China 2006
From Ben's Writing
Contents |
Introduction
I hated doing this as a kid — writing a journal, that is — but after my New Zealand trip, where I didn't write one, I learnt that they are a great way to remember what was going on. It's hard, I think, to capture everything that is involved in the trip. I doubt I'll recall the smells and sounds, but the sights, and my reactions to them, are easy to record. It is my hope, that this will be a good reminder (and teller) of the experience.
Calgary, December 16th
Said a sad good-bye to Jax. I have to give it to her, I could see it welling up in her eyes, but she kept smiling the whole time; I even got a nice slow motion wave good bye — or maybe, the fact that I was going to China had just kicked in, and I just imagined that. I miss her already.
Made good time through all the checks, so I ended up sitting at the gate for a good half-hour. Didn't look around much either; I figure, once you've seen the Calgary airport once, you've seen it enough for a life-time. Couldn't get internet access on my laptop, since I thought I had forgotten our password. Turns out that you need to actually pay for an additional option, to get access-point internet, so I just closed the laptop, and read.
Once on the plane, I sat beside an older couple that didn't way much, we made a good trio. After some time travelling, we ended up in Vancouver, having flown and hour and some change, but only lost 30 minutes according to the clocks.
Vancouver, December 16th
I arrived as scheduled in Vancouver, had some Japanese food to kick the whole diversification thing in to gear. Took some photos of this really big native Canadian carving of a boat (made with green rock). I then flew in and out of the duty free shops, looking at $3000+ watches; guess they must be impulse buys for a vastly different bread of people! Didn't end up getting anything, since I've got enough Canadian junk to last me a life-time. Also meet a nice Vancouver couple going to Vegas. She, the chatty one, was recently divorced, and as the story goes — both wore grins during the telling, so it's all up for interpretation — she just picked him up and was whisking him off to drink and gamble a little, among other things.
I didn't get to Van with much time, so I checked in and, other than the above, went straight to the gate.
Flight from Van to Beijing
The kind check-in lady was nice enough to give me a roomy exit seat, so unlike my next flight, I was able to stretch out and relax some. Like Sam's Air India experience, I was shuttled on to this circa 1980s Boeing 767. I think it was probably as old as my car, if not older. I think I remember flying in one of these, years ago, when they were new. The had managed to keep it in reasonable shape, but I always get a weird feeling when I'm in a machine that was built when smoking everywhere was common-place. I mean, really, who needs to smoke on the can? Those places are tiny, I can imagine even someone who is not claustrophobic would get a little wigged out in there once it fills up with smoke. I guess that high powered fan must have been to suck the smoke out fast enough so that you wouldn't die because you could not wait until you finished your business before you lit up. People must have had a smoke after every accomplishment, not just sex.
This flight was long, super long. We were delayed on the runway for what seemed like an eternity. Fortunately, I didn't miss my connecting flight, so I'm up at 2 am writing this down, before I forget it (and while I'm a little loopy — it's always more amusing to read this kind of thing — I've been up for 30 hours and counting [got some sleep on the Van to Beijing flight, but not much]).
I sat beside a guy doing his PhD at UBC. His English was as good as my Mandarin so we did a lot of smiling and and laughing at the movies.
As we flew over Beijing, the first thing that struck me were the expansive roads. The city's freeway are organized as rings attached to each other by equally impressive inter-ring veins, I think what I was looking at was the latter. I reminded me of my child-hood. Years ago, when I was a very, very little boy (and cute too, I can prove it, I have pictures) we were going home — this is in Mexico, by the way; and is very crucial to the story — and we stopped at the top of this hill, just at the entrance to our little town (village?). You could see lights straight across the horizon, reaching from left to right, for what seemed like an eternity, it was Mexico City, form about an hour away. I think I called it "[t]he city of lights." And it is exactly what I thought of when I saw Beijing's streets; they were these huge veins of light cutting through the darkness, waiving around like serpents in the water. The lights along the roads were so bright, that the rest of the city looked as if it were off; I commented as much to my seating partner, he laughed — as we had previously established as saying, "I have no idea what you said, but this seems to satisfy you," — and pointed at the lights, and said, "very big!" while making the universal "big" hand signals: place hands together and move outwards.
Beijing, December 17th
I was there for a very short time, which is fine, I'm stopping there on the way back for a few days. Everyone was rather friendly and helpful, except the check-in lady, who spoke no English, save for gate numbers, and was intent on making people's flights a misery.
Flight from Beijing to Kunming
The price I had to pay for her bad day was that she gave me, a 6' 7 guy, a centre seat in no-mans-land. Now, new Canadian airlines are pretty squished, but this was insane. I had to sit there spread eagle, just to kinda fit. I managed to convince the people I was sitting with that it would be best for all of us if I were to take the ille, and stick my feat out there, where I could trip other passengers, stewardesses and get my toes run over by the carts. Fortunately, this flight was not an 11 hour one; it was over in about 3 or so.
Kunming, December 17th
Stinky airport; cold too. Got a 40 yen cab ride (initially 60; and I wanted to pay 30; oh, well) in an unmarked car. Sketchy, I tell you, sketchy. But it was a nice car; which, in retrospect, does not mean much, but seemed like a good line of thinking: nice car, nice guy. Turned out to be OK, but in my semi-deluded sleep-deprived state, paranoia is an easy thing to develop.
The hotel, from the outside, looked like a dive. Worse, even, than the Alec Arms on one of its bad days. Maybe worse than Calgary's own Cecil. The sign looked like it was going to fall down any second, and the window frames looked as if they had not been changed since the turn of the century (it is cold in the rooms too). All of this turned out to be a bad ratting scheme; and for $17.50, I'm happy. I've got two beds, a TV (with nothing intelligible on) and my own private bathroom with an extra-long tub. Pretty nice all around. Although, having to wear a sweater and pants to bed kinda blows. Spring City my ass (Kunming City's nickname).
Kunming, December 18th
I woke up a little jet-lagged to day, after only sleeping about 4 hours. I hadn't planed to get up that early, but my body just did not want to sleep anymore. Worked out well though, since I got a free breakfast as part of my check-in, I went and filled my belly with food. Very interesting breakfasts people eat here. I would have never imagined spicy noodle soup was a 7:30 am thing. Guess I was wrong. What's funny is that I got there and it was a buffet, and I had no idea how to eat any of it. Good thing there were loads of people there, so I could just watch what they did, and then build my own meal. I'm glad I could just watch too, because trying to communicate with people has been very difficult. I'm glad I have a phrase book, because I can just point to what I want to say (I found this easier than butchering the pronunciation | which only served to confuse every one involved) but overall, if I can avoid having to ask, it works out better.
After breakfast, I bought a really expensive and extensive tourist map (i.e. has broken English in place of simply Chinese) and some bottled water (which seems to be the best way to keep myself from getting really ill). The map turned out to be as useful as me guessing which way I should go based on tea leaves in the base of a tea cup. It sure did look pretty, though. Loads of pretty colours. Good thing for me, the front-desk at my hotel was able to, and I say this quite literally, point me in the right directions.
I ended up walking through what looks to be Kunming's biggest park: Green Lake Park. It's at-least a 2-3 city blocks wide and about 4-5 long, with walking paths and bridges over the water. It is home to some old architecture and about 20 billion sea-gulls, whom can be feed with crust bought for one yen. The most startling part of my tour in the park, however, was not the large number of scary hungry birds, but rather all the people. All the dancing people, to be precise. Almost everywhere you look in the part, there are people dancing in unison. Some dance to what sounds like a more traditional sound track, while others are grooving to some weird sounding pop music. It was quite something to watch. Some of the groups contained about 100 people, all of whom were doing the exact same move.
The Conference
After making my way through the park, I made it to the site where the conference was being held: the Green Lake Hotel, a former Hilton, now privately owned. This place was grand. Everything is plush carpet, marble, hardwoods, etc. And all the employees bow and say hello to you as you walk by. It was a little weird at first, then charming, and now just kinda a little much.
The conference itself has basically taken over the entire hotel. There are at-least 12 small halls, and 2 main ones. I don't know how many papers are being given, but the are around 6 being given in parallel at any given moment, over the course of 3 days. I meet a fellow from Sweden, I think, Sven was his name. He was working on robotic assistance technologies. Basically, health related robots like computer assisted wheel chair navigation tools, etc. He too feels uncertain about Chinese breakfasts. It's nice to have a consensus on such an important issue.
I had lunch with Sven in the hotel. Our conference swag-bag contained free buffet tickets, so we decided to take full advantage. I can't really tell you what I ate, other than there was rice, and it did contain chicken, but I don't think I recognized any of the flavours. Oh, and I had a Sprite too, which, well, tasted like, you guessed it, Sprite.
Along with the free meals, we received a nice laptop-like-caring-case and a big brick of tea. I'll post a picture, so you can see what I mean by brick. We also got a break-down of all the papers, as well as a CD with a copy of each of them. Oh, yeah, and a fancy name tag too.
The evening Dinner, or Welcoming Buffet was incredible. We went to this place called "The Jixin Banquet Dance of China," which was a huge building housing a dinner and stage-show theatre. They would bring out courses after courses of food. Some was good, some was not, but almost all of it was edible, which says a lot, considering my self-inflicted dietary constraints. I got my picture taken with a few of the dancers at the end of the show, like any good tourist should. I also bought a video of the show, or at least that is what I thought it was; instead, it was more of an ad for the place. Oh, well, it was loads of fun.
Kunming, December 19th
What a waste of a day. It's pouring rain; my stomach is a little upset; and anything worth looking at outside of town is a good 3 hour bus ride away, and I'm not sure my gut could handle the ride right now.
I did manage to get outside, however; I walked back to the Green Lake hotel, to use the internet, have a free lunch, and be warm (no hot water in my building today; and I could see my breath in my room, it was so cold).
Once my stomach settles, I think I may just wander around the stores and pick up some little things to bring back. I did get some movies while on the way to the hotel. Some of them are in English and some are in Chinese. The store clerk helped me find some of the more popular Chinese films. They don't have sub-tittles, but the one is an action film, he said, so it won't require much understanding of the dialog. Six disks worth of action movie! Everything here is done in epic proportions.
Later that day ...
It's now the late afternoon and I've done some shopping. I don't get it; it's impossible to find anything here. There is loads of tea for sale, but little else. I did get some silk, I think, but mostly I just browsed. I also found a nice little place that serves good coffee, so I'm sitting here writing, drinking espresso and reading "The Game," a book on pick-up artists, care of my brother.
The rain has stopped, but its still overcast, and from what I'm told, it'll be like this for the next few days. I guess the weather just got bad too, it was, apparently, very pleasant a day before I got here. Guess they knew I brought shorts.
I present tomorrow, and I'm a little nervous. Everyone I talk to here is so well versed in their respective areas, that I feel a bit like a faker. I've rehearsed a bit, so I'm sure it'll sound OK, just not sure about the question period.
