Hi everybody, six weeks have passed since my last email and it’s about time for some news from me. Well, let’s say it with Groucho Marx: „Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana“.
In June I’ve been on a Polymer Physics conference in Jinan. On the way there we had a stop in Dalian and got a city tour. Dalian is a very nice place. Obviously in his days chairman Mao thought so too, and it therefore has a big area which can be shut off from common tourists in case members of the government come to spend their holiday there. We visited a sculpture park (where a lot of people tried to climb the mouth of a fake shark – at least its jaws start to break of) and the Tiger bay where according to the tale a princess was saved by a hunter from a tiger. There, like at every sightseeing point else I’ve been in China, people asked me to get a picture with me. I really don’t know why they do that – they don’t have a personal connection to me and what do they tell when they show the photos to someone? „Look, there was a foreigner we got a picture with!“. It is a strange habit here. In exchange I started to require a picture of us myself. They seem irritated by that request sometimes :-).
In Jinan I got to stay in the 5star conference hotel like my boss and his family while the Chinese colleagues were shipped to a cheaper hotel. I never ask for a special treatment – I just get it ;-). Five star hotels are nice, as you can imagine. From my window I had a good view on a open air opera in the park outside. That was a nice extra :-). The conference was nice and my talk went well. I got to talk with Julia Kornfield from Caltech, from who Prof. Rieger from Munich got the idea for our cooperation during my PhD work. The conference was all in English which seemed to be somewhat hard for most of the Chinese attendants. For some of the speakers the chairmen had to translate the questions to Chinese and the answers back to English. Most of the speakers seemed to be from abroad anyway – USA than Japan and than Germany. Really irritating was the habit of the Chinese audience not to switch their mobile phones off during the talks. Therefore there was a constant background noise of messages arriving and phones ringing as well as actually people talking on their phones while sitting in the audience. This appears somewhat rude to western people but is quite common here – just a different culture. During the conference we got a city tour in Jinan as well as a tour to Tai Mountain, a sacred mountain with temples on the top. The Chinese approach to mountain climbing is rather interesting: first there is a shuttle which takes you half the way up and then there are actual stairs going up to the top or alternatively if you are too lazy or not able to walk a cable car or even people who carry you in a handbarrow up the mountain (the handbarrows I only saw at Chang Bai Mountain which I visited lately with our group – I will come to that bellow). My colleagues bought a lot of local food specialties to bring back to Changchun. They surely could have bought it in Changchun, but bringing food home yourself seems to be a Chinese thing.
The weather here has been very hot in the last two months. Usually 30 degrees C and more. After two weeks of steam room conditions in my apartment the whole building got air conditioning installed. Now it is quite nice :-).
We followed the world cup very closely here. The first game of our great German team was at 2:30 in the morning here. Still, most of the colleagues came to my apartment to watch the game with me and we had a really good time (4:0 over Australia). They all supported the German team and we watched most of the German matches afterwards together! Sadly we lost against Spain, but I am very enthusiastic for the next international competitions to come. And as a special treat did I win the world cup betting game with my old colleagues in Germany (Who’s your daddy? Say it! … Right you are! I’m your daddy! 😉 ).
A strange thing happened last weekend when I went out to buy some stuff. A Chinese guy, about my age, stopped me and tried to ask me something in Chinese and English. From „Can you help me“, „do you have time“, „tou fa (which means hair in Chinese)“ and his helpless gestures did I conclude that I should have gone with him to his barber to show him my hair color. Obviously did he want his hair colored in that way. This question might seem strange at first, but when you are here for some time this is quite plausible. I denied his wish – somewhere you have to draw the line.
A funny thing is here going on concerning the dining service in the institute. The students all got a 100% pay raise (can you believe that?), but at the same time the food prices also got a 100% raise. While the graciously accepted the pay raise they started to boycott the food service. After 3 weeks and despite some concessions by the institute this is still going on. They allowed me to break their boycott, but until now I played along. Bear in mind, that the new prices are between 30 and 60 cent in Euro for a complete meal! Last week we took a two day Abteilungsausflug to Chang Bai Shan. The first day we rafted on one of the local rivers and the second day did we visited the mountain which has the highest and deepest volcano see in the world. Also, the border to North Korea goes right through the mountain and the sea. Despite warnings of a colleague of North Korean snipers did I take the opportunity and step one foot in North Korea. I’m a little daredevil ;-). To be honest, a lot of the Chinese visitors did the same.
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