Journal of a Sabbatical

China Trip 2000

psssst! cds, dvds?

Quote of the Day: "They can't go without me! I'm their guide!" -- Yang Yong on learning that the gang had left for the airport (and hence Kunming) without him

Today's Reading: The Story of the Stone (a.k.a. Dream of the Red Chamber) by Cao Xuequin

Photos:

View of Incense Burner Peak from the Garden

Empty Alcohol Bottles in the Sink - there has to be a better way to dry the damaged specimens!

István Saying Good-bye to Carol

Isabel and Zsolt Have No Idea They Have Forgotten Yang Yong

Subway Ticket

[9/22/2000] Here I am in Beijing. My luggage finally joined me after five days. I've been to the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the Summer Palace not to mention the botanical garden (which doesn't really count because I live here). Everything is so chaotic I haven't written much in my journal and I can't even remember which day is which.

It is raining here this morning and quite warm so I feel a little damp. The weather has been hot, hazy, and humid during the day with thunderstorms at night. Really dramatic thunderstorms two nights in a row woke me up. Periodic glimpses of blue sky appear as the cold fronts come in and give advance notice of the thunderstorms. It does make for dramatic skies in the afternoon as I walk back to the guest house from the herbarium through the garden. Every once in awhile the top of Incense Burner Peak is actually clearly visible.

For breakfast this morning we finally got coffee! Somehow we got the restaurant here at the Institute of Botany to make coffee for us this morning. It's presweetened and not strong enough, but gives that caffeine fix. They serve the coffee in a glass and hot milk in another glass. I think they boiled the milk. They brought out a plate of sugar cubes too but they were not necessary. The coffee is presweetened. I like tea a lot but I have been missing coffee after a week and a day.

I tried to order noodle soup for breakfast but you can only get wonton soup at breakfast time. I didn't care, I just wanted soup, but it took awhile to get that across. I also got tea eggs. The tea eggs are hard-boiled, cracked, then hard-boiled again in strong tea. They look weird but taste great. I passed on the deep fried bread this morning as it has a bitter aftertaste.

So much to do. So little time to do it. The office and the herbarium are closed for the weekend. Zsolt joked that I should do all my eating and sleeping on the weekend so I can spend all my time working during the week. The harridans who control access to the collection insist on kicking me out at 11:30 for lunch and at 4:00, the end of the work day. Unless I manage to hide in a specimen cabinet I'm not going to be able to devote every waking hour to photographing conifer specimens. My paper journal for 9/22/00 reads "Chinese specimens have white labels with the province name. Foreign specimens have purplish labels." That refers to the regular collection. I'm still working on the Type collection and won't get to them for awhile.

Qin Hai-ning hosted a farewell dinner for the field expedition tonight at a nice restaurant down the street. We have dubbed this the "alternative" to distinguish it from the "usual". Each person specified their favorite dish and then Qin and YY added a few local specialties like half cooked potatoes to the order. There was more than enough food. And alcohol. Everybody but me got into a real party mood. Me, I faked the toasts and concentrated on my ma po tofu.

[9/23/00] The field group left for Kunming. We waved good-bye to them as the van left for the airport. Carol and Rosalie and I are staying here to work in the herbarium. As we were standing in the courtyard talking after they left, Yang Yong appeared! Oops! They can't leave without YY! He ran back to the herbarium and we didn't' see him again so I assume they realized they'd forgotten him and picked him up there. It was quite a shock to see him after the van had left.

Rosalie had some kind of a painful neck spasm, which at first she thought was an ear infection. Once she found out it was a neck spasm, she decided to go downtown and get a room in a luxury hotel where she could get a massage. I went with her while Carol stayed and worked - she could get into the storage room where our specimens are but I couldn't get into the actual National Herbarium collection so it made more sense for me to go with Rosalie. Anyway, we had lunch at the Palace Hotel where she checked into a suite. I took a cab back and learned I still can't pronounce Xiangshan well enough for cab drivers to understand - thank goodness the doorman at the Palace understood my bad pronunciation and translated it for the cab driver.

[9/24/00] Next day Rosalie was feeling much better and invited Carol and me to brunch at Ristorante Roma in the Palace Hotel. Whoever decides what westerners like to eat for brunch must be Hungarian because there was plenty of salami, cheese, and tomatoes. Then it was power shopping in the Silk Street.

First we had to find Silk Street. We got to take the subway, which one of the guidebooks I got yesterday at the Palace lists as one of the top sights of Beijing. It is modern, clean, sleek, quiet and at least today not very crowded. I'm not sure I'd list it as one of the wonders of the modern world or even one of the top ten sights of Beijing - maybe I'm just jaded - seen one subway seen 'em all.

Silk Street is sort of misnamed. Most of what they sell there is not silk and it's more like an alley. A very narrow alley crowded with more people than you can imagine jostling one another for a look at the brand name merchandise. It's North Face parkas, New Balance shoes, and other brand name stuff. You know all the stuff that's made in China and you keep wondering where in China you can buy it because it's not in the stores? Silk Street is where you go to buy it. The sellers compete with each other trying to lure you in and if you stop so much as one second to look at something the salespeople are all over you.

The alley empties into a slightly wider street lined with booths on both sides selling everything under the sun except maybe silk. You'll be walking along and a young guy will sidle up to you and walk alongside you saying "CDs? DVDs?" and sometimes "Computer Software? English." They'd stay with you murmuring "CDs? DVDs?" until you definitively told them no. A few paces later another one of them would overtake you from behind and make the same pitch.

I did buy two cheap silk paintings, one of pandas and one of red-crowned cranes, from an old woman who then followed me around for awhile.

The most interesting thing somebody tried to sell me wasn't actually in Silk Street, it was near Tiananmen Square - a musical cigarette lighter with a portrait of Chairman Mao on it. It played The East is Red. How I passed that up I don't know.

On the way out of the market area we passed the US embassy with the flag fluttering in the breeze. I was so homesick I started singing The Star Spangled Banner. Suddenly other American voices joined in! Funny and sweet and alarmingly patriotic. However, I did not add the words "Play ball!" at the end.