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.