Xiamen

Well I feel bad leaving people where I did yesterday, as it makes the whole world seem a lot more bleak than it actually is.

Yesterday midday a car came to the office to pick me up and drive me to the airport, which it did, and I eventually figured out how to check in. You see, this was a challenge because the airport only has single screens to display flight information, such as whether it is on time, whether you can check in, which counter to check in at, etc. Because they only display it on one screen, they then will show one page at a time, with about ten flights, for about twenty seconds, then flip to the next screen, and do this for the entire day's flights. Never mind that some of those flights weren't leaving for at least another six hours, they still showed them, and so if you overlooked your flight the first time around you had to wait a few minutes before your information went back up. I, of course, needed to check twice to figure everything out, and so this took time. I checked in and went to a restauarant to get food. I ordered beef noodles and they asked me if I wanted tea. I indicated that yes, tea would be nice, and so they brought that. I got the bill and it was about half again as much as I had expected. I asked them why this was, and apparently they charge 10 yuan for a cup of tea. This is at the place that charges 20 for the beef noodles. It was more than a little ridiculous. Most of the nicer restaurants in Shanghai wouldn't even charge that much for tea, or if they did it at least wouldn't taste like hay.

For the flight I had no pillow, and the armrest was a little low for the way I like to sleep, so I managed what I considered a triumphant improvization involving placing my book on my shoulder and leaning against that. Thank you Barbara Kingsolver, and if anyone wondered whether or not Harvard students are really bibliophiles, this should confirm it.

The hotel had a car to meet me and the other person on this trip, Alexandra (she was coming in from Beijing, hence meeting her in Xiamen rather than earlier), and we soon arrived at the Sofitel Xiamen. We discovered that the company has special status, so we're part of the 'Sofitel Club', which means small, intimate breakfast room with a full buffet (they've got doughnuts, and yogurt, and bacon, and baozi, and congee, and danishes, and bread [real bread!], and jam, and marmalade, and.... ~BP) the top floors of the hotel, ocean-view rooms, free internet, and a couple other perks which don't hurt. I've got a large and fluffy king size bed, and I took a bath with hot water yesterday, and today got to shower, also with hot water. (Have I mentioned that I've yet to get the hot water running in the apartment?) They gave me a scrubby thing and bath salts, and the point is I am being spoiled, she says as she sits in a pristine white robe. The only thing is that I can't figure out what you're supposed to do with the other kind of robe, maybe it is for wearing down to the spa? It is sort of a Japanese-style one, just some plain cotton, no special textures. I can't figure it out. If you know the answer, send it my way and get 10 points!

So enough about how nice the hotel is (jealous yet?) after settling in we went out, first to dinner at a place that does 'classic Xiamen cuisine'. I ate jellied bugs. They tasted like bugs jellied with salt water and tobasco. It was not one of those 'weird but works' sort of dishes that sometimes happen in China (like the preserved egg with tofu and vinegar) this was one of those 'just plain weird' dishes, that I found totally unappetizing. However I did have noodles made out of eel that were really yummy as well as shrimp which we picked out from the tank and they cooked for us, and some other great dishes.

One of the things we needed to do this week was street interviews asking people who migrated to the city about their experience. So we got our first one done in the restaurant with one of the guys who tended the live fish before they got cooked. Our next field interviews we did with some guys across the street from the restaurant. It turns out that these guys are all marketers for herbalife, a weight loss dietary supplement. So while my partner did an interview with one of them, another one babbled on and on in fast Chinese about what I can only presume was about how wonderful this product was, and about the leader, and how I must have heard about this giant American company, and had I seen their headquarters, right next to Coca-cola's in LA. So the only association I have with that brand is on Ugly Betty where her sister is an Herbaluxe vendor, which is a parody on Herbalife, and that's all I knew about it, so I smiled and nodded until we had finished our interviews with that group. We then went to this big pedestrian mall that is one of Xiamen's major attractions and gathered more interviews there along with just seeing what there was to be seen. Back to the hotel, sleep.

This morning I got to sleep in until the lovely hour of 8 AM (almost an hour later than usual!) and eat breakfast and get dressed all professional for our interviews. We had four formal interviews today, and the entire time I felt like my Chinese was pretty much crap. The first interview I could follow only a little (it helped that there were slides), the second interview was almost completely lost on me. The third interview I actually didn't have too much trouble with, and the fourth interview I just hope she didn't notice my flagging attention. Part of the problem with the fourth interview was that we did it in a non-aircon area while i was in a full suit. It must have been 85 or 90 inside, add the suit to that, and I was just really really really uncomfortably hot. If you are out there, the person who was interviewed, accept my humble apology! That was an embarassing moment. I tried to write random things in my notebook, no matter what they were, just to make it look like I knew what was going on and was paying attention, but most of those fifty minutes are just a blur in my head. And we won't even talk about how many times our taxi driver dropped us off in the wrong place or we went to the wrong site for the interview. ;)

Dinner we did fresh seafood, and I had the best baby clams in black bean sauce in the world. Sorry Evergreen, but we picked these clams out fresh from the tank by hand, not to mention the shrimp, large bivalves, and crabs that we had for dinner. It was soooo good. You just go to the tank, pick out your victims, and they take them back, cook them in a manner that they like, and bring out to you your dishes. So we weren't quite sure what we could expect, but it ended up being so great. We sat outside and watched dusk turn to night on the ocean and had a sea breeze to keep us cool. It was super messy--crab is not an easy food to eat in the best of conditions--but it was so good!

So Xiamen has so far been great, I've got one more day here tomorrow and then I head back to Shanghai on Thursday morning. Big shoutout to that guy who emailed me, sounds like you should play more softball, and a shoutout to that girl who is visiting me this weekend. Also Celia and Marcela get shoutouts for posting comments, I miss both of you a ton! It is easy to win my love and affection through communication :) Until next time!