Yesterday I said my goodbyes to colleagues, students and friends. I took a final walk through campus and soaked in the atmosphere. All semester, I enjoyed my daily walk across campus to and from work, and so I paid close attention to the trees, the sounds, the heat and the birds as I walked the path for the last time.

I have gotten many lovely goodbye gifts from my students, TA’s and colleagues. One of the gifts was a key chain made with my likeness, hand-drawn by a student! That was very sweet.

In the morning of my last day, I went sightseeing with four of my students: Violet, Veggie, Jellyfish and Lucy. They were in high spirits and excited to be showing me their city, even despite the 100 degree temperature.

We went to Tiananmen Square. It required a one-day advanced reservation, a metal detector machine scan and at least two passport checks. In my observation, the students studiously avoid talking politics and criticizing the government. Only one student in my time in China, voiced criticism of the government and they did it with me only when we were one-on-one. As one of my students told me, “Chinese students don’t talk about politics much for obvious reasons.” The rest of the time, they only made veiled references — “there was the 10-year period that we don’t talk about” (Cultural Revolution), and “that day, June 4, that we definitely don’t talk about” (Tiananmen Massacre).

I took a moment of silence to remember those who lost their lives at the square.

Back to my goodbyes…. it was very sad saying goodbye to my closest friends, Jingyue and Lamqiezhun. I was somewhat surprised that I was able to make friends in such a short time in China. I will miss them both.

I also said goodbye to my favorite meal vendor, the fishmonger at the Dining Hall.

That’s all for now. I am in Tokyo and I have to board my flight for JFK. It will be a 13-hour flight. Then it’s onto Syracuse. I should be back in Ithaca by 1 am!

I’ll send an update in Syracuse! Bye for now….

I made it through the final lecture and my students’ final exam. So, now I am doing some travelling. I am currently on a high speed train to Shanghai. I have been looking forward to riding on a high speed train, even before I arrived in China. When I woke up this morning, to get ready to travel, I felt like a little kid on Christmas morning! I love trains, and I especially love high speed trains. The current travelling speed is posted in every train car. See below… 304 km/hour, which converts to nearly 200 mph! We are flying right along.

I am travelling with a new friend named Lamqiezhun. (The pronunciation is hom-see-joon.) What is particularly interesting about her name is that “Lamqiezhun” is her entire name. She doesn’t have a family name at all. She is a graduate student who just finished her degree in Grassland Management. I met her last Sunday for the first time, just by random chance, and she is fluent in Chinese, Tibetan and English. We met at an informal Tibetan dance on the soccer field after dark. We joined the circle dance for a bit and then we watched everyone else and just talked. She is very friendly and I eventually asked her if she might be interested in being my travelling companion. She was keen on the idea, and so here we are travelling on a high-speed train to Shanghai.

She is Tibetan and we have talked about what it is like in her hometown and in Tibet, in general. We even spent some time talking about yaks!

She was born in the Tibetan countryside and then moved with her family to the Tibetan city of Xining. Her family has kept the family property in the countryside and her whole family — about 20 people on her mom’s side, gather annually out in the country. They stay in the beautiful white yurt that you see below. The yak glamor shot is of “Dumpling”, who is one of her favorites.

It has been*very* helpful to have Lamqiezhun as my guide. Travelling in China would be very difficult without a helper who speaks Chinese. There seem to be many rules and situations that she needs to sort out for me. The Chinese system for many things is complicated. I am very glad to have someone to help out with the travel details, plus she is a great companion and easy to talk with.

As we were waiting in the train station for our train to arrive we had the following conversation:

• her: Standing next to you is very interesting.
• me: Oh, really?! Why?
• her: Did you know that everyone is staring at you? They aren’t full-on staring at you, but they are all stealing furtive glances. Many times.
• me: Oh yeah, that. I forgot to warn you. Traveling with me means you will get stared at a lot. Or rather, you’ll notice that I get stared at a lot. I kind of stand out.
• her: It feels a bit weird though, that they stare at you. It’s not like they’ve never seen foreigners before.
• me: I noticed it a lot the first week or so. I barely notice now. It doesn’t bother me much. They aren’t being mean or hostile, just mostly curious. They look at me, then glance away. Then look again, then look away. It’s the little kids who are funny about it. They stop and just stare. I smile and give a friendly wave, which they like. I catch the attention of babies. Even they can tell I’m different.
• her: This is going to be an interesting trip, with everyone looking at us. I’m used to blending in a bit more than this.
• me: It actually works in my favor sometimes. People are a bit friendlier because they can tell I am a foreigner and have no idea how things are done. I catch a lot of breaks because they give me the benefit of the doubt.

The distance from Beijing to Shanghai is 750 miles and takes 5 hours 30 minutes by high-speed train with 7 stops in between. To put this into perspective, Ithaca to Chicago is 675 miles. Can anyone imagine being able to get to Chicago in just five hours?!! This is amazing to me.

I looked up the airplane travel time for Syracuse to Chicago and it’s 4 hours and 45 minutes. Go figure.

Key takeaway: the trains here are seriously fast, comfortable and convenient.

On our first night in Shanghai, we wandered the city exploring the area between our hotel and the river. It’s a beautiful modern city. The cityscape is fabulous and almost unearthly.

On the far side of the Huangpu River, you can view the modern skyscrapers. On the the close side of the river are the classical European-style buildings that were built in the mid-1800’s when the European powers in invaded and staked a claim to large swathes of China.

Our plans for the day include a visit to the Shanghai museum and some garden visiting.

The one thing that I forgot when I did my trip planning is that the monsoon season reaches into Shanghai. Thus on our first evening stroll through the city, we walked in the monsoon rains. It wasn’t a downpour, but it was a steady rain and as you can see in the photo above, we got soaked despite our valiant use of umbrellas.

I am not complaining though because it reached a searing 106 degrees in Beijing today. So glad that we managed to escape that weather for a few days.

The countdown until I leave Beijing has begun… I have just four days left. I am going to make the most of it!

I am becoming a connoisseur of bike share bikes! When it’s time for me to go for a ride, I peruse all the spots where they are parked. As you can see, they are lined up in many different places. They come in three different colors: turquoise, yellow and blue. The color signifies which digital payment system you can use to rent them. The turquoise and yellow ones can be rented with WeChat only, which I don’t have. The blue ones are rentable with Alipay, which I do have. So I can only ride on the blue ones. The blue bikes are also the most rare, so I sometimes have to go hunting for one.

There are people whose job is bike shuffling. The job of a bike shuffler is to pick up bikes from popular places where they are left, and move them to popular sites where they will be rented. In the pictures, you can see the small three-wheeled vehicle that the local bike shuffler uses to shuffle bikes. It’s usually stacked higher than you see there. He’s already removed at least 6 bikes from the stack!

On Saturday, I had the sweetest bike ride on a Cadillac of bike share bikes. I lucked into this one. What made this bike so nice?! The seat was nice and high. The brakes worked very well. The bike had no wonkiness. I have ridden bikes that have: rubbing wheels, chirping pedals, broken brakes, a super-low seat and even one bike with misaligned handlebars that were turned 30 degrees to the left as I rode straight.

Anyways, I took this bike and rode to Beihai park. That’s the park that I went to a few weeks ago with that youngster friend, Jingyao, who loves soccer. I enjoyed the park so much, I decided to go back on my own. I rode the bike 6 miles into downtown and it was quite a nice ride, and of course, I rode back to campus too. Beijing is very bikeable. The weather could have been better, but it wasn’t terrible. (It was 83 degrees when I started at 8 am and 93 degrees by the time I got back at 11 am).

When I ride, I ride seriously, meaning that I don’t dilly-dally or go slow. I am the fastest person of any age group on a bike share bike. Not a single bike rider on a bike share bike has ever passed me during my 3 weeks of riding. I just spin those pedals and zoom along.

I was rather fond of this particular bike by the time I got to Beihai Park. It rode so smoothly and had a nice high seat. As much as I liked that bike, I knew that it wasn’t really “mine”. The sad part of about renting bike share bikes is that you can’t just “claim it” as your own once it’s parked. Anybody can rent it as soon as it’s parked. I liked this bike so much that I attempted to hide it. I put it further away from the park entrance and “hid” it behind some super-old and very crummy bikes in hopes that no one would notice it and I could claim it an hour later when finished my walk through the park.

You probably can predict where this story is going. My lovely bike had been claimed by the time I returned. 😦 The bike I had for the return trip had an annoyingly low seat, even in its highest position, and I felt like my knees were knocking up against my chest.

The park was just as lovely as I’d remembered, with beautiful wide walking paths with trees forming an arch overhead.

Curious things that I saw at the park:

–> A man stretching — not just any man, an old man. Stretching in public is very common among the Chinese, especially the seniors. They like to stretch their hamstrings. On fences and gates and benches and walls and railings. It’s a regular thing here. I couldn’t get into that position if I tried. I can’t even touch my own toes, let alone put my foot up at shoulder height. It’s ludicrous that he can do that. And, more amazingly, it’s perfectly normal to do out in a public park.

–> A group of women dancing tradition Chinese dance, just to the side of one path in the shade of the trees. It was lovely to watch.

–> Another group of 7 or 8 senior women doing aerobic exercises together in a circle, talking non-stop. I sat and watched for ten minutes or so. It looked like a lot of fun, not the exercises so much, but the togetherness. They seemed to be enjoying each other’s company. And I was looking for company. So I took a deep breath and walked over to them, making motions to ask if I could join them. They welcomed me into their little circle and I did the exercises along with them. It was very sweet. They didn’t speak much English, except the leader who proudly counted “1, 2, 3, 4” in English, just for my benefit.

I struck up a “conversation” with the woman next to me (using Google Translate) and I told her I was a visiting professor from Cornell teaching at China Agricultural University. She told me about her group: they are all retired and know each other from work. They said they are doctors, nurses and staff members. It was nice to be welcomed into their group, even if it was just for a short while. We took a selfie together when it was time for me to go.

My ride back to campus was uneventful, except for the bicyclist I spotted pulling a metal trailer with a grandmother and her grandkids! That is definitely something you would not see in the States. I loved it! Maybe when I am that age I can get somebody to pull me along just for the thrill of the ride.

Back on campus, I saw some more interesting sights: Graduates playing basketball in their graduation gowns in full sunlight when it was 93 degrees. They seemed to be having a lot of fun and didn’t appear to mind the heat.

Then I saw the delivery truck delivering vegetables to one of the major dining halls on campus — a dining hall that serves at least 5000 meals per day. Note the sacks of fresh veggies being unloaded from an old VW bus, onto an ancient had cart up a set of 8 stair steps. Very curious.

Half the fun of eating here is the process of discovery. Andy asked me after my first week, “So tell me, what kinds of things you are eating?” My response was, “I have no idea what I am eating.” I don’t know the Chinese or English names of any of the dishes I eat (except for Kung Pao chicken, which I do recognize.)

Discovery of various new foods was the theme of last week. For instance, last week I ordered my breakfast with the usual point-and-hoot method. It was a rolled up flatbread, but with a something inside that I couldn’t see. The bread part was thicker than a tortilla or a wrap, and it was flaky-looking. The fun part was that I had no idea what was inside. The question was: What will I find when I open it up!? It was a hot dog and a fried egg with a piece of lettuce. It was quite yummy!

If you look closely in the photos above, you’ll also see a metal bowl with a liquidy something. That’s my new favorite breakfast food — millet porridge. I like it so much that I have learned how to say it in Chinese:

Xiǎomǐ zhōu  小米粥

“Xiao” means “little”, “mi” means “rice” and “zhou” means “porridge”. Phonetically you would pronounce it “see-ow-mee joe”. Literally, it’s “little rice porridge”.

I like asking for it by name so that I don’t need the point-and-hoot method of food ordering.

I told my students in class today about this favorite food. I pronounced it for them and they gave me a round of applause!

Recently for lunch, I chose a round fried ball of something. The outside was covered in brown flakes. It’s kind of neat to sample something and know that there would be a surprise on the inside. I discovered that it had sweet bean paste on the inside. Again, very yummy.

I am getting quite good with chopsticks. One of the dishes that I really like is boiled peanuts (see above). I have gotten skilled enough to pick them up one by one with chopsticks. It’s good practice.

A student gave me a bag of mangoes three days ago. omg, they were the best mangoes I have ever eaten. I ate three at a time.

I have been very diplomatic as I write about the food in my blog. However, there is one dish that I really don’t like. I have even given it a descriptive name of its own: Chainsaw Chicken. Suppose that someone hands you a whole raw chicken. Then they hand you a chainsaw. They explain the culinary rules: you have to cut the chicken up into bite-size pieces using only a chainsaw. That’s it. No knives and you can’t use your fingers, except to throw away every piece of chicken that miraculously ends up boneless. One extra-strict rule has to be followed: the dish can only include chunks of chicken meat that have random bone pieces in them. Once the chicken has been completely obliterated, they cook it in hot sauce. I unsuspectingly chose this dish during my second week in China because I didn’t know any better. As I was eating, it felt like a lesson in chicken anatomy as I discovered bone bits in every bite: Oh great, that’s a piece of spine. Hmmm, this must be a chicken femur bit. Ah, the delicacy of chicken wishbone fragments. (Sarcasm here.) I ate about three pieces and gave up because it was so unpleasant. Now I know to steer clear of that dish, as well as its sibling dishes: Chainsaw Fish, Chainsaw Pork and Chainsaw Beef.

The end of my time in China is coming quickly. I leave on June 30, which is just 10 days away. Wish me well for tomorrow… I will be giving my final lecture of the course! I expect that it will be a bittersweet moment.

My blog has been pretty candid about my experiences in China over the past month. I’ve had lot of interesting conversations, nice weather though a bit hot, great bike rides and fun lectures. Occasionally weird food.

It really has been a wonderful month so far. But it wouldn’t be entirely truthful to say that everything is super-fine, all the time. In addition to coming down with Covid , I hit another sad patch about a week ago. It’s kind of weird/odd/noteworthy how things became sad: my Nigerian friend, Amaka, who is a grad student here gave me a warm hello hug. The feeling was almost electric — I said to her: “Wow, hugs… that’s what I’m missing here.” She had given me a spontaneous hug in the middle of a conversation a few days before too when I mentioned that I had four kids. That really took me by surprise.

Her hug was the first time I’d been touched or held in 4 weeks, with the exception of occasional formal handshakes. 

That night, I was thinking about her hug and it made me realize that I was really missing Andy and my kids and my friends. I was longing for the familiar. I had a good cry about it. And another cry on the phone with Andy the next day. Then it seemed to pass. It made me think a bit about what makes me feel good here. So, I tried to plan more of that into my life: good conversations with people, walks outside in parks and gardens, bike rides and reading. Staying in contact with my friends back home really helps too. I send texts and write emails to keep up with friends, and that makes me feel good.

And, of course, I enjoy writing this blog. I enjoy thinking about the best way to tell a story. It’s very rewarding. It feels like so many interesting and often hilarious things happen that it’s hard to know which ones to write about. 

I had another meal, this time in the dining hall, with three students: Violet, Veggie and Jellyfish. I am not making this up. They were lively, opinionated and just a bit silly. They obviously enjoyed each other’s company and we had some good laughs.

The night before, I had dinner with three male students at a Sichuan restaurant and it was the hottest meal I have ever tasted. We had some adventurous eating and I got to taste bone marrow for the first time. I thought it was quite delicious. So was the eel. The meal could have been even more adventurous if I hadn’t politely turned down his offer to order some brains for us. There’s one thing I won’t eat, and it’s brains.

These three young men were quite serious, so our conversation led us to the topic of their research projects. One of them is studying the compounds in foot sweat that make stinky feet. He said that his roommate has super-stinky feet, so in the service of science he asked his friend to not wash his feet for three days. Then my student took his roommate’s wretched socks, stewed them in the laboratory for a few hours and then extracted the stinky chemical compounds in order to isolate those that might be neutralized by a new chemical spray. I can say that it’s creative! I am glad I wasn’t around as he was stewing the socks.

The other student is studying insects as a viable food product. Specifically he is studying silkworm chrysalises and how they might be turned into a protein powder for human consumption. All the rest of us thought this was, uhhh, interesting but we were pretty certain that it wouldn’t be for our consumption. He said, “I like eating insects. They’re good! You just fry them up. I eat silkworm larvae. I’ve had ants and termites, though I don’t love those. I particularly like bees. Spiders are pretty good too, though of course, they aren’t actually insects. Beetles though. I won’t eat beetles. That, would be grim.”

Well-spoken, I’d say.

Having been in China for exactly 4 weeks now, I would say that the most rewarding parts of being here have been the conversations I have had with people — students, fellow faculty, staff members and random strangers. There seems to be so much to learn and talk about.

I just finished dining out with two of my students, Yifan and Shiyi. Sometimes the Chinese choose English nicknames. Yifan just goes by “Yifan”, but Shiyi goes by “LittleBear”. Hmmm, I thought when she told me this… I must have misheard her, but no, that is her nickname because that’s the directly translation of her name from the Chinese. I tried to picture myself calling on her in class by her nickname, but my imagination just doesn’t extend that far!

The conversation was far-ranging and we covered many topics. Here’s a list of things that we talked about and the gist of each topic.

• The stress of the college application process in China. For the Chinese, getting into college is based exclusively on one’s performance on a single two-day entrance exam. That’s it. No essays, no activity lists, no teacher recommendations. Just a single test. And your chance of getting into a university and which ones is not entirely based on your performance. Your chances also depend on where you live, not just on how you did on the exam. Some provinces get more slots than others. Apparently it’s a lot easier to get into a top university as a Beijing resident than it is as a resident of other provinces. [OK, so I am going to go super-cynical here and guess that this is because Beijing is the political center for the Chinese national government and the politicians here get to set the rules. They want their kids to have a better chance of getting in, so the standards are lower for people who live here. It’s sort of like Stateside where lobbyists and moneyed interests get more say in the functioning of our government and legislation than a regular person does.]
• The stress of the college application process in the United States. I told them how our system works, which can also be very stressful, but in a different way than a 2-day entrance exam.
• Things they need to know for their entrance exam. They have to know 80 poems, many of which are in ancient Chinese with more complicated characters, old-fashioned grammar and archaic words. They have to be able to fill-in-the-blank for missing parts. They have to know oodles of math, even if they want to be English majors or psychology majors. And they have to know a whole bunch of other stuff that I don’t remember. They viewed the entire process of high school and prep for the exam as very sad. And saddening to be a part of.
• Tutoring from a young age. As soon as their schooldays end, they all go for private tutoring. You aren’t required to have tutoring, but if you don’t, you’ll fall behind all your classmates.
• Boarding school. LittleBear went to boarding school as a 6 year old. Why? Because her parents were very busy. She lived at school during the week and went home on the weekends. It can’t be that uncommon because I know of another student who had the same experience. I kind of wanted to cry when I heard this.
• School hours School can start as early as 7:30 am, and if a teacher wants to start earlier they can tell you to be there at 6:50 am.
• School rules in China Oh, there are so many of these. Girls’ hair must be kept shoulder length. School uniforms are required for everyone with the only leeway being socks and shoes, so they individualized their outfits with loud socks and funky shoes. No nail polish is allowed. Or make-up either. No pierced ears. No dating is allowed in high school. Or, if they do date, it has to be a secret. They asked me, did my kids date in high school and did they tell me? Hmmm, that was a good question. Two of my kids dated a little and two of them didn’t date at all. One of them dated secretly and the other openly. I told them that my kids are pretty open with me about who they are dating as young adults. They were impressed that they are open about it. Apparently they don’t mention this to their parents.
• School rules in the US I told them that there aren’t too many dress code rules at my kids’ public school. Tank tops are ok, but no spaghetti straps. Skirts need to extend to their fingertips when their hands are by their sides. (Is this still a rule at ICSD?) And no butt cheeks showing from beneath one’s shorts. Who knows what the cleavage rules might be. As for dating, it’s fine. I said the dating rules are set by parents, not by the school. They found this to be very interesting.
• After-effects of school rules in China They said that the universities don’t have dress code rules like the high schools. So they say that one particularly good thing to look forward to after taking the big college entrance exam, is that the high school dress code and behavioral rules no longer apply. So they say that lots of teenagers go a little crazy. They get their ears pierced and they dye their hair crazy colors and the nail salons are all packed with customers. I said that Chinese students seem to dye their hair at higher rates than the American students, and they told me that it’s just because they didn’t have the freedom to do it in high school, so it’s their little rebellion now that they can. I told them that the one thing that’s the same between the US and China is that nearly all the middle-aged and older women dye their hair. Nearly everyone. I marvel at it in the States, and I marvel at it in China. I’ve got my own personal experiment in reverse-rebellion going strong. 😉
• Social life and activities at Cornell They actually asked me: What is a college party like? Hoo boy. What a bummer of a topic. I had to explain the Greek system. And the drinking. They found this mystifying. They told me, we don’t do much drinking here. And we don’t have parties like that. I told them: Yeah, I know. The Chinese system is better. You aren’t really missing anything.
• Rainbow decorations at the mall Our restaurant was located on the 6th floor of a mall. As we were riding up the escalators, I noticed some artistic, geometric rainbow design decorations. I asked them, “Are those there for Pride month?” They looked at me blankly, “June is Pride Month”? I said, “You know, gay pride.” Still no recognition. “Ok, ‘gay’ means women who like women, and men who like men.” Now they get it. They shake their heads: “Um no. Those rainbows are definitely not for gay pride. They are just decorations that happen to be rainbows.”
• My favorite foods in China I told them I really like Chinese food, and it is quite a bit spicier than American food. We had five dishes for dinner. The first one they described as not spicy. It was actually medium-spicy. The second dish they said was a little spicy. It was incredibly over-the-top spicy — one of the spiciest dishes I have ever had. I asked them: You say this is only “a little spicy?!” Yup. I shook my head. Wow. They would find American food so incredibly bland and boring.

• T-shirt choices We had an interesting discussion of the t-shirts that the Chinese wear — more than half the t-shirts have English words on them. I asked LittleBear, what’s your shirt say? She told me — I don’t know what it says. I just like the cute puppies on the front!
• Clothing styles in the US versus China I told them that the Chinese dress more modestly than the Americans. And they cover up much more in the summer to protect themselves from the sun. The Chinese students, particularly the women, try to stay as untanned and white as possible. They also wear more clothes, even when it is quite hot. Last Friday, on the day of my students’ Intro Stats exam, it reached 95 degrees. They took their exam in a room that was 80 degrees or more, and many of them purposely had on long sleeves, pants and jackets, so they wouldn’t “get cold”. At the start of the exam, one young woman pulled on elbow-length gloves and told me this was because, “I don’t want to catch a chill.” 😲

My dinner lasted more than 2 hours, and it was one of the best conversations I have had with my students so far. There is so much that I want to know about their daily lives and views about things. And they seem to be equally interested in me. It makes for some lively and insightful conversations.

I have three (!) more meals with students on my schedule this week. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s report. Sichuan cuisine (the spiciest kind in China) is on the schedule! Eep.

The weather here is going to heat up. Here’s the forecast…

The term is flying by. I have just five lectures left, with the last day being June 20th and then the final exam on June 21.

I hope to tell you about my classroom teaching and students soon. I had a moment in the classroom on Friday that was … epic. Truly epic. You do not want to miss that story.

Signing off now… Best wishes to all of you!

Some of the best news of the past week is that:

• I have Alipay on my phone, so now I don’t have to embarrass myself by using cash.
• I joined a bikeshare plan with HelloBike!
• I have taken about 6 rides in the past week for a total outlay of about $2.

As you can see from the picture, the bike is a total granny bike — single-speed, a seat that’s too low, upright handlebars and hard rubber tires. No inner tubes. But it’s fine, really fine. A granny bike is better than no bike, for sure.

My first time out, I took a trip around the block. Note the wide empty street with no cars. There is very little vehicular traffic on campus. The trickiest part was the transaction. To rent a bike, I pull up the Alipay app and then indicate that I want to use my HelloBike plan. (I bought a two-week plan: For $1, I get 6 rides of up to 30 minutes each. (I am not making this up.) Every bike has a QR code and a GPS tracker. I scan the QR code and the app notes the time and location of the bike. Then the locking mechanism unlocks. I raise the seat post as high as it well go, test the brakes and ride away. It’s pretty straightforward.

Yesterday was the best day of riding for me. The temperature hit 100 degrees during the day, but that didn’t deter me. When it got down to a more reasonable 90 degrees at 7:30 pm, I headed out for a bike ride. My destination was the Olympic Park, 3 miles east of campus.

Beijing is surprisingly bike-friendly. Apparently it’s been bike-friendly for many many years. Nearly all the major roads have wide bike lanes 8-16 feet wide, though they aren’t just for bikes. The bikes share the bike lane with the mopeds and sit-on scooters. There are usually motor scooters whizzing past me. It is a bit nerve-wracking, but it’s better than mixing it up with the cars like I am used to in Ithaca. And there are no potholes here. Ithaca roads can be an obstacle course, especially on the downhills, swerving around the bike-swallowing-size potholes on State St, Stewart Ave and Gun Hill. The roads here are smoooooth.

At the Olympic Park, there were hundreds of people out walking and enjoying the cooler air. It didn’t feel too crowded though because the park is a big place and everyone spreads out.

The buildings are really beautiful. I got to see the Bird’s Nest from afar, and it was quite impressive-looking, especially in the evening light.

My ride was 7 miles altogether. As I was riding, I did a quick survey of helmet-use among cyclists and motor scooter riders. I was wearing a helmet, but I was the only one among the 100-200 bike riders I saw. The motor scooter riders are a bit better, with about 30% in helmets.

On my little field trip to the Olympic Park, I was peddling as fast as I could go and managed to keep up with two riders on real bikes. Of course, they didn’t know that I was chasing them — that’s my competitiveness coming through. I rode as fast as a person can ride on a single-gear granny bike with hard rubber wheels and a basket on the handlebars. I was able to pass some motorized scooters and young guys on bikes too. My legs were spinning out at about 100 rpm and I must have looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care. I was biking and I loved it!

Yesterday I found out that my hair hasn’t been shampooed it 3.5 weeks. I have been using conditioner that I thought was shampoo. All the markings on the bottle were Chinese. How would I ever know?!

When I used this “shampoo” for the first time, I thought to myself, “Hmmm this isn’t getting very sudsy. Maybe it’s just conditioner.” I dismissed this thought and decided that maybe the Chinese don’t use sudsy shampoo, and then I just forgot about it. After a week or two or three, my scalp was feeling a bit itchy and just not clean. So I got out my phone, pulled up the Google Translate app and I had my answer: conditioner, not shampoo.

Back to the store I went for bonafide shampoo and now my hair feels really good.

Yesterday was a highlight of my stay in Beijing. I spent the entire afternoon exploring Beihai park in the central part of Beijing, with a newfound almost-friend, Jingyao. And then we had the evening together walking the city, having a hot-pot dinner and taking the Metro.

The first story is about “How did you meet Jingyao?” About two weeks ago, I was in one of the dining halls for dinner and I decided that I wanted to have soup, at the make-your-own-soup station. I didn’t quite know how it worked, so I asked the woman next to me: “Do you speak English?” And she said, “Yes!” and then proceeded to show me the process of getting my own soup. The station looks a bit like the open dairy cases at Wegman’s — it’s an open refrigerated case, and it has all kinds of uncooked vegetables, pasta noodles and meats. The way it works is that you take a shoebox-sized plastic basket and you choose all the ingredients that you would like in your soup. You place the items in the basket and then bring the basket of ingredients to the soup counter. The cooks take your basket and add boiling hot broth and cook everything together for about 5 minutes. When it’s ready, you pick it up at the counter and add yummy things like green onions, cilantro, boiled peanuts and red chili pepper mix and it’s ready to eat.

I invited her to join me for dinner. We had a wonderful conversation. She was lively, confident and had very good English. She asked me if I like visiting parks and when I said yes she started ticking off the names of the parks I should visit. I was having trouble keeping up with her suggestions, so I handed her my phone, and she dropped a whole bunch of pins on my Google map showing all the best parks. Then, when she found out I liked art galleries, she did the same for those. It was a great dinner and so we exchanged contact info and said we should have dinner together again.

A week ago, she sent me a message and asked if I’d like to go sightseeing. She said she’d be my guide!

So yesterday we headed out, via the Metro subway, to the Beihai park. Interesting impressions were that: 1) the Metro is very clean and very quiet; 2) every station has a metal detector with a conveyor belt, just like airport security back in the States! 3) since I am a foreigner, I can’t use the self-service ticket-buying machines. I have to talk to a person at the ticket kiosk and buy my tickets individually, one by one every time. This system is not set up for foreign tourists; 4) to buy tickets into the park, I had to bring and show my passport. Every person entering the park had to show their ID! You can’t just pay money to get in. They need to know who you are, as well. The Chinese have to scan in their ID’s to buy tickets and get into the park. I could comment here, but I won’t.

About 10 minutes into my trip with Jingyao, we have this conversation:

• Me: So you’re a graduate student, right? What are you studying?
• Her: (frowning) I’m not a graduate student. I’m just a junior.
• Me: Oh, really? I just figured you were older because you seem older. And you speak with confidence, more than you’d expect of a person your age. I’m thinking: omg, not only did I arrange a half-day outing with a brand-new acquaintance, but this acquaintance is just 20 years old! Yikes. I hope this goes well.

After the Metro ride, our first stop is her favorite cafe. Trying to be hip, I order a coffee drink: oat milk latte on ice. This is about the third time in my entire life that I have had coffee. I actually liked it. We got a slice of pistachio cheesecake to finish and that was delicious too.

It felt like the Gimme Coffee on North Cayuga Street and it reminded me of all the cafe-sitting I have done with my Israeli friend, Ornit.

We walked a couple of miles more and saw some beautiful architecture, temples and museum buildings.

Our destination for the day was Beihai Park, which was first built in 1166. A description of the park said that it is the oldest and best-preserved imperial garden in the world.

There were so many parts of the park that were enjoyable: long tree-lined avenues for pedestrians to walk along, temples hidden in the hillsides, ponds, a huge beautiful lake and a grand temple and temple gate. Although there were thousands of people there, it did not feel overwhelming. The path goes all the way around an enormous lake, more than 3 miles around!

We had some interesting conversations that afternoon. I asked lots of questions about her life, and life as a young person in China. We talked about her plans to come to the States for one or two years for a Master’s Degree in Communication and how life would feel different stateside. At one point we had this conversation:

• Me: Do you have a boyfriend?
• Her: No!
• Me: (hmmm, that was a very strong no…) A girlfriend?..
• Her: (smiling) Yes! Well actually, no. I had a girlfriend my senior year in high school and my first year of college. But we broke up. She’s a director. That’s my type, can’t you tell?
• Me: A play director?
• Her: Yup
• Me: Nice!

From there, we had an interesting discussion of gay rights, and Chinese society’s acceptance (or lack thereof) of gays.

From one of the Temples there were some excellent views of the city of Beijing, as well as the mountains to the north. The city of Beijing is quite large. In early May, I was trying to get a perspective on what it would be like in Beijing. I had thought that Beijing would have a population comparable to New York City. But then…. I looked it up. Beijing has 3x as many people as NYC! Beijing has about the same number of people as live in all of New York State! Beijing has 20 million people, and they all live within a 10-mile radius of downtown. There are tall apartment buildings and skyscrapers everywhere. It’s very densely populated. In one of the photos below you can see the buildings of the skyline. What was surprising to me was that it didn’t feel like a huge city, right then right there. You would never have guessed that we were almost at the center of an enormous, bustling city.

I really enjoyed Jingyao’s company throughout the day. She was talkative and an easy conversationalist. At one point, I was talking about my passport photo….

• Me: Here’s my passport photo. When they took the picture at the passport photo store, they told me I couldn’t smile.
• Her: Ahhh, but I can see a hint of a smile there. You are actually smiling, just a little bit.
• Me: Yeah, you noticed! I think the no-smiling rule is a dumb rule. So I smiled as much as I thought I could get away with. I was in a defy-the-government kind-of mood.
• Her: I’m impressed.
• Me: But still, it’s not a great passport photo — at the passport store, the main light source was a spotlight coming straight down from above my head. It made my gray hair glow bright white. Very unflattering.
• Her: So, what color was your hair before it went gray?
• Me: (My thought: What?! Has my hair turned so gray that she can’t even see that my hair is brown?! This is bad, very bad. I hate getting old. Ugggh.) Brown. My hair was brown.

We walked all the way around the lake. It was more than 4 miles, and lovely the whole way. As we walked, we talked more.

• Me: I have to tell you… I am a huge women’s soccer fan.
• Her: (she stops walking and looks at me stunned) No way. So am I. And I watch the men’s game too. Tonight it’s the Finals of the FA Cup, Man City versus Man United. First time in 150 years. Aren’t Haaland and De Bruyne amazing together?
• Me: I cannot believe I am having this conversation. I come all the way from the US to China, and I run into a woman who knows and loves soccer! This is seriously cool. Erling Haaland is amazing. He keeps getting perfect passes from Kevin De Bruyne and he puts them away every time. They are a perfect combo. You’re rooting for Man City, right?
• Her: Of course! I have a bunch of friends who are part of the local soccer scene on amateur teams. They have reserved an Irish pub to watch the game tonight. It’s going to be a really good game.

We talked a bunch more about soccer, and then had a delicious dinner of traditional Beijing hot pot. No weird stuff this time.

It was a really wonderful day. I was super-impressed with the lake and city park. It was incredibly restful and rejuvenating to be outside enjoying the sunshine and surroundings. I made a new friend and we walked more than 10 miles together!

I am looking forward to a good week, with occasional outings on a bike share bike. I’ll keep you posted. I’m thinking of you all! — Melissa

Topics for upcoming posts: teaching statistics to Chinese students in a Chinese classroom, riding a bike in Beijing city traffic, the local weather (100 degrees forecasted for next week), and more weird food stories.

One thing that I have particularly enjoyed during the past week is having the opportunity to strike up conversations with random strangers.

Conversation #1: Yesterday evening I went for a walk in my favorite park. On the way back, I passed a woman who was about my age and appeared to be friendly, so I waved and said “Hello!” She seemed very pleased with this. Then I thought to myself: try saying hello again, but in Chinese. So I wave again and say, “Nihao!” She smiles widely and speaks excitedly to me in Chinese, none of which I understand. I know that she has asked me a question or two. I smile, shake my head and shrug my shoulders. Then I wave goodbye.

As I am walking away, I think, maybe I should try using Google Translate to have a conversation with her? So I turn back to her, and I type on my phone, “What was the question you were trying to ask me?” The app turns that into proper Chinese and I show it to her. She smiles widely and types her answer into her phone in Chinese. I point my phone at her phone, and the translation is, “You are so beautiful. What year were you born?” I am somewhat surprised by the question, as I tend not to ask strangers how old they are. However, I just assume that this is normal Chinese manners. So I write, “196x”. (Yes, I am leaving out the details in the retelling of this story.) I show her. She grins again, points at herself, and says, “Me too!”

Then I make a motion to her, oh wait. I take off my baseball cap and pull up a lock of hair, motioning to myself: “My hair is gray, but yours is not.” She giggles a bit. She motions to her own hair, leans over and parts it to show the roots, and says, “Oh, but that’s only because I dye my hair!” We both have a good laugh and I wave goodbye.

It was a lovely, very brief conversation, but so human and friendly.

Conversation #2: My room is right next to the running track, which is an incredible hub of activity once the sun goes down. Due to the orientation of my room, I can only see a small slice of the track. So last night, when a bunch of music started at the track at 8 pm. I went out to see where it was coming from. In the middle of the track, someone had set up a speaker and they were playing Chinese dance music. There were about 30 people dancing some type of line dance in a circle around the speaker. They appeared to be doing something, Macarena-like, but more impressive and complicated. It looked like so much fun. I was really enjoying the music. So I just stood around in the dark to the side, tapping my feet, humming along and enjoying the spectacle of it.

After about 10 minutes two female students come up to me, and start a conversation:

• Them: Hello!
• Me: Hello!
• Them: We’re Tibetan.
• Me: You’re from Tibet?!
• Them: Yes!
• Me: Wow, that’s cool. It must be really different in Beijing than in Tibet.
• Them: Heads nod vigorously The air is very clear in Tibet. deep breath
• Them: The air is not very clear here. Heads shaking
• Me: The air can be bad here. Pantomime of coughing hard
• Them: giggling at my pantomime
• Me: Are you from a city or a rural area in Tibet?
• Them: Our families are animal herders.
• Me: Wow, that’s amazing. What kind of animals?
• Them: Lots of kinds. Sheep, goats and yaks.
• Me: Yaks! Yaks are seriously cool.
• Them: Smiles and head nodding
• Me: Are you here tonight for the dancing? Do you like to dance?
• Them: More head nodding
• Me: Are you two of my students?
• Them: Confused looks
• Me: Oh, sorry. I teach here at CAU. I thought I might not have recognized you. I am teaching Food Science majors and I wasn’t sure whether or not you are both my students.
• Them: No, we aren’t your students
• Me: It’s nice to meet you anyways! What are you studying? Are you vet students?
• Them: No we’re not vet students. We are studying ….(They tried to get Google Translator to work for this, but the answer was incomprehensible. We never did figure it out.)
• Me: Well, it’s been nice talking with you. I don’t want to keep you from your dancing.
• Them: Can we be friends on WeChat?
• Me: Sure!

We exchange our contact info and they disappear into the night. I go back to my room and revel in the fact that I just got to meet two young Tibetans, for the first time. I’d love to meet them again. I’d love to hear about their lives. And I am keen to learn more about their yaks.

It’s been a quiet three days here and I feel much better than I did on Wednesday. My symptoms now are just occasional headaches, some nasal congestion and shortness-of-breath (!) at climbing stairs. That last one is a bit surprising for me. It usually takes strenuous exercise to make me get out-of-breath, but not these past few days.

I have been hanging out in my room, taking occasional naps, reading and tidying-up the gradebook for my Intro Stats class back in Ithaca. And I have been eating the meals that they deliver to my door at 8:30 am, 12:30 pm and 5:30 pm. It feels very leisurely compared to my usual pace.

As for today’s topic, let’s cover another slice-of-life topic: grocery shopping. I made a brief foray to the grocery store today.

[An aside on COVID: I know that some of you are thinking, “WHAT?! You got COVID 5 days ago and you’re out in public?!” Yes, I wore a mask and socially distanced from the people I met. That is easily within the bounds of acceptable COVID behavior here. The Chinese are pretty chill with regards to COVID now. From the start of the pandemic up until last December, the government was very very strict and followed a zero-COVID policy, with severe restrictions and strict rules with regards to isolation and quarantine. Then, in December there were widespread protests and Xi Jinping (China’s president) did an about-face and basically eliminated all the restrictions. I was talking with a student about COVID and he said that when the COVID-policy was strict, he had to isolate at an off-campus hotel for 10 days, when there was a case of COVID in his home province which is 1300 miles away! The policy was that if you visited your home province and there was even 1 case of COVID there in the past two weeks, then you had to isolate for 10 days when you came back. Anyways, the current policy is that, well, there is no policy. If you feel ok, you can do as you wish. I think that if you test positive, you are supposed to stay away from other people, and that is what I have been doing. When you are feeling fine, you can go back to doing your usual activities. I don’t even know if there are masking suggestions or requirements, post-COVID. I started feeling symptoms last Monday, I tested positive on Wednesday and I plan to be back teaching, in-person, next Monday. Everyone here seems to think that’s a perfectly reasonable plan. ]

So, I walked to the grocery store. It’s called WuMart and it’s a 15-minute walk from my room, just beyond the north entrance to campus. I was in search of the two food items that I love and aren’t served regularly here: chocolate and peanut butter. I also needed boring things like paper towels and Kleenex.

It was a bit scary going grocery shopping the first time. Many of the packages are only labelled in Chinese, which is not particularly helpful to me. It felt quite intimidating until I discovered a most-amazing app… Google Translate. Suppose that I see a package of something and I have no idea what it is. I pull up Google Translate, click on Chinese -> English, then point my camera at whatever it is that I need to translate. I don’t even need to take a picture — just look at the item in the view finder and the Chinese is translated automatically. Like Magic. AI really. Below is a packet. It could be any number of things. An office supply product. A kitchen gadget. Or some kind of food product. Who knows? But using Google Translate, I can figure it out! Below on the left is what the item looks like on the viewfinder of my camera. And then on the right, it shows Google’s translation of the Chinese text. Just aim my camera at Chinese characters and voila, an English translation!

On this package you can see that it’s braised duck wings. From my experience with Chinese cuisine so far, I am going to guess here that they are not boneless. Maybe they are for gnawing. Or for consuming whole. Inquiring minds want to know.

Anyways, this Google Translation app is very useful. I have used it for other things too. I can type in English, and it makes a translation into Chinese. This could have saved me a pile of trouble last week at KFC.

I discovered today that paper towels come in square packets instead of round rolls, and they stock both both Tide laundry detergent and Skippy peanut butter. That’s useful information.

In the fruit and veggie section, I found deals on Asian pears, peas, cauliflower and dragon fruit. I love the look and name of dragon fruit! I have one in my fridge, but I am unsure how to prepare it. I’ll google it and see what they say. I’ll report back when I have more info.

This brings me to a discussion of the check-out and paying for things. In China everyone pays for everything with their phones. Literally everything. They use one of two apps: either WeChat or AliPay. They don’t use credit cards and they rarely use cash. I have been working with Marge over the past 10 days to get WeChat funded by my VISA credit card. Sources on the internet say that it’s possible, but there is no actual evidence of this. If you don’t have a Chinese phone number, then you can’t use WeChat. That seems very short-sighted on their part given that foreigners do come to China and do want to spend money, but WeChat doesn’t make it possible.

And why do I care so much? What is driving my desire for WeChat or AliPay? It’s not the buying of groceries. And it’s not the payment of pharmacy items. Or restaurant bills either…. I want to have the freedom to take the Metro and explore the city. And most importantly, I really want to ride a bicycle. There are bike share bikes everywhere. This campus has at least 200 of them. I haven’t been able to ride a bike in 10 days, and I am getting itchy with desire. I can rent a bike from right outside my building for $1 per hour. Yes, that’s right, super-cheap. Everyday I walk past hundreds and hundreds of bicycles that I am itching to ride, but can’t, because I don’t have the right payment system on my phone.

News flash from 5 minutes ago — I googled the spelling of AliPay and found this:

So according to the below release from AliPay, a foreigner can now attach their foreign bank card to AliPay and use this to make purchases in China.

So a solution to my payment issues may be in the works. I’ll have an update if it actually works out.

But I digress… I am at the check-out with my groceries and I absolutely know that I should be paying with WeChat or Alipay, but I can’t. So the clerk scans all my groceries and motions to the register with the amount I need to pay. She expects me to pull out my phone and pay. Instead, I pull out my wallet and reach for my cash — she rolls her eyes, furrows her brow and makes a snort, and says something in Chinese along the lines of, “Cash!? Jeepers, you can’t be serious. There are phone apps for this, you know. ” I don’t know Chinese, but I am sure that this is what she’s saying. I look at her apologetically and say something like “I know, I know. I am really trying hard to get one of those nifty apps, but it’s harder than you think. Maybe next time?” I pay her in cash, smile sheepishly and leave with my groceries.

As I travel back to campus, we come to the entrance gate. CAU is a gated campus. It’s not open to the public. There are three entrances to campus. Everyone entering has to have an official approval. Mine is a virtual form that I carry that indicates that I have official permission to enter because I am a official foreign visitor to the campus. I am much relieved that I don’t have to use the official Chinese method of entry — facial biometric scan. The camera scans your face and matches it in their database. That makes me shudder. I am glad to have been spared that.

I thought this would be a quick-and-easy blog entry on grocery shopping, but you heard so much more. I am obviously emerging well from my COVID fog.

Thanks to everyone for the well wishes!