about something. Maybe that's in part why I'm enjoying being alone so much. But the other good thing is that I'm starting to go running again. It's an awesome stress release and gets some of that cooped up energy out of me. Plus it's fun to see people's expressions. First of all, no one here goes running. So they all seem to think I'm a little insane with my sneakers on and my headphones in jogging around town. Second, my pale whiteness glows like the moon on a clear night around here and have the fairest hair around. So seeing me jog by is probably a bit of a sight. But most people smile, a few stare too awestruck to make much of an expression, and the kids will sometimes even say "hello". I had to jog through a group of about a dozen 10 year old boys the other day. Oh boy that was funny...

There is a young man in the town who I wrote about last year and again a few days ago. He's a musician who has been struggling with his friends to balance their passion with reality. It's a sad story, really. They collectively dumped their entire savings into producing a CD and printed thousands of copies with confidence that it would sell well and they would be on their way to stardom. Unfortunately that didn't happen, they're all broke, and they're in varying stages of depression. This young guy seems to be coping alright, but apparently several of his friends have gotten into drugs and drinking in excess. He said that's common in the music scene in China right now. It sounds like they're collectively going through a little bit of the middle class angst ridden thing that the US music scene saw in the 90s. "Oh woe is me, I have more money now but I'm still not happy with my life and no one understands" kind of thing. But he still loves music and was excited to hear that I brought my computer with my whole iTunes collection. So he plugged in his MP3 player, and I transferred about 3 Gb of stuff to him. That should keep him busy for a little while at least. He brought another bandmate last night, and we all sat up talking and listening to tunes for awhile. It was an interesting conversation (through translation) about traditional versus modern Chinese music styles, western influence, and language differences between English and Chinese. I asked, because of the tonality, if it is more difficult writing lyrics in Chinese and if there are any tonal constraints to the music so that you don't change the meaning. He said no, because the musical tonality is usually so different that it doesn't change the meaning, and that people with different regional dialects still understand each other. I understand, but it still seems funny to me. When people ask where in China I've visited before, no one ever understands me. I can say "Guilin" and "Chongqing" pronounced correctly but without the right tonality, and they look at me like I've spoken gibberish. So then I have to draw it out on a map or describe the location and sights, and then they say "Oh! Guilin" with an entirely different emphasis on the syllables, but it doesn't sound all that different to me. Language is fascinating...

Mmmmm, camel ticks...

I think I've discovered the worst thing about doing field work in the desert in China. Camel ticks. Yucky little critters. I was told last year (but never saw them since I was restricted to the field station due to the impending Olympics) that there were "insects" in the desert that chase you and crawl up your pants. Well today I saw them. They aren't insects. They're camel ticks. About 1/3 of an inch long, and they apparently hang out in the sand to keep cool until they somehow sense a passing potential host. Then they come scurrying out after the individual (camel, cow, horse, sheep, person) in a mindless race to hitch a ride and latch onto a meal. So you have to keep moving faster than this ticks. And ideally gaters are a good idea to keep them from getting under your pants cuff. I'm itchy just thinking about this. I think I'm going to strip down in front of the big bathroom mirror and have a quick check even though I know I'm clean. They just give you the creepy crawlies thinking about them. Though I'm so glad I'm not a girly girl. I had a "discussion" with my student the other day about women doing fieldwork, because he didn't like the idea of bringing along a young female PhD student. He wanted a male student who could help him "in the field" (his favorite phrase). I, of course, got my feathers ruffled that he was lumping women into this wimpy category when I know loads and loads of women who can get just as or dirtier than the boys and can hold up to the heat and hard work. Mmmm, maybe not this one so much. I adore her. She's been so sweet and helpful all week. But she's a city gal. The mere idea of the ticks got the better of her, and there was a minor melt down when she saw the first one. I, on the other hand, was immediately fascinated by their single-minded hunting skills. I'm not sure if it's head, movement, or CO2 that they sense, but they're incredibly quick and efficient.

But we did arrive today, which is excellent. We packed up the van this morning with all of our belongings and supplies and made the hour and a half drive north from Urumqi to the field station at the edge of the desert. It looks perfect. It's warm during the day, and the vegetation is starting to come out, but it's still pretty barren and cold at night. Apparently the low temperature just broke freezing last week, so things seem to be on track for an early collection. We had a look around and set some traps (industrial mouse traps) this afternoon to see if we catch anything overnight. There did seem to be footprints in the sand that look about right for the three toed critters we're searching for, so I think they are out already. We've negotiated with a few local folks to go out and collect live ones tonight, so we'll see what the situation is tomorrow. Either we're going to be very very busy very soon, or we'll have a few days to wait and re-assess.

The drive out to the desert was spectacular (pre-tick). The young musician guy from last year came to pick us up, and then we went to collect his father. His father is apparently a well known local hunter and knows how and where to find these little rodents. This was one of those days I wish I understood Chinese fluently, because the father is fascinating. He kept trying to share survival skills about how to find water in the desert, info about the ticks, descriptions of native plants, but all of this had to pass through translation from the two students. At least I'm more connected and more involved this year, but the father said to me (through Xialin) that he wishes I understood Chinese, because there was a lot he wanted to teach me. There's a lot I'd love to learn.

But the trip started with a failed start. Of the car, that is. The musician guy (I don't know names, so they're the musician and his father) got a new car since we were here last year. But it's apparently having starter problems and therefore has to be push-started. And it's a small SUV, so it's quite a collective effort to get this thing moving in the middle of the road with big trucks and motorcycles whizzing past. I guess it's supposed to be fixed tomorrow which will be nice, but not nearly as interesting for our story.

The dunes are about a 20 minute drive from the field station, and it's a fascinating drive. The immediate area is farmland, but it's incredibly salty soil. Right now the whole surface of the ground is covered by thick white crystals. It's amazing any plants can come up in this earth. But they are. Then the further out you go, the more barren and sandy it becomes. The agriculture changes from farming to nomadic grazing, and there are yurts (round canvas tents - temporary homes) dotting the roadside. The local sheep and goat herders ride on horseback, so you see flocks of sheep in movement followed by a couple of mounted Chinese "cowboys". It amuses me that they're so fascinated by the American cowboy, when they've got for all practical purposes their own version right here at home. Then right before the landscape changes again to tall loose sand dunes, there was a huge herd of camels. Bactrian camels. Of the two-humped variety. They're endangered, and there are apparently only about 400 remaining in the wild, but there seems to be a pretty healthy domestic population since I've seen them all over Xin Jiang (even rode one last year). Hence the accompanying population of foul camel ticks...

And I just checked out clean. No hitchhikers!

Trans-continental cat surgery

I find it a little difficult to start this blog post without first commenting on our poor kitty back home. Darren and I have been in touch all day because he was dealing with a pukey kitty last night and ended up taking her to the animal hospital at about midnight. They did x-rays and now ultrasounds and seem to think she has swallowed something that is obstructing her intestine. Of course that's serious, and of course they may have to operate. But that means $$$. Damn cat. We love her dearly. She's awesome. She's more doglike and incredible laid back than most cats. But both of them get into EVERYTHING. They play with string, sticks, coins, bread ties, the round plastic bits that seal milk caps, plastic bags, etc, etc, etc. So I'm not terrible surprised, because we're always finding things to take away from them. But geez this sucks. It's the responsibility you take when you adopt a pet, but it's also good practice for kids. Right now I'm not so sure I'm ready to be sitting in an emergency room with a kid who swallowed something. It makes me appreciate the day spent in the hospital when my parents thought my sister swallowed a bottle of perfume. In fact she'd dumped the perfume in the bottom of my purse, *and* it was Tinkerbell which is by definition non-toxic since it's made for kids. *BUT* I can now understand that panicked feeling when something's just not right...

But I'm on the other side of the planet and a little bit helpless right now. My local concerns are more of the "can we get this done" nature. Starting with "can I wait long enough for the water from my sink to run clear that I feel it's safe to make my morning coffee?" Yeah. I woke up this morning to brown water from the tap. It happens. And after 5 minutes or so it was clear, and I made my coffee. I *have* to have my coffee. I'm fully over the jetlag, but for some reason I'm still hitting the afternoon slump. Then it was off to the lab to autoclave all of our water from the weekend. The drawback to having only one autoclave and only one person who runs the autoclave is that when people like us hog the time, everyone else has to wait. I felt a little bad about that. There is a whole lab of about 60 people who are all dependent on this one piece of equipment that we used for about half the day.

And I gave a seminar today. That's fun, because the students here are just starting to get interested in developmental biology because of my visits to this university. They are so much more well-read and more enthusiastic after just one year since our last visit. I always watch the audience when I give seminars to see the smiles and head nods. If a few people are responding, then I know that I'm being understood and all is okay. Last year was a little rough both because of the language difference and the new topic, but this year I had the head nods and smiles. So I think they got it. We also have a PhD student working with us this year who will be taking on a developmental project for her thesis. That's exciting, because she and I will have several weeks to get her started with her understanding. There are peripheral things I'm learning from working here. One is that we're incredible lucky in the states (and canada, australia, NZ, UK...) to speak English natively. Science functions in the english language. Folks here have to learn good science, but they also have to be proficient in english to be able to understand the huge body of literature and to contribute to the community in a meaningful way. The other thing is that my time here is not just for the benefit of furthering my own research. The faculty and students see me as an opportunity to connect with a different part of the research community, so there's a huge teaching aspect. In addition to directly training one of their students, I'm asked to read manuscripts before submission, and I get asked often how to apply for PhD and postdoctoral positions in the US and if I'm willing to act as a reference on their behalf. There are little things about conducting field work in other countries that you don't anticipate when you take on a project like this.

After our seminars, we were invited out for the annual "welcome to Urumqi" banquet. This is quite a sight. The location was the "Tian Shan Virtuous Country Hotel" which is one of the fanciest places in town, even if it has an incredibly odd name. The formal banquet is always held in a private room, and this place was swank with real bamboo in the clear glass walls and glass shadow box tiles in the floor with sand, rocks, and shells. There were 9 of us around a big round table with a lazy susan in the center. The food comes out dish after dish after dish in the center and gets spun around so that your culinary scenery is constantly changing. And then there's the alcohol. I never remember that when someone asks "do you drink alcohol?" they don't mean beer or wine. So when I say "yes if others would like", I forget that means Chinese rotgut. China is not known for it's fine liquors, and there's a reason for that. And they love to drink even though they aren't so tolerant. Just moments before the first toast, the senior professor's wife reassured me that some people in China try to get you to drink too much, but not this lab. And it wasn't "too much" but it was more than enough considering the strength and flavor of this stuff. So it starts with the senior professor lauding his praise on us and thanking us for gracing them with our visit. Then we eat for a prescribed amount of time. Then his wife made a similar toast wishing us much luck in this collection season. Then more eating for a prescribed amount of time. I'm quite proud that I've learned the Chinese way with this custom because just as I felt the correct amount of time had passed, Shaoyuan confirmed that by starting the third toast. Then after an equivalent amount of time, it was my turn to give our praise and thanks for their assistance and assure them that this project could not succeed without their help. Then it moved around the table from person to person with gentle nudging from the senior professor at the appropriate times for the next person to speak. And much alcohol was drank by all. It's all formality and custom, but it's highly entertaining (and useful) from a cultural perspective. This is how the wheels of progress get lubricated.

So now I'm off to sleep and be ready to leave for the field station tomorrow. I think we have everything ready, and it seems that our arrival is very early this year which is excellent. The temperature is warming quickly, so the animals will probably be out of hibernation this week, but the last snow was just last week so there isn't much vegetation. I think we may get our first pregnant females in a week or more so we are in excellent timing for collecting the stages for our work. Even though many of you don't really know what that means or the real importance, it's very good. Keep your fingers crossed that all goes well!

Have patience, fat grasshopper...

So somehow everything here seems to take longer than it should. I spent 5 hours this morning trying to acquire a 20 liter jug of distilled water. 5 hours. With the assistance of 5 students. And apparently there is one technician in a lab of about 60 people who runs the autoclave, and he doesn't work weekends. So we have to wait until Monday to sterilize anything. Fun. It's sort of the moral of the story here. I need something accomplished. I ask. Multiple enthusiastic students hop to my side to help find what I need, but they're all speaking to each other in Chinese and not so much to me about what it is that I need. And then I wait. And wait. And wait. And eventually what I need manages to turn up.

But on the upshot, I have arrived in Urumqi and am settled into my hotel on the edge of campus. I made it with no trouble, but my suitcase of research supplies almost got me into trouble. First my belongings were overweight. You're only allowed to check 20 kilograms of luggage, and my things together with personal travel items and research supplies came to 33 kilos. So I had to take a slip saying how much I was over in weight to a counter where the guy calculated how much I owed. Then I had to go to a third counter to pay the amount and get a receipt which I took back to the guy at the second counter who gave me another slip of paper to take back to the ticket counter so that they would issue my ticket. Which is when the x-ray machine triggered an alarm on my bag. So I had to go behind the ticket counter to try to explain to the guy that I am a researcher with harvard and none of my materials are toxic. Fortunately I had a copy of my chinese business invitation letter and a business card (very handy in China) to verify my purpose and identity. He let me and my things through but not until after he and two other people manhandled all of my belongings. This is exactly why we can't just fly back to the states with our specimens and have to instead ship them through an expensive courier service. Every piece of luggage is x-rayed before it's accepted, and they search everything. It's not so much a matter of "if" I got caught carrying things out of the country, it's a matter of what to do "when" they confiscate a month of hard work. So we spend the money and a great deal of time doing things the legal way.

And then there was the wait for my departure. Where I had my photo taken by a curious young Chinese man. I think he was trying to be sneaky, but since I was sitting alone near a wall, I can't believe he would be taking a photo of the plant or the newspaper stand next to me. I'm used to being an oddity here. No problem. But what I don't understand is that no one seemed to blink an eye when the tall lanky American man walked past in a straw cowboy hat and orange ostrich boots carrying an intricately tooled leather shoulder bag. Even I took a double glance at that one.

For some reason the lab head here sent a woman I have never met to pick me up. She's a very sweet young PhD student who may be coming with us to the field site as an assistant, but she wasn't in the lab last year when I was here. She apparently asked the few other foreigners if they were me before I finally came through baggage claim. And then she hit me with "you're thinner than I thought you'd be after looking at your photo on the lab page. I though you'd be..." and thankfully she didn't finish that sentence. I think I need a new photo for the lab website. It's a funny thing about China - they almost greet you with a comment about your weight. I'm always being told that I'm large or that I've lost weight since someone last saw me. Whatever happened to the good old American greeting of "you look great" even if it's a bald-faced lie? But I'm used to it now and just smile in response. Not a country for the weight conscious or sensitive types.

Nihao from Shanghai

I arrived safely after 27 hours of travel. Boston to Newark, Newark to Beijing, 6 hours in the Beijing airport, and then Beijing to Shanghai. I'm here visiting a lab sort of as a consultant on limb development. They are studying all things bat - echolocation, ecology, behavior, evolution, and one postdoc has recently started looking at limb development. They are excellent hosts, so I have a comfortable place to stay, tons of food, and entertainment around the city. Zhe and I went last night to the big shopping district, Nanjing Road, which is lined with little shops and huge department stores, and everything is lit up in blinding neon. We went into several little specialty food shops with sweets, liquors, chinese medicines, imported chocolates, and a meat market in the back. The meat market was the best. I saw flattened pig face. As in face skinned off of pig. Eyes and ears and mouth and nose. Flattened pancake thin. Awesome.

We went down one of the little side alleys to where there were some food stalls and just picked at a bunch of finger foods for dinner. Waffle-type pastries filled with red bean. Grilled pork wrapped around green onions on a skewer (mmm, food on sticks), sweet sticky rice, and tofu. Yeah, so Zhe says to me "the tofu smells bad, but tastes very good." I think "ok, maybe she doesn't like the smell of tofu." But it's not so bad. I like tofu. Let's have some. Oh noooo. We get a container of fried tofu doused in a red spicey sauce that tastes a lot like buffalo sauce, and she says to me "Smelly tofu." That's putting it politely. I would say rank cow manure-smelling tofu. As in it brought back vivid memories of going to the auction barn with my dad as a kid. I made it through one piece without gagging and then politely said "I think it's a little too strong for my taste." I'm a very adventurous eater. I've had blood sausage, sheep lung, and a lot of things I didn't even know what they were at the time. But this is one thing I just couldn't stomach.

So then we wandered down to the river which seems to separate the main part of Shanghai from the big buildings in the financial district. We got tickets for one of the cruise boats that takes you up the river and back to see the buildings from both sides which is quite lovely. This is the only place I've been where not only are the buildings lit up with neon down the sides, but two of them serve as giant advertising billboards. It was unbelievable the sort of detail these many-storied skyscraper TV screens could project. Aquarium fish in in vivid colors, fluttering cherry blossom petals.

And I held a bat yesterday. Hooray for that rabies vaccine :) This lab has three different species of bat in captivity, and Zhe let me hold one of the littles ones with tiny teeth so it couldn't do much damage if it got away. They're cute little critters...

Only at Carnival...

It was fabulous. We arrived in Santonia at about 7:30 pm after a long day walking all around Santander, and the Carnival parade had just started. I don’t know who won the costume contest, but they were all a lot of fun. Like the Transformers who stopped once in awhile along the parade route and transformed into cars and airplanes. But one of the most fun, for me at least, was Barack and Michelle Obama complete with the Secret Service. It wasn’t just them – it was the fact that later in the night they met up with random other people who were dressed as Al Qaeda, Talibanis, and the Saudis. So many different and fun costumes, many of which wouldn’t go over so well in the States, and many were very driven by American and world politics. I saw more US Army and Navy costumes than you’d see in San Diego on ship leave. But if only the real world could bring opponents to such a fun and slovenly drunken place to sort out their differences…

Early in the evening was full of families and kids running around. Carnival is kind of like Halloween on steroids. There are no age restrictions, everyone’s in costume, and everyone is in group costume. It was amazing. Whole families – mom, dad, and a couple of kids – dressed as lions or ducks or clowns, or priests and nuns. My favorite was the little toddler dressed as a priest sucking on a pacifier on a white chain. So incredibly wrong but so cute. Then as the night wore on and the families disappeared, the younger crowd came out in all sorts of costumes. Mostly men in drag. But not like Brazilian Carnival men in fabulous sequins and feathers-type drag. Men in high-necked dresses with long skirts and their hair in Spanish buns with lots of makeup and rich red lipstick. The gals we met up with, Rocio and her friends who live in Santonia, were all dressed as punk rockers. And they brought costumes for me and Federica. We were “Little Red Riding Hood”. Cute. Very cute.

There were two big stages set up in town with music blasting until 7 or 8 in the morning, and the squares were both packed full at least until we caught the bus back to Santander at 4:30 am. It was good fun, dancing in the streets all night. But we were clearly not the professional party type. No, those were the kids who had packed 2-liter bottles of cocktails to power their alcohol fueled all night frenzy. 4:30 am was late enough for me. I zonked for the entire 30 minute bus ride back, and the 10 minute walk to my apartment was the longest trudge ever known to mankind.

So the next morning, we drove with Marta to visit Comillas. Ok, truth be told, it was afternoon before I dragged out of my apartment. But Comillas was nice and very worth the effort. It’s a village by the ocean that is typical Spanish with windy little streets and old houses. There is an old gothic chapel on a hill that has been converted to a walled-in cemetery. Unfortunately the two main attractions, Gaudi’s house and the religious university that he designed, were both closed for renovations, so we only got to see those from a distance and through scaffolding. But it was a nice visit and better than lying in bed all day. Which is probably what I would have done if not forced into the alternative.

One more full day and then I’m back to Boston. It’s been a great visit both for work and for fun. I haven’t wanted to turn this into a boring lab notebook, but suffice it to say that the main reason I came out here has turned out well. The work was accomplished, and I feel sufficiently trained to go back and do this myself. That is until sometime in the middle of the summer when things might just have to “stop working” so that I have a reason to come back and hang out on the beach, er, I mean slave away in the lab again. I’ve made some really good friends, eaten a lot of great food, had a lot of great drink, and stored away some “reserves” for the imminent trip to China. So stay tuned sometime around March 23rd for that one if you want to follow along some more…

P.S. I added a picture to the post below. This was taken on the subway in Bilbao. The first panel is “don’t hold the door”. The second panel is “don’t enter when the alarm is sounding”. And the third panel clearly reads “don’t sit while conjoined triplets are standing.”