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!
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
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!
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!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
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...
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