Photo post – 31 August

Note, whenever I say “the museum” when I’m here, I mean ZJSTM – that’s Zhejiang Science and Technology Museum.

The globe is the planetarium, called Vibe Theatre. The indoor view is really cool too, remind me to photograph it for you.

More shots from the museum.

I have yet to ask what the panels are made of, but I say it looks pretty majestic.

I tried to figure out if they actually meant “proch”, but the only definition I found was that it means “powder”: in Polish. Don’t think they were going for that. This hangs above a big tunnel (in view) with interactive screens showing “explorable” science news.

My not-so-secret hideout.

Vibe Theatre is just out of shot to the left. There’s this tucked-away little bench with this view of the big lobby. And a vending machine just next to it. Good for a break away from the office.

Lunch receipt. Can you figure out what I ate?

The book shop right next to the museum.

They have excellent A/C facilities. ^^

They also have this!

What’s this? “Ke pu” shelves! That’s “science communication” to you.

With books like…

… thrilling, no? Seriously though, it’s a growing field, and I imagine those shelves will have a regular turnover of new works in the foreseeable future.

Besides, as it was, I already couldn’t resist buying a book from the selection, even though I was going to do shopping last on this trip. Eugh, luggage restrictions.

Days the Twelfth and Thirteenth – 29 & 30 August

Okay listen up kiddies, I am swamped, and a bad blogger. Frankly I’ve just been writing for the past two days, and now I am packing. There are photos though, which I will show you at some point, and tomorrow I’m off to Beijing on errands. Frankly, I’d be surprised if PKU doesn’t have internet everywhere, but expect blogging “lite” for now. I’ll try to queue something for you. That said, if I’m not blogging “live” again by the 10th, call Interpol. Ta-ra!

What I bought in the miscellany shop the other day: a good ole enamel mug. Size huge! Sometimes bigger is better. Especially if you need to fit your two-dishes-and-rice lunch in it so that you can take it from the canteen back to the office to eat al-desko.

Day the Eleventh – 28 August

• I have a train ticket to Beijing. I even made a little query at the kiosk as to how big the difference is between second and first class, to be met with a “first class is really expensive”. Not sure if they were being snotty appraising my economical situation through the way I look, or just plain informant.

• To get this ticket, I spent the morning ringing around official vendors to ask for details on what to bring, etc. Turns out I could have skipped all that and just rocked up to travel shop. They just needed some sort of ID – passport okay – and that was that.

• It also did mean that I spent ages outside this morning.

• After a few days of Arctic sub-30 C temperatures, it’s 35 C again today. Better than 37 and certainly better than 40, but still. HOT.

• Someone tried to give me a brochure for English classes. Don’t get me wrong, I might need them, but maybe not with the “Wall Street English” system.

• So I arrive at the office near noon, all red in the face, and keep fanning myself for a good hour before my face stops emanating heat.

• Good job I got that flyer-fan last week.

• Writing under way in a big way. Feels good. I can do this.

• Email tennis this morning. I am currently winning. This means that I’ve sent emails but nobody has replied yet. Bugger.

• Missed lunch. Starving. (Before anyone starts scolding: I did eat a combo of snacks to keep myself going.)

• Primary schools open for business again next week, and lots of mummy staffers have brought their little ones in today. In my office, two mega-cute girls, five and six years old respectively. Both refuse to nap after lunch. Fortunately(?) I had a late night last night (using VPN to access journals, ‘cause I’m groovy like that) and deck regardless of kiddie sing-songs.

• Today has been (is still) mostly about writing (and GBBO), but I did visit the wet market and some adjacent little shops on my way back to pick up a few bits and bobs, and decided to take some photos for anyone who is interested. Don’t think I’ve ever catalogued a China-trip this way, but then I suppose it’s not my usual summer-holiday-with-the-family either…

Spotted at the bus stop: I need that hat.

The plaza in front of the museum. This is the aftermath of a week-long music event with “The Voice of China”, sponsored by Harbin Beer, Volkswagen, and some other companies. I wouldn’t really have minded had their marquees and backstage area not blocked almost all of the stairs to the bridge, so you had to walk around the whole hoopla to get across.

The back of my train ticket. I am to bring ID, ticket, and myself on the day of travel. Luggage (one? Multiple?) must not exceed 20 kgs (for an adult), and dimension-total must not exceed 160 cm. This applies to all high-speed trains in China. Now you know. Thank me later.

Market time!

Miscellany shop. You can see that it’s crammed, but you can’t see that it was SO HOT in there. I will show you what I bought later.

Fruit and veg for what must have been over 100 sq m. Paradise.

Home made (and some wholesale) noodles and vermicelli. These were in kiosks on the periphery of the greengrocers’ space, alongside flour and rice shops, with equal multitudes of variety.

Chinese charcuterie and butcher’s in the background. There were fewer of these, but in a hall just smaller than the greengrocer-hall.

Condiments!

Fishmongers and other seafood occupied a hall similar to the meat products, but with very slippery tiles. Depicted is a… pool? with live shrimp. If you want to buy, you get a net, and pick your own. We once bought some shrimp that really fought for their lives and kept jumping through the weighing and until… well, the COOKING.

To end on a less morbid note: did anyone say “tea”?

• Finally, when I walked past the markets yesterday I was baffled by an intense stench at the end of the street that I could only smell in a circle of radius 2m or so. Today when visiting in daylight, I discovered a stall selling stinky tofu 臭豆腐. Mystery solved.
• Also, not a fan.

Day the Tenth – 27th August (photos at the end)

• What is there to say for today…?
• Well, I basically feel like I live here now. I suppose it’s because I’m actually due somewhere in the mornings, and for actual work… rather than the living room coffee table for parentally supervised summer holiday homework. Like almost every summer spent in China in my childhood.
• Feeling quite frantic about work, because there’s so much of it and very little time. Is there a point negotiating for more time a week before the deadline? The main reason I’m left with this work is because I’m doing all the admin for my research here in China myself, and there’s rather a lot of it, and for some of it I have to travel to be there in person to fix things.
• Meh, power on as usual.
• Office topic of the day: the museum staffers need to go for medicals later in the week (I’ll have to go on a PKU-enforced medical next week, for that matter), and apparently stool samples are required. There’s a long debate on how they think this will be achieved: should they present a sample themselves (and how this will be transported), or do they subject themselves to some poking with a cotton bud.
• Many expressions of disgust come forth.
• Those who have been… probed, before, do not say anything helpful.
• At all.
• Some look forward to knowing their blood type – apparently the knowledge of one’s blood-type is uncommon in China.
• I manage to join in the post-lunch nap yet again. Slowly getting the hang of this.
• Just before leaving, I ask around about buying train tickets. Apparently one needs a local ID to buy them online? I decide to pop out to a licenced ticket vendor at lunch tomorrow.
• I’ve realized that doing my daily commute by taxi will cost on average 16 Yuan one way (subject to traffic though), which is pretty much the same as the bus fare in ol’ Manc.
• …but I suppose going on public transport has it “charms” too.
• Certainly a better view into local day-to-day life.
• That said, quite a lot of the locals take taxis too.
• No inspiration for dinner, so I permit myself to wander around the block in my part of town despite time-to-eat running away since I’m due in a conference call in the evening.
• I find the wet market! And a tonne of “small eats” around it.
• Dinner consists of Chinese flatbread sandwiched with pickled cabbage and leek, and an iced drink of matcha, tapioca, and red beans. Yum yum.
• Results of conference call: I’ll do observations first, and ask questions later – in the museums, that is. Observations will include a range of people in the museum (visitors, variously titled staff), and also shadow staff with the same or similar titles in different types/themes/sizes of museums. Let’s roll!

A wild Transformer appears [in the middle of your fancy shopping centre]!

Found the wet market! More photos to come when I go there in daylight. ^^

Dinner!

Close-ups of food, what’s not to like? (Even if the photography is poor.)

This cost twice as much as the food. Discuss.

 

 

 

 

 

Days the Eighth and Ninth – 25 & 26 August

You get both days at once because today I’ve just been working from home. Not even a cockroach sighting (but there’s plenty hours left in the day for that, not that I’d appreciate such a sighting). Most noteworthy things today are probably the thunderstorm in the middle of the afternoon when they sky went really dark, and my writer’s block. Nothing more exciting. Which is why it’s good that I have things from yesterday to show you…

• Is it just me, or is the word “eighth” really awkward?
• We start the day with a bruise-update: I think the flash has somehow made it look less purple? Either way, it is still all various shades of purple, a bit painful, a bit swollen, and I look forward to it GOING AWAY.

Frankly, at a distance, it looks like I’ve got dirt on my knee. Annoying.

• I feel that I should be writing today, but I also feel that I should have a proper day off, after a rather nutsy week, just to regroup, and actually poke my head out to do SOMEthing that’s neither work nor work-related admin.
• I settle for mentally planning and writing down a to-do list, before I tackle the cleaning – an acquaintance of my Dad and his daughter, who is, as I later find out, five years older than me, want to come over and have a nosy about this flat that I’m staying in. The plan is then to drive to theirs [the parental domicile, where the daughter stays during weekends: the pull of the big city!] and go out for dinner!
• I tentatively turn off the A/C, and open some windows – taking care to pull shut the mosquito-nets while the windows are open – to weather the place, since the windows are always closed due to said A/C. But it’s already muggy (prepping for the thunderstorm later in the day), and somehow that amplifies the smell of car exhaust, which gets carried in by the wind, even though I’m on the fifth floor.
• Ground floor is level one in China.

Can you make out the net?

• Anyway, the windows get shut after five minutes, and I need to turn the A/C on again, not to cool the place down, but to dry it out.

Side-ways opacity.

The net actually comes in a retractable roll, and stays in place with a magnet. I’m trying to demonstrate this, but feel that it’s failing.

• The new acquaintances arrive, and they’ve brought gifts?!
• They look around the flat, ask me about my work, how I feel about being in China etc. Then I take the freedom of discussing the admin details of my visiting studentship (they both work at universities) to Beijing, and receive some helpful advice. For one, they recommend that I just buy a single ticket there, and another single back, when I know what my return date will be. I will try to visit a ticket office on Tuesday, and ask if they do open returns or how much it costs to change a ticket, etc. And then just BUY IT.
• Well, after my queries to the PKU admin lady comes back.
• I get along well with the daughter, who spent time studying at Nottingham, and we natter the whole way to theirs. Although I do remember to ogle West Lake as soon as it appears outside the window.
• Beautiful.
• But I have no pictures. We didn’t stop, and I decided not to unleash my inner hipster and also tourist on the first meeting. It will also be a motivator to make sure I actually make a purposeful trip to West Lake in due course.
• They live in a lovely penthouse near one of the Zhejiang University campuses. The mother greets us and immediately furnishes me with tea and lots of snacks. Then I get the quiz about work, life, etc.
• We watch telly. Even though the TV in my room both works, and I’ve figured out how to control it, I haven’t really watched much telly. We catch a showbiz gossip programme, and something that’s similar to… SNL maybe? Only this was in the afternoon, so with more family-programme style jokes.
• The father gets called in to work (academics and Sundays, eh?), but the mother, my new friend, one of her old friends, and I head out to their local branch of The Grandma’s. A restaurant chain serving really good Hangzhou cuisine.
• Or so I’m told. And I have verified. *nods like she knows it all*

There’s a waiting area in The Grandma’s. But instead of an aperitif, you get a little tea-tumbler.

• Or should that be Zhejiang cuisine? It is one of the Eight Culinary Traditions of China.

• The friends ask me if there’s any food I don’t like. I mention the coriander thing but quickly add that it’s no biggie.
• Only it is, but still. One ought to be courteous when treated to dinner.
• Again, no hipstering at first meetings. There’ll be plenty more pictures of food later.
• As I am the youngest, I seem to have lots of food shovelled onto my plate after each dish is brought on.
• It was so good though! Including a fish-and-lotus-root stew with enough green peppercorns (and some red chillies) to make my tongue go numb, but I still couldn’t stop eating it. Huh. And the sweet-osmanthus-honey (there is nothing I won’t google for you) glazed, fried sticky rice cake? I let myself have three pieces of that. One must draw limits. But ugh was it good. Then there was shellfish, misc Chinese greens, ear fungus, and super-tender beef, stir-fried with a mountain of fresh coriander (which I discreetly peeled off and deposited in my by-then-empty clam shell).
• The place is really popular. At one point, a table next to us seems to have a dish missing, and the customer yells at the waitress. I understand the wrath – we’d all complain if there’s food missing from our order. But the making a scene… augh, I’d still rather skip that part.
• Through pudding, we get a lecture from the mother in What’s Important When Looking for a Husband. I can’t resist but poke in a few humorous comments, was I’m wont to do, but otherwise we’re good Chinese girls and just listen through.
• We also talk about their travels! The friend and her parents toured the Nordic over the summer, and the friend’s friend went to Africa for a month. Jealous? Who?

One of the gifts. I haven’t touched chocolate since I arrived, but won’t say no if it’s offered to me.

• The thunderstorm has truly broken out when we leave, and since it was a little walk from theirs to the restaurant, and I hear them mention taking a taxi, I presume they mean to get back to theirs, so that we can discuss which bus I should take to get home.
• But in the taxi, my friend describes the exact spot where I live, and I’m slightly surprised. Then, the taxi is already on the road, and it would be awkward for me to tell [friend, and friend’s friend… let’s call them XF and LW respectively, since they might come up again] them that they don’t have to come with me, so we continue the chatter. This time it’s TV series and the such.
• When we arrive at mine, LW has to get out in order to let me out – a good thing about Chinese taxis maybe? That they don’t even let you get out on the side of the traffic? And I chuck a note that’s roughly equal to my trip home at XF, who’s in the front. She jumps a little – we did spend part of dinner talking about creepy-crawlies – but finds the note, and by that point I’m already waving from five metres away.
• This bit comes from many times watching my mother and her father (i.e. my grandfather) fighting over who pays for taxis etc. Frankly, I don’t know what the etiquette is among friends, so I just assume the universal equal-split applies in this situation.
• That said, I get the feeling that XF’s and my father are good friends, and now she’s sort of decided to “big-sister” me a bit while I’m here. So rather than fretting too much over bill-splitting etiquette, I’ll try to put together a nice present once back in the EU and send over instead.
• Totally knackered as soon as I step in the door.

I could probably cook with this if I get really desperate, but I’m not, and don’t plan to be. It’s a very pleasant rose-scent. That said, it’s the “watsons” logo that’s important here – makes me all nostalgic about Hong Kong.

Well what of today then?

• Lie-in. And after breakfast I fall asleep again? What is this?

• I’m having to take a break from sci comm as well as hist sci to deal with some pure museology. It’s easy to get stuck in the histories of these too, before I remember that it’s the theories that I need to take away with me to discuss in my essay.
• Email from Hanban at last, detailing the layout of my scholarship. It’s quite complicated, as all these things are, but I think I should be able to manage it. Although I might have to send one more email to the poor International Relations admin lady at PKU to make sure all plans match up…
• Temperatures have dipped below 30 C (temporarily, if the forecast is to be believed), but it’s muggy muggy muggy. Which makes it feel warmer, and mostly clammier than it is. If the dampness wasn’t there it would almost have been kind of nippy in my shorts-and-vest combo today. 25-29 C is very “comfortable” weather in this region, as my new friends from yesterday said.