Chuck's talk day

May 8, 2007 Tuesday

We have a meeting with Ping at 9:00, so decided to make a quicky trip to STARBUCKS downtown. It was CLOSED!! Back to the guest house for a really gross breakfast. You haven’t lived until you have eaten cold fried egg with chopsticks. I think that a lot of the things on the buffet are leftovers from the dinner before. The pumpkin puffs aren’t too wonderful the next morning either.

The maids came to clean just as we were leaving our room. Both this guest house and the one in Hefei are incredibly stingy with toilet paper. The roll is ¼ size and just lasts one day. (If you have any problems, it doesn’t last the day.) I signed that I would like 2 rolls. Much giggling. I tried to take two rolls, thinking that perhaps they misunderstood. They would only give me one. (But, it turns out that they had already put one in the bathroom, so at least I had 2.)

Met, looked over the meeting room, and checked our email. Then back to STARBUCKS. I am sooo excited. I hadn’t realized how much I was missing my lattes until I saw the possibility of having one here. They taste exactly the same, the menu is exactly the same, and the crappy pastries are exactly the same. They look so good and taste like sawdust all over the world. (Trust me – I have checked.) One problem – we were dropped on a different street. Oh, no. Luckily, I spotted a big building a block over that I recognized, so was able to get us to where we wanted to go.

We wandered through the downtown department stores. There are many really large ones here. Notice the timely decorations. They also had signs in English about Mother’s day.

I saw a China Mobile counter and decided to see about recharging my phone. The guy spoke English and was really helpful, until he discovered that I had China Unicom. (Sort of like Cingular & Verizon). He said that there was a CU near the Wal-Mart. We kept wandering, came across the Wal-Mart but didn’t go in. Found the CU next door. Not the right CU. That girl actually took us to the right CU. But they couldn’t put minutes on the phone. I had two choices. Get my friend in Shanghai to buy a card and send me the info or take a taxi to a hospital (she said it was close) and perhaps buy a card there. I decided to take option one and email Douglas when we go back to Ping’s office.

We found an underground restaurant court (lots of little restaurants, all with their own seating) and ate a light lunch of dumplings and noshes.

Went back to the university for Chuck’s talk. I get to sit and click on the screen when he wants to move to a different slide. I can knit while I wait. I am not sure how much the students understand when he talks. They do seem to be reading the slides.

Dr. Ming Qi came to the talk from another university in Nanjing. He works with a colleague of Chuck’s at UCLA. He told us to call him Ming (his first name, because his last name is hard for us.)

So, after the talk we went to dinner at the guest house with Ming and Ping (his last name – because his first name is hard.)

We had Nanjing duck, (which is different from Peking duck. It is salted, not crispy and is served cold) clear, wide, very slippery noodles, (I think that sometimes they just want to test our chopstick skills. We are always complimented on how well we do.), crunchy noodles, lima beans (these taste and look like large limas with a dark line on them. They come arranged in the bowl all lined up with the dark lines on top – like a flower arrangement.) spicy beef, “tastes like chicken tofu” (developed by monks who didn’t eat meat) steamed & fried buns, pancakes, pumpkin buns, soup with croutons, sautéed green vegetable and buns shaped like seashells that you pull open and spoon in a filling.

Ming and Ping decided what we are doing tomorrow and wrote down all of the instructions for us. We are meeting Ming for dinner after our day of touring.

After saying goodbye, Chuck and I walked up the street looking for a place to buy water. Besides being stingy with toilet paper, the guest houses don’t provide water. We had brought 3 bottles with us, but had to buy 2 yesterday in the dining room. They charged us 30¥ for 2 bottles, that would cost 2¥ in the store. So tonight we walked 2 blocks to a small store. I bought 5 bottles.