Highlights from the last two weeks

Sorry for not writing. As an attempt to rectify this mistake, I'm posting some of the past two weeks' "greatest hits." I will elaborate on anything people ask in the comment section.

-Slept off my travel

-Learned to fabricate and use AgPDMS from Limu

-Was sick so missed a trip to Guangzhou

-Went to HK Island for Congee with Chih-kuan. Then I bought a pillow and lock for my door, which I installed after some hilarity.

-Started work on my own chips, and developed a high-tech solution to a problem using sandpaper

-Went to the University Choir O-Day (i.e. frosh camp for choir nerds) and bungled my way around with the help of a few handy translators who could tell me what all the cantonese was about

-Missed a choir practice due to a typhoon

-Successfully manufactured three chips (four more on the way), two of which have bad electrodes, and one has blocked channels so is unusable.

-Talked about the intricacies of the English language with Limu

-Gotten closer to a Caltech schedule, and not in a good way

-Drank 5 cartons of fruit juice in a week

-Watched way too much West Wing, and composed a letter to the President's (in RL) advisors, which I have not yet sent

I'm sure I missed something, but oh well

July 28: Mid pleasure's and palaces, there's no place like home

This is my account of the final day of travel, and because I am currently sitting in my room back in Hong Kong, I am eschewing the paper notebook for the faster, and somewhat less hand-tiring task of recording everything by hand.

I woke up at 8:00, and then took a really long time to get going. I chatted with the guy from ASU, packed, and then rewrote my postcards in pen. Then I had to get stamps and breakfast, not in that order. I was told that the nearby bookstoreish (just 4 doors down from the hostel) sold stamps, but opened at 11, so I waited and ate breakfast with Sophie and Anne (the breakfast was ostensibly the “British breakfast” but didn’t quite meet those standards). When I failed to find stamps at the bookstore, I grabbed my gear, said goodbye to all, and caught a cab to the post office. There, I mailed my cards and caught another cab, still laden with backpack, duffel (with attached scroll) and pipa, to the Suzhou train station. The train from Suzhou to Shanghai was a shinkansen, so the journey was quick, and on it I received helpful advice from a Chinese business woman sitting next to me.

Once in Shanghai, I did not have much time to waste. Following the woman’s advice, I caught the metro to People’s Square (Renmin Guanshang, I think) and from there to Longyang. In Longyang, I took the “Demonstration Maglev Train” (or something) to Shanghai-Pudong International Airport, and I must say, that thing was fast…The fifty kilometer journey was over in about 7 minutes, primarily because when we reached our top cruising speed, we were going at 432 km/h, or about 264 mph for those unacquainted with metric. The entire car shook from the air resistance. I know it was that, because the whole train is magnetic levitation, so it was hovering about 6 inches from the track. For the record, the train was impressively fast…

At the airport, I got checked in without much hassle, although I accidentally claimed the pipa was for her father, and not for my own when I tried to speak in Putonghua. I ate an extremely overpriced lunch/dinner at the airport where I performed a separation experiment on my glass of kiwi/sprite juice, and then caught the flight to Shenzhen. I was a little worried for the Pipa on the flight, but everything went fine due to the kindness of one attendant, (although another didn’t notice me wince when he shoved a bag on top of the pipa case).

At Shenzhen, I decided to make things easier for myself, if not a little pricier (it only costed about $10 than it would have otherwise) and took the airport-border-Hong Kong shuttle bus back home. The bus drove us to customs, where my bags were inspected, and I annoyed the agent a little when I didn’t have an “invoice” (it took me a while to figure out what he was saying through his accent, and even longer to realize he meant: did I keep the receipts for my gifts?), but all went smoothly. Then the bus finally dropped me off at Kowloon station. Turns out, Kowloon station is almost as you could possibly be away from HKUST by metro, and I had to take 13 stops to get back to Choi Hung station. Once there, I had NO idea where to go, because I was in an unfamiliar part of the station and couldn’t find the busses. Fortunately, I ran across two English speaking Chinese girls, who both turned out to live in the Bay Area and were on a cultural exchange for the summer with their university, and they showed me where to find the bus stop. I got to Tai Po Tsai safely after that, unpacked to the minimum extent, and then rushed to HKUST to say thank you and farewell to Xiao, who is going to Japan (he left this morning at 6:00 AM). I walked back to the village with Shuyu and Jinbo, and then watched a few episodes of “The West Wing,” showered, and got into the first REALLY clean clothes in a while, and went to sleep.

July 27: Suzhou

The next day (today), I awoke early and promptly fell back asleep. Getting up for real (some time later), I showered and took care of other personal matters. In Suzhou, toilet paper seems destined for the wastepaper basket after use, and not into the toilets. I went across the street for an accidental breakfast of Mochi, given that the other things I ordered were not being served, and the “Suzhou Special” is in fact, Mochi with some sort of paste in the middle.

Back at the hostel, I checked my mail by temporarily borrowing the computer from a traveler planning his next jaunt. When I saw the Input Method he was using, I realized he was Japanese, and so we chatted a bit in Japanese (he seemed pleased). With all the Chinese I’m learning, my Japanese took more thought than usual, and many natural expressions I know in both languages were in some sort of hybrid language. It doesn’t help that Chinese tends to be an SVO (subject-verb-object) language like English, so its syntax is a little more intuitive, and Japanese is SOV.

I also met Helen, a Vietnamese Englishwoman who had had a miserable experience at another hostel in Suzhou, and was currently she was afraid she had caught rabies from a cat’s scratch. I tried to console her, but failed epically at calming her. She had a lot going on, but was rather intense and angry, and irrationally fearful of the other hostel’s owner. Although I’m sure there’s a another side to her story, she did sound rather put upon. Nevertheless, I was glad to get away from her, at her urging, when she recommended I visit a garden on my own. I found the “Humble Administrator’s Garden” which was anything but “humble.” It’s a World Heritage Site, but I wasn’t terribly impressed; Japan has spoiled me. Even the interesting rock formations were disappointing: merely smaller rocks cemented together.

At the garden, two boys (probably about 6 and 9 years old) walked by and told me in big voices “hel-lo!” and when I “nihao’d” them back, they turned in their tracks and dumbfoundedly asked me “ni hui shuo zhong wen ma?” we shared introductions, shook hands, and they walked off, leaving me with a smile. Later, a young man asked me if he could take his picture with me. I of course accepted, and got a picture with him in turn.

So, I wandered off in search of a pipa for my dad. After wandering, I returned to the historic street, where my hostel was, and visited the guqin tea shop. There I watched a few Guqin players (the guqin is a Chinese non-bridged zither, so is not the same thing as a Koto, that’s the guzheng) show off, then asked for help finding a pipa. After a short wait during which a man came to help (with his own pipa in his arms), we (one of the shopkeepers, he, and I) headed downtown. There, I debated buying a beautiful, but obviously machine built pipa, and finally did so for 1600 kuai (the higher end model with cow horn frets and tuning pegs was 3500 kuai, more than I had on me and was willing to spend). I also had the opportunity to make a screeching noise on an Erhu, reminding me of my violin lessons, and watch the shopkeeper break a bow on the same instrument. Then we headed back with my new treasure, plus extra strings and plecktra.

Once back, I stored the pipa behind the desk and visited a coffee shop on the canal to write a few postcards, and headed to the hostel in the rain. Back inside I met the Danish duo Anne and Sophie, also veterans of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and I gave them some travelling hints, at least regarding Hangzhou and booking tickets. Then we went to dinner, heading for the same noodle shop I went to last night, getting lost, and finding another where a kind Irishman helped us order something tasty.

We walked back in the rain, discussing Danish and German, music and culture, and who was the butt of whose cultural jokes. I returned to the café where I currently am, to write these entries, and was later joined by Anne and Sophie. We chatted about school, home, and using Facebook, shared emails, and they went to bed (they will be followed soon by me).

Oh, I’ve spent a lot of time petting Chuxiang (spelling incorrect, but named after a famous Chinese beauty from history), the golden retriever, who is as unfriendly and vicious as you’d expect a golden to be (cue sarcasm). Actually she’s sweet and lazy most of the day, and rather larger than a passing Japanese couple expected. Plus she found my shoes fascinating.

Gute nacht.

Phrase of the day: Jag taler ike Dansk (I don’t speak Danish)

July 26: Crazy bus drivers in Suzhou

Here I’ll detail the final two full days of my journey:

On Sunday (July 26) I woke up early and explored Xitang for an hour, watching the people go through their morning routines (although most had been up for hours already, it seemed). The town was calm as villagers did their washing and prepared for the flood of tourists to arrive later. I was particularly amused by the ducks “farm” in the water, where the chicks were herded by a man in a boat. It was rather hilarious and adorable. Then I went back to bed and woke up after another hour and a half.

Returning to Xitang proper, I had to pay an entry fee. By this time (10:00 AM), the tourists were out in force, and there were many shops everywhere selling overpriced goods of various sorts. I mostly just wandered, trying to take a boat down the canal. Alas, I would have had to go alone and did not have the money to afford the trip, which was split among members of the party.

After a brief “breakfast” of fried tofu and some sort of sweet gelatin, I returned to the inn, gathered my gear, and wandered in a direction that I hoped would bring me to a bus station capable of taking me to Jiashan. I did find it after a great deal of searching, and a number of helpful pointers from rickshaw drivers. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned, but by this point, my bags have gotten quite heavy, especially after silk shopping in Hangzhou. So I got back to Jiashan safely (with a Spanish, Cantonese and Mandarin lesson all under my belt).

The bus from Jiashan to Suzhou was insane, or at least the driver was. Quite apart from the racket he and his wife were running where they picked up passengers on the road for a little personal cash (or so it appeared), he would honk at every car (with a piercing, horrible horn) he passed, whether on our side or on the opposite side of the road. Additionally, when on a one lane road, he’d pass in the oncoming lane, and honk furiously when an oncoming vehicle came too close. Regardless of whether it was his fault or not (it usually was), he would essentially drive the car legitimately in the lane off the road. This occurred too many times to count.

Once in Suzhou, the honking only intensified and didn’t stop. By the bus station, it felt like New York, only less polite and more civilized with the car traffic. I found the correct bus after trial and error, wound up at the correct bus stop, then utterly failed at finding the hostel using the map the hostel provided on the internet. It was only by frequently asking for directions, lucky wandering, and a pair of helpfully foreign (i.e. white) other hostelees who guided me to the hostel that I found it at all. The hostel is lovely, in a very Asian style, with open-air courtyards in various places, including by the door to go outside. So ironically, to get to the other half of the hostel, I have to wait by the sliding door in the rain, before I can walk outside into the covered walkway, then back inside into the rain. For it was raining much of the time in Suzhou.

I went out to dinner with the helpful pair I met earlier. Francesca is from Italy and Daniil is from Slovenia. After considerable wandering, we found a small noodle shop, where the cook kneaded the dough and pulled the noodles by hand, right in front of us. He literally folded and stretched the noodles until they were the correct length and thickness, and then cooked them. Apparently, these chefs are the lowest on the hierarchy or cooks in China, but his noodles were fantastic, and people in the US would pay a fortune to see the “show.” The only trouble with the dish was, serving it was next to impossible, given that the dish was essentially one giant noodle. We shared our bounty amid trying to serve the continuous noodle with chopsticks.

We wandered back to the Hostel and looked for a tea shop. Because most of them were closed, we settled for the one next door to the hostel. Francesca and I discussed the pair’s trip on the Trans-Siberian Railroad before traveling in China, linguistics, and the differences between sex-ed in Italy and the US. Then it was off to bed.

Word of the day: tiujian (recommend/recommendation)

July 25, delaying to Xitang

I woke up a bit late (9:00) and decided to visit Su Causeway. This was a walkway across Xihu ordered built by Su Dongpo, the great poet of the Song dynasty, when he was governor of Hangzhou. My plans for a quiet trek to view the lake in tranquility were thwarted by what seemed like every tour group ever visiting along with me. So, I gave up the chance for poetic reflection and returned my bicycle for the 300 yuan deposit. Then I shopped for a bit, ate lunch/breakfast, received directions to Xitang, and left for the East Bus station.

Once there, I misunderstood my instructions and bought a train (not bus) ticket, scheduled to leave at 6:50. Thus, I returned to the Hostel to kill a couple hours (I was tired and a bit upset from this schedule failure), learned that I could have taken a bus without a wait, and became mildly depressed. I finished Ender’s Shadow, returned to the station, and waited an extra 45 minutes for the train.

Onboard, I learned that the ticket lady’s claim that there were no seats onboard the train was nonsense. As in the train I was on was overfilled as well and I didn’t have a seat the entire ride. So, I stood in the aisle for the two hour journey, pseudo-composed my Colbert aria, wrote a cute poem about the people near me on the train (less truth and more of an exercise in rhyming, although the passengers did help me find the correct exit).

I arrived in Jiashan and was promptly “accosted” by a driver who would take me to Xitang. Although he overcharged, he got me to Xitang when I had been sure I would have to wait until morning for that very mission. He took me to an inn on the river, and was shown around town by the owner. My Mandarin was extremely weak, but I can tenuously hold simple conversations now. If I keep expectations low, I can get across half of what I try to say (as in, if I stick to what I’ve already learned, which isn’t much). The town is gorgeous and peaceful at night, and I am feeling much better about the world. Well, peaceful except for the Rap bar, where I was offered a drink, and refused due to my dislike of alcohol. I said something about needing to be 21 in the US, and could understand the innkeeper joking about it with her husband. On the other hand, I got a chance to pet the dog kept on a pitifully short leash. Poor thing is attention starved, I think. It leapt all over me and whined when I left. So different from the spoiled puppy at the hostel.

Goodnight, I’m waking up to see Xitang at dawn, then returning to bed. 6:00 is too early for anything other than sightseeing…

Oyasumi…

Tonight’s music: mu min xin ge (Shepherd’s Song, heard in Xitang)

Word of the day: zhaoxiang ji (camera) because I kept forgetting it…

Paizhao (to photograph)

July 24, back to Hangzhou

Morning Update: Turns out that not going to the Stone Forest was the right decision; it’s pouring right now, and Shan will accompany me to the bus station.

A bit more to update upon from two more days of travel. On Friday morning, as I mentioned, it was raining heavily, so I ate and went to the bus station in Qiandao City with Shan. Although she gave me her phone number, with me having no email with which to contact her, I feel that this parting will be for good. If I can get Skype working, I’ll try to call her during the summer.

The bus back to Hangzhou was uneventful, apart from my newfound knowledge that a number of Kung Fu movies are as ridiculous in original as they are dubbed. Or perhaps the sync was wrong precisely because they were dubbed, in Mandarin over a Cantonese track? It was also raining in Hangzhou by the time I arrived, and did so heavily as I looked for my hostel, the Hangzhou West Lake Youth Hostel. The place, incidentally, is lovely, clean, well kept, with a kind and helpful English speaking staff, a good menu, and an adorable German Shepherd puppy (named Renmeng, I think). The dog is spoiled, and I understand why; all these travelers (including me) miss their dogs at home. I was puppy starved and so let him “nibble” on me, with pain from puppy teeth, and eventually my water bottle.

As I headed out to go Silk shopping, I met James who had lost both his wallet and place to stay. We traveled across HZ together and then parted ways, he for his new hotel and me for the market. There, I spent far too much money, but I also have some excellent gifts to bring home, and even have something nice for myself. I can also guarantee that all will “love” my Halloween costume this coming year.

Returning to the hostel, I found a street (it’s existence had been previously unknown to me) with hundreds of small shops and explored a bit, buying Jiaozi (pot stickers) to tide me over. The next day I bought some Chinese/Pinyin/English children’s books, but this is out of order. I listened to a superb Chinese-Saxophone player, and then hiked up to a pagoda on a hill. The pagoda was depressingly non-traditional, with the slowest elevator I’ve ever ridden in. The hill itself was lovely; green and foresty, and if it were Japan, there’d have been shrines everywhere. On the way down, I took a different route, took a wrong turn, hopped on a bike, and rode miles in the wrong direction. I knew I was lost when I asked somebody where Xihu was, and got an “I don’t know” in response. In all, I spent about an hour very lost and very nervous in Hangzhou. And on the way back, I got soaked because it started raining yet again. I ran down Nanshan Road as fast as I could and arrived at the hostel drenched, thirsty and out of breath.

I chatted for a bit with a Yorkshire family on Holiday, found “Ender’s Shadow” and read it while I ate my first real sandwich in months, then chatted with other guests, including a Brit whose name I’ve forgotten, a couple from Oakland (who informed that my letter to Aanastad had been utterly ineffective, i.e. the state budget had been gutted), and Ellie Chang from Virginia, whose name I remember because I have her email. She was the only one I met who was also studying in China, although the subject was Chinese for her and physics for me. Then I stayed up far too late reading Ender’s Shadow.

July 23 and Qiandao Hu

Today was mostly uneventful, although the mostly will be qualified in a minute. In the morning, I woke, ate, and then broiled in the sun as I tried to find a bus that would take me to “West Station.” After about an hour on foot, I found one and journeyed across Hangzhou to a big bus station where I bought a ticket to Qiandao Hu (One Thousand Island Lake). The bus was comfortable, air conditioned, and about two hours long, so I slept and completed a Pimsleur lesson. Although there was a war movie airing on the TV, it was in Chinese so I wouldn’t have understood even if I could hear it.

At Qiandao City, I struggled to find my hotel which Xiao claimed was nearby the station. Turns out that the company booked was correct, but the hotel was incorrect, and was about a 15 minute taxi ride out of town. I was ripped off by my first driver who conveniently failed to switch on the meter.

I dropped off my bag and decided to try walking back to the city (underestimating the distance) as no bus was coming. I passed by four bus stops before a bus finally passed me. I must have gone two miles by the time I decided to take a taxi.

I had the option to leave Qiandao Hu by bus, if I had hurried back to the hotel and checked out early, but decided to wander instead. Qiandao Hu city has a busy center where the most prevalent shops seem to be fish and fruit markets. At every restaurant, we could see that night’s dinner swimming around. At one, I saw a chicken and a chick, wandering out front (a mother and child, I imagine).

Because it was late and I could not do any of what I wanted at Qiandao Hu. English is scarce here, especially on signs and maps. My Chinese is enough to get back to my hotel and to realize I’d be hopeless getting anywhere else (esp. to the Stone Forest, my ultimate goal). Qiandao Hu isn’t in Lonely Planet at all, as it turns out. I caught the correct bus back to the hotel on my own (I got complimented on this by the other passengers) and did my best to chat a bit, learning a few new words in the process.

I decided to eat at the somewhat (rather) dingy hotel restaurant, and there learned to never doubt my karma (to quote Julie Andres, “Somewhere in my youth, or childhood, I must have done something good). As I tried and failed to order, and because I was the only guest there, all six waitresses came to help me. All, it turns out, are 20, and all were beautiful/extremely cute (and were rather surprised that I was the same age, although I’m used to this from Japan). At dinner, I got to use my Kanji to communicate with the staff, with sometimes confusing consequences (Japanese is not simplified like mainland Chinese is).

The waitresses helped me pick dinner (one, named Shan, spoke English) and I chose a small fish. I apologized to his “friends” as I watched him pulled out of the tank. And the waitresses took care of me really well. I spend much of the evening chatting with Shan, and getting shy looks from the others. All of them just finished high school in the fall, and Shan was off to Hangzhou University in the fall.

The crew (men too) also help me plot a course to the Stone Forest, but I decided that the mission was probably too complicated for me to do on my own. On the bright side, it means I can wake up later than 6:30 tomorrow, and I get to see Shan again, who alas has no email.

Goodnight.

July 22, the Day of the Eclipse

This morning, I awoke early and tried to get to Qiantang River, but took the wrong one, went the wrong way, and arrived at Hangzhou High instead. There, I received a booklet in Chinese with the exact timing of the eclipse, so I watched the astronomical phenomenon there. Despite being already cloudy, I could see both the Corona and Venus for the six minutes of totality. I must say, it was more beautiful than I can possibly describe. I must be an astronomy geek, but it brought tears to my eyes. If I have the chance, I want to see the next eclipse with the proper gear.

Immediately after totality, I rushed to the Qiantang with the assistance of a kind lady who traveled two stops with me, and arrived at the river in time to see the tidal bore. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, a Tidal Bore (or tidal wave in the true sense), is a phenomenon where the tide rises at the mouth of a river and creates a massive, sustained wave down the river. The Qiantang has one, and the Amazon has another. I was told the wave would occur about 1 hour after the eclipse. It turns out I was not only hours early, but in entirely the wrong spot. Keep that in mind.

I met Matt at the concrete embankment and we walked for miles/kilometers (he’s British from Northampton, I think) waiting for the Bore. We had been given a variety of estimates, and at various times in the day, including between 10 and 11, 11 and 12, 12 and 2, 11 and 3, etc. So we walked in the 100 degree heat, despite being both dehydrated and very hungry (no breakfast/lunch) but march on we did. I expect we went a total of 2-3 miles before we stopped for water at a nice café (we left a nice tip), and another mile or two before it started raining. Yes, rain, although prior to the weather change we were dehydrated beyond belief.

We walked and walked chatting about the English language, school, his life in Malaysia and mine in Hong Kong, and so on. One expression he used frequently that I especially enjoyed with “Ideal!” for whenever he approved of a situation, or its circumstances.

At about 3:00 PM, we saw the tide in the river rise suddenly and realized that this was probably the Bore, or the remnants of it from farther downstream. So, starving, we stopped at a lovely tea shop which provided nuts and candies along with my Chrysanthemum tea (apparently it’s not my favorite). After our snack, we wandered in the direction of civilization. Hangzhou north of the river is extraordinary like a bustling metropolis waiting to happen. I must have counted at least 30 buildings under construction just north of the river, and along one single block, I counted twelve. The infrastructure is also mostly there for a few important looking buildings, but almost nobody anywhere. Even this at a lovely park where “raptor pens” looked down onto cars on a highway, there was nobody there.

A little farther north and people reappeared. At a bus stop, a nice girl guided us to a stop near Xihu where we alighted and wandered in search of real food (i.e. not munchies). We found our goal at a wonderful (and huge inside) restaurant with a menu that looked Babelfish.com-ish. Some dishes included Salive Chicken, “big lobster,” and others I can’t remember. I wanted a copy of the menu just for the Chinglish. Alas, I didn’t take photographs.

We ate enormous amounts together, and finished every dish but “Unify the Rivers and Mountains” which contained shimp, eel, chicken, vegetables, and some sort of veggie dumplings, from the rivers and the mountains. We tried to unify it as best week could, taking the title of the dish as an imperative, but couldn’t quite manage it. We also ate a delicious mango pudding in the shape of a fish.

Finally, Matt and I went to the “night market” and after some searching I shopped and haggled. Shopkeepers kept calculators for the purpose of haggling with gaijin. On the whole I did quite well, and made a few owners unhappy with their bargains. I now have a number of gifts and my very own PRC Propaganda Poster from the Cultural Revolution, with the slogan “Powerty comes from Gun.” I imagined Gaius Baltar when I bought it.

Finally (for real this time) it was farewell for us (he returns to Malaysia on Friday, tomorrow as I write this) and I returned to the Shimoga Hotel, where I fell asleep almost immediately.

July 21, Hangzhou

This entry was written the day of the Eclipse, hence my not-so-subtle commentary.

I sit here at Hangzhou high school, crossing my fingers and hoping that the sun ceases to obstinately hide behind the clouds by 9:38 when the eclipse becomes total. When the clouds thin enough, I can see the sun has become an incomplete disk, an honest to goodness crescent, although I cannot yet catch a non-blurred photo of it. I will keep trying through my inexpertly produced pinhole, which is more of a pencil-hole in a piece of paper. After totality, I will hurry to Qiantang River to watch the famed Tidal Bore.

Yesterday was certainly an adventure. I got to Hangzhou without a hitch (thanks to Sun’s assistance, and a terrible baozi breakfast). After arriving in Hangzhou, it took me quite a while to find my way to Xihu (West Lake) from the station, but I eventually managed it. I wandered for a while with all my luggage, looking for a hotel that wasn’t 1500 Yuan a night, and eventually found the Simago Business Hotel. I room I rented was 550 Yuan, but discounted to 270 Yuan, and was extremely spacious and comfortable, far more than I expected and more than I’d have settled for paying only $40. Pictures of the room exist. I was most impressed by the telephone right by the toilet, however, for those who need to multitask.

I dropped the major mass of my luggage and proceeded to wander Hangzhou, looking primarily for a stand where I could not only rent bicycles (those were everywhere) but where I could find the rental card as well. I found one MILES away from the hotel, and by the time I reached it, I was dehydrated with a rather extensive headache. I think by the end of the afternoon I was near to suffering heat stroke, despite drinking lots of water.

I visited the beautiful Leifang Pagoda by bicycle, destroyed in the Japanese invasion. In the rebuilding process, some modern accessories were included in the design: not much original is left, except the foundations. Indeed, the pagoda now has a central glass elevator. At least I believe it is modern, unless the 10^th century Buddhists were a lot more talented than we give them credit. I did get to see “Evening Glow over Leifang Pagoda,” one of the 10 Sights of Hangzhou.

The sun is currently a thin crescent in the sky, so I’ll describe the remainder of my day later…

By the time I left Leifang, I had a dreadful headache, one of the worst dehydration headaches psible, and I knew I had to rest. So at an amusing show of fountains timed to Chinese music, I drank over a liter of water and waited a half hour. I returned to the Shimago hotel, although not before being yelled at for walking my bike in a “walking zone” (apparently the no bike rule is rigid), took a short shower and a two hour nap.

Upon awaking, I was too drained for a further excursion and so ate downstairs at the hotel restaurant. This turned out to be a wise decision. Not only was dinner exquisite, but my waitress was extremely cute, although I’m ashamed I wasn’t able to work up the courage and tell her so (in Chinese, of course). The meal was also conducted entirely in a form of pidgin Chinese. I got better as the trip wore on.

Getting Shanghai'd

Here is the account of my journey to mainland China transcribed from my handwritten journal in a silver notebook. On the whole, the words are those that I recorded on the specific day of my journey, modified slightly for style and content when necessarily. In addition, one major textual change takes place in this transcription: when I take notes, I tend to use Japanese and Chinese as a kind of shorthand. However, for the benefit of those of you who cannot either read those languages, or do not have the correct encoding installed on your computer to actually visualize them correctly, I am translating these into English.

July 21 2009, 12:00 AM

Perhaps the best way to describe my first impression of Shanghai was of being hit by a wall of “oh my God, it’s HOT!!!” When I alighted (fancy British word for disembarked, used all the time in Hong Kong) the plane, it was 95 degrees Fahrenheit, and also 8:30 PM. In addition, it was nearly at 100% humidity. The heat would continue for another day, before the rain started, and never seemed to let up…

Travel to Shanghai was mostly uneventful, in the way traveling to get to a destination is meant to be. Mostly is the key word, however. At the very beginning of my trip, I boarded the wrong bus and arrived at the wrong MTR station. It wasn’t an insurmountable problem, I just had to travel for an extra half hour to get to the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border, and in one piece. Entering the Mainland was no trouble at all, although it was a tad inconvenient with impatient glares in my direction. I particularly enjoyed the friendly, welcoming barbed wire on the Hong Kong side of the moat.

Once in china, the barrage of salespeople began and never ceased…I learned immediately that not only do I not want to buy most of what they offered. I also learned that most of the “helpful” people who get very excited and begin guiding me somewhere other than where I’m going aren’t actually helpful, and just want me to use their overpriced and unnecessary service. There are many helpful people, let me get that straight, I was pointed in the correct direction many times. The helpful ones just didn’t get excited.

Xiao Xiao’s friend Sun Chengjie picked me up at the Shanghai Pudong Airport (with a sign and everything) (p.s. the airport is massive, it took 10 minutes to walk down the terminal using walkways), and showed me a bit of the city. Shanghai is gorgeous, but surprisingly dark compared to Hong Kong, New York, Tokyo, etc. Much of the darkness is due to the massive renovations occurring in the city in preparations for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, where the Chinese government is doing much the same as it did to Beijing.

With a single night in Shanghai, I feel I’ve had enough city, and I want to go somewhere more peaceful and calmer. Tonight, everybody wanted to sell me things, including lasers illegal in the US, various toys, “Chinese Massages” and other less innocent offers. I was even assaulted by a “weak” old begger, who leaned on his cane, pointed to his mouth to show how hungry he was, and then gripped my shoulder sharply…

From now on, I’ll tell people who ask to sell me things by using English “watashi dost nicht loqualis Inglais.” Maybe that will confuse even the trilingual street hawkers. Not that many of those trilingual guys will be selling stuff on the street, but I also don’t want to be caught in a bluff about my language.

Early to rise tomorrow, and then I’m off to Hangzhou.

Leaving on a Jetplane

This will be my last post for more than a week. I’m traveling up north to watch the eclipse and do some traveling around China, a bit more on that later.

The week has been mostly uneventful. On Thursday and Friday, I worked with Ameng in the clean room manufacturing my chip design. Although I’m technically not allowed to touch anything, she allowed me to be an assistant, so I washed and dried chips, and did a great deal of work transferring the glass masks from one heater to another while we baked the photoresist on. We got 2 of the 3 copies of the mask correct, and should finish with the manufacture (i.e. PDMS deposition) when I return from my journies.

On another note, apparently I’m not supposed to be downloading files here either, or at least uploading them. Since I can’t figure out how to turn off that last feature, though, there’s not much I can do, so I won’t be able to get Spanish language tapes. Found this out on Thursday…

On Saturday evening, the group went to see Harry Potter 6 downtown. We ate dinner at a nice Chinese restaurant and had a full course meal, which was wonderful. It was kinda expensive for a Chinese meal, $108 apiece. But since those are Hong Kong Dollars, it turned out to be only about $14 USD, which was amazingly cheap for the quality of food we ate. The movie was also very good, by far the best of the films. Yes, there were bits the director left out, but most of them were unimportant. I quite liked how they treated relationship issues; I think the film dealt with them as well or better than JKR did. There are a few things I’m curious about for the sequel. How they’ll deal with Harry’s mission to find the Horcruxes is a mystery; he didn’t receive the full briefing in the film by Dumbeldore and the department of backstory. But oh well, we'll see how it works out.

Saturday evening was also exciting for the arrival of a typhoon to Hong Kong. Although they are pretty weak by Florida standards, it was still a lot of wind and water. Fortunately, I got a ride home by HKUST security, otherwise I'd have been really really wet by the end of the walk. At home, I watched some episodes of The West Wing, which has all the political intrigue of Battlestar (minus the stuff blowing up every episode), but has the added benifit of being political. Unfortunately, it's a bit addicting. But it was interesting watching an episode about a hurricaine when the wind was raging outside my window.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon doing laundry and packing and planning. Thanks to a great deal of help from Xiao Xiao, I have my itinerary. Today (Monday) I travel into the mainland and fly to Shanghai from Shenzhen, where I meet a friend of his. On Tuesday, I go to Hangzhou and find a hotel and explore; and then on Wednesday morning, I wake up early to watch the eclipse. Then in the afternoon, I head to the canal city Xitang (featured in the final scene of Mission Impossible III, although they claimed it was Shanghai…). The next day I go to Qiandao Hu (literally, the 1000 Lakes) and stay for at least one night and see (hopefully) a place called the Stone Forest. On Friday the 24^th, I return to Hangzhou for two days, where I stay at a youth hostel, and perhaps make some new friends like I did in Kyoto, as well as travel the city. Finally, I go to Suzhou on the 26^th and 27^th and explore there, before heading back to Shanghai on the 28^th and flying back to Shenzhen and ultimately, Hong Kong.

One final thing, for all one of you readers, I’m writing this “blog” as much as a journal for myself as for others, and in my journals, when I think to write them, I record everything. So please forgive the vast wealth of detail and inanity. I’ve learned from experience, if I don’t have some sort of excuse to write, I’ll forget/blow it off.

See you all on the 28^th or later!

http://www.orientstocks.com/images/zhejiang2.jpg The map linked contains most of the locations in my travel. Shanghai is in the upper right, Hangzhou ("hahng joe") is in the middle, Suzhou ("Sue Joe") is at the top in the middle, Qiandao Hu ("chee en dao who") is the lake to the southwest of Hangzhou. Xitang ("she tahng") is near Jiashen, which is just southwest of Shanghai

An update

I have a great deal of catching up to do, so I’ll describe some of the key events and leave out the remainder.

On Thursday, I had the opportunity of visiting the Clean Room. That means I turned into a fluffy white bunny again, wearing almost identical garb to the outfits I wore in KamLAND. Because I was untrained and had not passed certification, I mostly stood around and watched (being forbidden to touch anything but one computer). The room had everything, including an air shower and yellow lights so as to not expose the photoresist. I got to see first hand what I had learned almost 2 years before in APh 9, except I think experience was a slightly better teacher.

On Friday, I spent the day attending seminars on research. The morning was devoted to talks by students in my group, and the afternoon was a 3 hour “Soft Matter” (i.e. flexible polymers in biology [i.i.e. DNA]) seminar, given by Dr. Bob Austin from Princeton University, and Chih-Kuan and Shuyu from my lab. It was all very interesting, especially as Bob Austin was one of the pioneering scientists in the field of biophysics. In the Lecture, Bob Austin also mentioned that the full Solar Eclipse will be visible from Hangzhou/Yangtze River area, so I am going to make a trip up north myself to view it. I will likely be alone, as nobody is able to accompany me. But it will certainly be worth it, and I’ll have to learn Mandarin in a hurry.

At some point last week, I also started downloading from a torrent the Pimsleur Language courses in Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish, and Danish (should I decide to study in Denmark). As of this moment, I am at unit 11 in Cantonese and unit 6 in Mandarin. When I finish these entries, I will do unit 11 in Cantonese… On second thought, maybe I should double time Mandarin (Pimsleur recommends only 1 unit a day, but maybe the situation requires that I go a little faster, I have plenty of time to finish Cantonese, but only a few days to get up to snuff in Putonghua).

Also at some point, I bought an amazing book by David Crystal called The Stories of English, which is covering in exquisite detail the English language’s transition from Old English and examples of changes and held words to boot. This will keep me busy for a while.

On Saturday evening, I left work earlyish, and went down to the undergraduate area to talk with students my own age. When I found all the buildings locked, I instead went to the track and ran about a mile. That was almost as fun (*insert sarcasm here*). I am out of shape and need to exercise more often. However, the track was about 20 feet from the ocean, so I had a cool night ocean breeze cooling me as I ran, which was wonderful.

Sunday was fun; the group went out and watched Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen downtown. As expected, the movie was hilarious, especially in the dramatic sequences, when every character seemed to have lines pulled straight out of TVTropes.org, but read with a straight face, and without the incessant tabbing (speaking of which, the XKCD comic from Monday the 14^th is amazingly true). Afterward, we went to a noodle place where I had “Fish Balls,” which were literally spiced, “chicken nugget” shaped fried fish mixture, and was quite delicious. Afterward, I bought a mattress! and alarm clock, so when I returned home, I threw out the old one that I feared was full of bugs. Now, because a cleaning lady came to visit the flat, my room is clean and a good place to sleep in. My ease of mind is far greater now that I not only don’t have to worry about bugs, but don’t have to worry about my body hurting from lying on a wooden board.

Monday was mostly uneventful, except that Among and I finished my first chip design, and submitted it to the technicians to make the masks for the positive and negative photoresists. I really hope this works! Dealing with 100 micron wide channels will not be easy, that’s for sure…

Today, again was uneventful, except for just before I arrived home. I left the 7-Eleven near the apartment, and took a different route, to where the old British man was celebrating a birthday. I stood by and watched and sang, and then talked to a gentleman from India for a while. The Brit (who spent years in France, so he said) is a cranky old goat, but as the Indian said, “his bark is worse than his bite.” He told me, as he was quite inebriated, that he would take care of me should I need any assistance.

Music of the day(s); Non e si vago (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ34Ryd2Cuo&feature=related, here actually Connoly in a pants role) and Se in fiorito (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrFY6nhwADU Sholl at his best), both Julius Caesar arias from Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto. I want to sing them, along with Va tacito e nascosto for the concerto competition in the fall. With sleep and plenty of fluids and frequent practice, my countertenor is getting higher and better, although I still have to work insanely hard to not clench my throat constantly. Posture is helping, as is warming up properly, but clenching is certainly a danger that I’ll have to get over if I want the muscles in my neck to stop aching.

I started writing the script for what I hope will be an entertaining One Act play. Given my past success at writing, I think I’ll wait and see what eventually comes out…

wan-an!

Post with photos (of the Lab)

July 7, 2009

I slept until 1 today, haven’t done that since Caltech, but I did have my late-night insomnia/illness to blame for that. At the lab, I tried to call Sarah and wish her a happy birthday, but epicly failed at connecting to the internets using the outside network. First I failed to bring the password with me when I went outside to not disturb my labmates, and then I discovered the password didn’t work anyway. Shikata ga nai ne.

I got to finally do some experimental work today; I mixed the oil with the GER powder to make a GER fluid for my own work, and then spent a good amount of time discussing my plans with Among. We have a bunch of ideas that might work, but we’ll have to try several different ones because none are guaranteed to do so. Apparently, putting together different types of materials on the 100 micrometer scale is harder than you’d think…

I got a Chinese name today. I am now Gu-Kaixi, at least according to Among. Gu means “Arrowroot” (this part I might change) and 凯希Kaixi (kai shee) means Hope of Victory. Jinbo says it isn’t a very Chinese name, but I like it. First and foremost, however, I will remain ケーシー more than a Kaixi.

I have finished both my pleasure reading books and now have only a gajillion other things to distract me from my work. Oh internets, why must thou exist to abet procrastinators so?

This afternoon, Dr. Li showed me the track and swimming pool at HKUST (the track is within throwing distance of the ocean) and some of the undergraduate areas of the school. I think I’ll spend some evenings down there meeting people my own age (not that I’m not enjoying the company of my labmates). Among warned me not to go swimming down at the ocean though; apparently, there are sharks that are big enough to sample me, if not devour me completely. Last night, in my own wanderings, I discovered a spot on one of the lower levels that is mostly enclosed with excellent acoustics, but is far enough away that I can’t bother anybody. I’m going to have to go back with my rollup piano and sing one of these nights.

July 8, 2009

Nothing terribly exciting happened today. Slept late again (I’ll go to bed early tonight, I promise). I did pass my safety examination (apparently I studied hard enough in the 8 hours I prepared during). Then I got a safety briefing about how to use the chemical rooms, and now I have card access to the rooms. Might come in handy tomorrow or later when I really start working on my own.

I’ve decided to put Cantonese on the back burner, although I’ll keep it up a bit. I’ll focus instead on Mandarin, because everybody around me speaks it, and it will be far more useful should I go to the mainland. I have a visa to do so.

Attached to this post are a bunch of photos of the office on the fourth floor and of the adjacent lab. There are also a few long-dark-creepy hallways pics (the one that looks long and dark). I won’t show any more photos because they all look the same, hence me getting lost almost constantly and frequently turned around. I’m getting better and almost not failing at getting everywhere.

Music of the Day: "Pur ti Mio" from Montiverdi's Poppea. The lower singer on this track is Philippe Jaroussky, and he is male, despite the voice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYc_O-fpHzQ

The words are less than thrilling, but the music is sublime, to say the least

Italian
Pur ti miro, pur ti godo
Pur ti stringo, put ti annodo
Piu non peno, non moro,
O mia vita, o mio tesoro.

English
I gaze on you, I rejoice in you,
I embrace you, I chain you to me,
I suffer no more, I die no more,
Oh my life, oh my treasure.

July 6: something short

I got to start working on my project today (well not really, but I did get to see Among do some microfluidics experiments, and I have a chip with which to perform my first experiment. If this works, I can move on to more exciting things, and maybe designing my own microfluidic chips with AutoCAD.

Alas, moderate illness struck today, yet despite my exhaustion, I cannot sleep. It is 4 AM and tomorrow will be miserable, so I’ll cut this short. I drafted a letter to one of my state senators today, to see if maybe HE can do something to knock some sense into the Sacramento politicians. Since he is one, I’m skeptical, but I can dream, can’t I?

Oh, and I also watched the movie Next, with Nicholas Cage, which was quite good, and gave me some interesting dreams about being the official emissary to the Martians when the come, for some reason.

July 4 and 5th

Well, catching up yesterday didn’t turn out as well as I’d planned. I got in a discussion about the physics of my microfluidic design and then was tired and headed home to bed. So I’ll try to remember the 4^th and the 5^th in this entry.

On the 4^th, I did a lot of designing on my own, and I have a number of different ideas that should work very effectively if I can make one key feature of my microfluidic circuit work correctly. So figuring out a way to build the first part is my project, at least for now. To that end, I’ll have to learn not only autoCAD (which shouldn’t be terrible) but also what exactly I need to do to design masks for the PDMS lithography.

Today (the fifth) was lots of fun. It was mostly a day off, so I ended up coming to the office anyway, but doing nothing of note productively. In my own room, however, I made great strides; I embarked on a massive cleaning project to detoxify my room. To that end, I put in a great deal of chemicals, bought a new mattress cover, some sheets, and dusted like crazy using disinfectant spray. Then I sprayed Raid like crazy to control either mosquitoes or bedbugs (if I have them, might explain the 30 or so bites I have across my whole body, and left for the day.

I went to Hong Hao with an escort, and there I bought the sheet, towel, and mattress cover that should (I hope) make sleep much more bearable. The mall was like most malls; a little large and crowded for my taste, but enjoyable to see for a short time. The mall had a similar feel to ones I’d encountered in Japan (Toyama in particular), but on the whole, it was a mall where I could buy things I needed. If I chance to return, I do have a few non-critical items to buy; namely an amazing looking green-tea and anko slushy from a tea station.

At 5, all the men in the lab boarded the green minibus, headed to the Choi Hung station (where I bought a mini-bus/everything pass), and headed to Tsim Sha Tsui, the business center of Kowloon. We met Among at an amazing dumpling restaurant called Din Tai Fung (http://www.dintaifung.com.tw/en/index.asp) where we celebrated Jinbo’s work, and him preparing to head to Indiana in September. Afterward, we headed on foot to Victoria Harbour raising and lowering our umbrellas frequently due to the binary nature of the downpour. At the harbor, we watched a light show that played out on the largest buildings of Hong Kong island, where their façades changed color, played light patterns, and blazed some extremely strong green lasers in time to semi-traditional Chinese music. I enjoyed the spectacle greatly, and I may return at some point in the trip.

We wandered down the Hong Kong Avenue of Stars, akin to Hollywood’s Walk of Fame where we saw famous Hong Kong actors’ names imbedded in the walkway along the wharf. I only recognized a few names (Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee, among others) but also saw Bai Guang, who I think might have been the singer in one of the songs from the 2007 Acadec CD (Liang Shang Ho anyone)? Hong Kong has a lovely downtown; it is remarkably clean, but is also civilized and well designed, for the most part. Hong Kong Island also has a stunning skyline. Perhaps I can upload the group photo we took at some point.

On the way back, I discussed the American political system with Chih-kuan/Richard (he studied at Princeton for his undergraduate work) and some amusing stories about newsworthy events in Taiwan (apparently, the police lost a cash-carrying armored car when it was towed for parking illegally, and then refused to believe that a tow truck had merely come and taken the car away).

Now it’s time for bed; hopefully the 3 hours my room has had to air out will have been enough for the Raid to dissipate.

Bai-bai

Update: I'm not dead, so I guess everything worked out well. And my room is CLEAN!

Images: My room before the purge (note the matress)

Happy Handover Day!

Today was interesting, and I imagine not at all representative of what my days will be like here. Today is the 12^th annual “Establishment of Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region Day” or “Handover Day” as some (i.e. Wikipedia call it), and was therefore a state holiday. As such, I went to the gym and played badminton and ping-pong, met a number of new people in a completely non-work environment (I spent a while chatting with Mia/Mo Lan, a recent graduate of a university in Beijing, and a worker in a Christian society at HKU), and spent several hours reading articles and trying to decide what I want to do with my work (still no project proposal). I will meet with Dr. Wen soon to try to decide. One project I was interested in is apparently in the works for the group, but probably not feasible in the 10 weeks I have. There are uses for microfluidics and ER/MR fluids I didn’t imagine. Apparently, MR shells can coat various drugs which will then be released due to the heart’s own magnetic field.

This school combines a sense of familiarity with a complete foreignness in an odd way for me. Familiar, because of the physical environment, elements of Asian culture, and of course, the ubiquitous Kanji I see everywhere. I can even tell spoken Mandarin from Cantonese most of the time. But the hard part for me is my almost complete inability to speak the languages. English is something of a necessary evil here, given my extremely tenuous grasp of Cantonese and Mandarin. I’m learning key points of structure in both, but the gaps in my vocabulary are so large that concepts I do know are the exceptions, not the rules. I loved being in Japan last summer and finally getting to the point where I could think and learn new words in Japanese, without ever resorting to English. I hope, but doubt, this will occur this summer for me in Cantonese.

I am currently sitting outside one of the student cafeterias here, the Can-teen II. I’ve eaten here twice, but feel apprehensive about doing so tonight given the frustration I’ve seen the staff show at my inability to speak their language. I’m sitting where I am therefore not for the food, but for the view, which is quite glorious. I’m staring at Kowloon bay with a multitude of green islands (there are few buildings in view, except for the bits of campus at the edges of my vision), an assortment of different boats, and a slowly setting sun. This sight, and the birdsong, has a calming effect, and I want to sit her a bit longer before I return “home” to my little room. I have a suspicion that I will spend even less time there than I did in the Chesters at Caltech, but this is more out of sheer desire not to be in my room her, not when there is so much else to see.

I will be going to bed shortly, although it is not yet 7 PM. I am not sure what percentage of my current tiredness is due to my jet-lag, and what is due to my exhaustion from a trip and an extremely poor night’s sleep last night. By going to bed early tonight, I can insure that the latter is not a cause.

Image: View from the balcony outside the cafeteria, at Dusk, of Clear Water Bay