It has been a very full two days… lots of surprises and fun moments. This post is a little on the long side. Sorry about that. It’s been eventful here. If you only want to read a little, that’s ok, but you should definitely not skip the last page of today’s blog post. There’s especially good stuff at the end.

For today’s blog, I plan to focus on the various emotions and reactions I had during my first two days in Beijing. On my very first morning, I strolled out of the hotel and just started wandering, mapless, on a bike/walk lane along a main road. I came to a river and a park! A lovely park. It was exhilarating to come across a park, randomly, in my first 5 minutes of exploring! My first Beijing photo is here… me in front of a stand of bamboo.

I came across an older woman dancing to music that was kind of Chinese, but modern too. Her motions were similar to tai chi, but not as slow. Further on were about 100 people sitting in folding chairs, looking like they were sleeping upright. I think they had gathered to meditate, because it was perfectly silent. Many of them had towels over their heads! The paths were winding and the park was lovely even though it was already 85 degrees at 8:00 am in the morning!

I wandered back to the hotel and was met by Marge, a young Chinese woman who is the communications director for the dual degree program and who has been my handler over the past two days. Off we went to find a bank… We were going to attempt to open a foreign bank account for me. Long story short… no go. No bank wanted my money for such a short period of time. Also, Chinese banks are very different from American ones… they are not quiet, restful, stately or calm. They were loud, noisy and very utilitarian. Think DMV, but much louder. As for why I needed a bank account: the Chinese don’t really use credit cards and only sometimes use cash. They pay for nearly everything via their phones, with a multi-purpose app called WeChat. Without a bank account, it’s very tough to use WeChat. This is an ongoing issue that we are still working on…

What was interesting about being with Marge and her colleague, Jingjing, is that the moment they stepped into the sunlight, they each opened up an umbrella to shade themselves (and me!) from the direct sun. I tried to keep the giggling to myself. It was very kind of them to think of me and I was respectful of their desire to shade me from the sun. I do not know how they would react if I told them that I spend many summer hours on a bicycle, sweating profusely in direct sunlight.

We had a nice stroll around campus and eventually got to meet my faculty sponsor named Xiaomeng who will be very involved in the arrangements for my course. Xiaomeng is an Associate Professor in the School of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering. He is tenured. Make a note of that fact.

So, here is where my reaction changes to shocked. He invited me into his office — it is an office that he shares with Marge, the department’s communications director! He has a shared office. Wow. I’d never heard of that for a professor. People come and go from his office all the time. It’s a hub of activity.

Xiaomeng is warm, funny, outgoing and has excellent English. He attended Purdue and University of Georgia, and then worked for a few years in North Carolina. He lived in the States for 10 years altogether. He is kind and helpful. I am going to enjoy working with him.

Lunchtime provided another opportunity for surprises. We three (Xiaomeng, Marge and me) headed to the dining hall for lunch. Nearly everyday the faculty and staff eat lunch in the dining hall, mixed in among the students. Again, it was a very busy place to be. Tons of people, everywhere. Noise, commotion, lots of bodies moving about. And all kinds of different dishes to choose from. The surprising part is that the people serving up the food were actively trying to entice us to choose the food in front of them. It was like being recruited. I asked Xiaomeng, “Why are they trying to recruit us to choose their food?!” His response: They earn a commission from the number of people who choose food from their offerings. They are outside vendors, that the University invites in to serve students.

Whoa. That’s something novel.

And what was the cafeteria like? — old-style McDonald’s with fixed tables and chairs, in rows, with no air conditioning. Did I mention that it was 97 degrees outside? It was only a tad cooler inside. The food itself was excellent! I had kung pao chicken and a dish with broccoli and beef. I managed pretty well with my chopsticks. Or at least I didn’t embarrass myself too much.

After lunch, we got to see my room and it looks excellent! It is newly renovated with new furniture and cabinets. It’s very comfy. It’s essentially a dorm room, with a private bath. It’s located in a building for foreign faculty and visitors and is located right on campus. I’ll save the details for a later blog post. I am very pleased with it!

In the evening, I was on my own so I wandered over to the mall and grocery store. I was drawn to the fruits and vegetables and was shocked at the low prices. I texted Marge and asked her if I was understanding the signage correctly — “I think I must be misreading these signs. Does it really say that cauliflower is 42 cents per pound?” Yup. “And these Asian pears are 77 cents per pound?!” Yup. Another surprising moment of the day. I will have to load up on my fruits and veggies.

I’ll include some photos of the market tomorrow.

Day 3

This day got off to an auspicious start! Yesterday Xiaomeng asked me if I’d gotten breakfast at the hotel. (It comes with the stay.) I was a bit sheepish and told him no, I wasn’t hungry due to all the travel the prior day. In truth, I don’t love the usual hotel breakfast fare; I imagined sytrofoam bagels, lukewarm scrambled eggs and packaged danishes. Ewww. He looked at me with a bit of consternation and said, “You really ought to try the hotel breakfasts here.” Keeping that in mind, I headed to the hotel breakfast bar on my second day in China.

There are no words to describe what I found there. Delicious, unbelievable hot dishes of a sort that would NEVER be found in the US. Never, ever. I had the best breakfast of my life.

Vegetables! For breakfast! I was in heaven. I *love* vegetables. There was sauteed cauliflower with tomatoes, random stir-fried green leafy things with beef, saucy green beans with pork and a fried fish bit on a stick. Mmmm. And those were just 3 of the 12 possible hot dishes that they served.

After that great start to my day, Marge met me at the hotel along with two students who showed up to help me with my suitcase. On the prior day, Marge and I had discussed the arrangements for moving me from the hotel to the dorm. (It’s a half-mile of flat paved terrain.) I told her I would just bring my stuff over to the dorm from the hotel by walking. She looked at me, very dubiously, with squinty eyes and said something along the lines of… “No, you cannot do that. We cannot let you do that. You have both a big suitcase and a full backpack. You need our help.” (I was perfectly capable of this trek, just FYI. I am neither a shrinking violet nor a wimp.) Alas, this was not the time to pushback. I have come to realize that I think it makes them feel helpful and proper to be taking care of me. I think this was a time to be deferent to their expectation that I am a respected visitor. And so we all walked to campus, with them carrying two bits of luggage and me carrying nothing at all.

This is a theme that I am noticing in my first few days in China. They treat me with great respect and esteem since I am a visiting professor from Cornell. This is somewhat amusing to me because I am just-a-lecturer at Cornell, and don’t rank too high in the academic pecking order in Ithaca.

The rest of the morning was spent testing out AV equipment and trying out the classrooms. All of that looks good and will be ready for the first day of lecture tomorrow. I also had my first meeting with the five TA’s who will be helping with the course. It was great to meet them and I am working hard to memorize their names.

So what is special about today? It’s my birthday. My Chinese host knew this and had made some nice arrangements for me. No one asked how old I was turning, so that was excellent. I don’t want to know what they were guessing.

After our TA meeting Xiaomeng took all 8 of us out to a restaurant to celebrate my birthday! It was so nice of him to do this, and what a memorable meal it was…. I will remember this meal for the rest of my days. We had a hot pot meal. I had never had a meal like this before. “Hot Pot” refers to a big triply-divided vat of two types of broth and one sauce. The pot is inserted into the center of the table, and it is kept boiling for the whole meal. In one half of the vat is a mild bone marrow broth and the other half has a spicy brown broth with lots of seasonings. For our meal raw meats (and a few veggie greens) were served to the table over an hour-long period by the waiter. The diners place the meat into the vat where it cooks and then is fished out and eaten. It is delicious, but also messy. The restaurant actually provides aprons for everyone to wear while dining.

So, I know you are all wondering… What kinds of meats did they serve you? They start tame and get progressively more, uh, … unusual. I think euphemisms can be excellent placeholders in polite conversation.

So here we go… sliced beef of three different cuts, pork of two different cuts, sliced lamb, meatballs of beef or indeterminant origin, balls of fish, balls of shrimp and crab. When the next plate of meat arrived, Xiaomeng asked me, “Any guesses on this one?” It looked bumpy like a starfish, but I guessed that it wasn’t starfish. Nope, he says. Stomach of a cow. I tried hard not to make a face. It mostly tasted like the sauce it cooked in, but had a texture that I had never sampled before. So then the next plate of meat arrives. Hmmm, no way was I going to guess this one… He tells me, “Intestines of goose”. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud, “Seriously?!” Again, it tasted like the sauce, but with an intestine-ish texture. This whole time, I am being watched very closely by the TA’s who are greatly amused by the grimaces that I am trying hard not to make. So, you ask, could it get worse more unusual?! Oh dear, yes. That’s when the waiter arrives with a dish of red liquid. Xiaomeng turns to show me the dish:
“Any guesses?” Oh jeepers.
“Cherry juice?”, I ask hopefully, but with a grimace.
“No, sorry. This is duck blood.” Sharp intake of air here.
“So, we’re going to cook this, which will turn it into coagulated duck blood? And then we’ll eat it?”
“Yup.”

On the bright side, I guess that would be better than drinking it straight up.

It turned out to be pretty good. It was sort of like savory jello with Asian spices. It’s the texture that makes it unusual, not so much the flavor.

Then we had dessert, which was a melty kind of jello with little encapsulated fruit juice beads. And, then there was birthday cake — a green matcha cake with strawberry frosting on the outside and fruit buried in the center.

The entire meal was delicious. And it was so nice to celebrate my birthday with newly-made friends!