For over a month, I have been working around the clock on an article based on my research with Wang Zhiyou and Zhu Jingsong. it is titled “Accurate and Precise Polynomial Approximations to Angular Interrogation Surface Plasmon Resonance Data.” I know that, with a title like that, everyone will be most eager to read it.
It is a bit long, twenty eight pages of text, double-spaced, not counting the 15 figures in the article. I am guessing that it will be about 12-16 journal pages long when it is published. We are thinking of submitting it to a journal published by that European bandit Elsevier.
Jingsong is happy with the work. As sort of a reward, I have been invited by the Chinese Academy of Science to give an address to the young scientists at the nuclear test facility in Mianyang (绵阳; pinyin: Miányáng), Sichuan Province. There are still many problems after the May 12, 2008 earthquake.
Mianyang is the second largest city in Sichuan Province, located in western China. Mianyang is noted for its beautiful scenery, long history, and deep cultural roots.
They say the food is hot and the women are beautiful.
Sichuan is also famous for its relaxed lifestyle. In fact, young men are advised not to go to Chengdu, since they will find the relaxed pace of life too appealing. Here is some background from China Odyssey Tours.
Unique Leisure Life in Sichuan
The tempo of life in Chengdu, the capitol of Sichuan Province, is the polar opposite of Shanghai. Even Chinese people traveling from other cities are amazed at Chengdu people’s ability to relax. People seem to spend the majority of their time in tea houses, or playing mahjong, or card games. Tea House Life
Sichuan can be called a province of tea houses. Tea houses can be found in every city, town, and village. Spend a day in a Sichuan tea house and you will have a better understanding of Sichuan people’s local life as it has been for hundreds of years.
The tea house is an important gathering place in Sichuan, especially in Chengdu. It is one of the few remaining cities in China to still contain an authentic tea house culture. Thousands of teahouses are scattered about the city, they provide the locals a place for social gathering, entertainment, where they can get together with relatives, make new friends, and meet up with old ones. Over the centuries, people in Chengdu City have formed a habit of stopping by teahouses.
Even though a tea house is not a scenic spot, it is still a wonderful place to see and be seen. It is recommended that every visitor to Chengdu stop and visit a tea house for a while. It is guaranteed to be the experience of a lifetime. Mahjong and Sichuan Cards Games
More so than in any other place in China, Sichuan is famous for its relaxed lifestyle, and the games played there play an important role in the leisure time of its residents. The two most popular are Mahjong and the card game DouDiZhu (fight the landlord).
Mahjong is a game enjoyed throughout China and around the world, but nowhere does it have such notoriety as in Sichuan. Almost every resident of the province knows how to play this game, from the oldest senior citizen, to the youngest school child.
Everywhere you go, you will find people playing Mahjong. It can be seen on the streets, in tea houses, in Mahjong houses, and at home.
The other extremely popular game is Dou Di Zhu (Fight the Landlord). It is a card game similar to the game Big 2, but with some major differences. In Dou Di Zhu one player plays the landlord, and the other players team up to ‘Fight the Landlord’.
26.4.2009
I flew down to Guangzhou to meet Jinsong for three days. My flight down from Beijing was relatively pleasant. The plane was half full.
I spent the flight working on my Chinese homework, especially writing characters. The stewardess really liked that a lot, and looked over my shoulder to see how I was doing. She saw me writing the words 王老吉 (Wanglaoji), a Chinese herbal tea that I like. It is made here in Guangzhou. A few minutes later she brought me a cup from the first-class cabin! I could actually understand some of the Chinese spoken to me!
Throughout the flight I heard two very loud cockney-accented voices yammering away. I was surprised to see they belonged to a pair of Indians two seats back.
His assistant, Gao Ye, met me at the airport. We took the express bus downtown. Very convenient. She will show me around the city today while Jinsong is working.
Jinsong is preparing a large grant proposal. We will talk a lot of science this trip, but we will eat a lot of really delicious food, too.
Last night we went to a sauna for some shvitzing, had a great meal of the local cuisine, and spent two hours drinking tea. Dragon Well. Just amazing. So delicious I felt I was getting a buzz.
I have been working with two students - Zhiyou, with whom I visited Houhai on the night of the closing ceremony of the Olympics, and Hourui, our companion on our trip to Xi’an - at the nanocenter (which I now can say in Chinese: guojia nami kexue zhongxin.
We are trying to find the most economical way of representing surface plasmon resonance spectra with a simple polynomial expression. It is a tough problem in data analysis. We have had great difficulties with numerical instabilities, and we could not get consistent results. We spent two months trying to figure out the origin of the instability.
Recently, we discovered that part of the difficulty arose from limitations with Mathematica itself, so I wrote our own linear regression algorithm with arbitrary precision.
Now we have consistent results, and we have found a compact reliable method that allows us to identify the resonance position to a precision about 50 times narrower than the sampling interval. In addition, we have found that the most commonly used method has a 95 percent confidence interval that does NOT include the experimental data point closest to the resonance!
Last night’s closing performance of Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca” featured an all-Chinese cast, under the baton of Li Xincao, conducting the Shanghai Opera House Orchestra, the China National Symphony Orchestra Chorus, and the Women and Children’s Chorus of CNSO, with Zhang Liping in the title role as Floria Tosca, Dai Yuqiang as her lover Cavaradossi, and Liu Yue as the lecherous Baron Scarpia, with stage direction by David Li.
Despite the occasional musical glitch, and odd distractions from unusual staging, set, costume, and lighting choices, the performance of this new production, whose première opened this 2009 Opera Festival of the National Center for the Performing Arts, was very affecting; it was received warmly by the audience.
The beautiful Ms. Zhang, already well-known for her Cio-Cio San, commanded the stage. Her acting, her sense of bearing, and her stage presence illuminated the evening. Ms. Zhang portrayed Tosca’s yielding to Scarpia with a convincing balance between vulnerability and determination. Ms. Zhang’s voice is not huge, but there were many moments went it sailed over the orchestra with great beauty. Her “Vissi d’arte” was exquisitely sung, with the dark edges of her voice adding a thrill to her spinto sounds. Her portrayal of the jealous Tosca was also quite energetic and compelling.
Dai Yuqiang sang the role of Cavaradossi on closing night, following the previous night’s portrayal by Marcello Giordani. Dai Yuqiang did not sound healthy at first. His voice in “Recondita Armonia” seemed too broad, needing more cover and focus. Yet he gained strength steadily through the evening, so that by Act III he sang with beautiful intensity. Mr. Dai’s “E lucevan le stella” was rich, full of resonant legato, with anguish and desire blended in exciting proportion. The audience erupted as he sang the last words, “E non ho amato mai tanto la vita!” The audience demanded an encore, and received one. This was one in which Dai Yuqiang sang again with great intensity, but this time so piano, so delicate that one could hear the weeping of the audience as he sang “Oh! dolci baci, o languide carezze”. Many more cries of applause followed the close of the aria. Mr. Dai also sang with tenderness and elegance in ”O dolci mani”.
Scarpia was sung by Liu Yue, a 1988 graduate of the Tianjin Conservatory of Music. In a different venue, Mr. Liu, who as a youth in 1985 made a fine impression as finalist in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, might have been able to fare well, but his voice was difficult to hear in this house, and suffered from too dark a color. However, when he could be heard, particularly in Act II, Mr. Liu’s voice was clear and appealing.
There were other moments of great beauty as well. Huang Ronghai sang exceptionally well and acted ably as the Sacristan. Cui Zongshun’s Angelotti was another inspiration in the performance. Dai Ziyi sang the Shepherd Boy’s pastoral “Io de’ sospiri” - wrttten in Romanesco, Rome’s local Italian dialect - with clear, bright, sweetness. Li Xiang sang Spoletta with a chilling menace.
The ringing of the morning bells in the churches of Rome at the beginning of Act III was performed by members of the chorus, dispersed through the audience, each with a tubular bell and a mallet. The result was quite effective.
Some of the orchestral playing could have been stronger. Intonation problems in the viola section in Act III, coupled with the occasional ensemble problem, especially in Act II, were the small handful of flaws in the orchestra, which generally played strongly under the excellent leadership of Maestro Li.
The set was designed by Chen Yan, with lighting designed by Sha Xiaolan.
There were some strange moments in the production.
A large giant figure, who appeared to be at least a foot taller than anyone else on stage, draped in dark gray from head to toe as if he were a cross between The Mummy and Il Commandatore from “Don Giovanni” - a deus ex machina figure - lurched across the stage in the Act I finale and made itself at home among the members of the chorus; it re-appeared in the last scene of Act II in order to hand-deliver the instrument of Scarpia’s murder to Tosca.
There was no parapet from which Tosca could leap, so her demise was arranged in another fashion. Tosca made her way to the mirrored cross which dominated the set, cried “O Scarpia, avanti a Dio!”, after which she tore off her outer robe, revealing a stunning brilliant red dress underneath. At this point the mirror slid up, revealing Gigantor in his gray body wrap, who embraced her, and carried her off to her judgment with the Baron.
The set was so barren that at times it was necessary for the principals on stage to mime their actions. The Sacristan’s mimed rope work in the church and Tosca’s hand-washing in imaginary water after her dispatch of Scarpia were unconvincing.
Ms. Zhang’s declaration, made after Tosca dispatches Scarpia to the grave (”E avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma!”), was both triumphal and sneering, but it was marred by the bizarre underlighting - with blazing white light! - of Scarpia’s corpse on the cross-like walkway leading into the interior of the Palazzo Farnese. The lighting was so strong that it seemed to lend more of a carnival atmosphere than a sepulchral one.
The costuming, full of stark contrasts of black and white - except for Floria Tosca’s brilliant red gown revealed only at her death at the end of Act III - had its moments of weirdness. Scarpia’s silent but deadly spies looked like Darth Vader, with masks of silver. The chorus of ragazzi entering the church at the end of Act I sang well enough, but each of the young girls in the chorus was dressed in what appeared to be a school uniform, with a large glow-in-the-dark cross mounted on her forehead, while a large white veil billowed from the peak of the glowing cross like a sail. Seeing this mob of ragazzi, most of whom were well under 120 cm tall, dart around the partially lit stage with these glowing crosses affixed to their foreheads was bewildering.
Premature ejaculations of “Bravo” from the audience spoiled two moments. The start of the unison duetto between Tosca and Cavaradossi (”Trionfal, di nova speme”) was inaudible, because the audience, not recognizing the absence of a cadence, had started to clap and shout at the pause before the duet, drowning out the two singers. During the ruckus, their voices drifted, and the two were flat when the orchestra entered a few bars later. And the ominous final chords of “E lucevan le stella” were never played, even in the encore, after members of the audience yelled with enthusiasm even before Dai Yuqiang had dropped his stance.
The performance closed, after many bows and curtain calls, with a tribute to the composer, during which the curtain rose and the drop at the back of the stage was lifted to reveal a large open space with the chorus, still in costume, flanking its sides, as the orchestra played “Recondita Armonia” with both Dai Yuqiang and Li Xiang singing. Images of the composer were projected onto the back wall, while the audience seemed unsure whether to clap, to stand, or to leave. We stayed until the curtain dropped the final time, not wanting to miss a moment.
We have been roommates and co-workers now for one month.
She is our group’s new finance manager, after Mazhen returned to Jinan to help care for her mom’s mom.I miss dear Zhen very, very much and think of her often.
Meng is thoroughly engaging. She is fluent in French, after living in Reims for three years and Paris for two, but her accent is atrocious and her spelling is even worse. She uses “d’ for “t” and “b” for “p”, so “peut-etre ce matin” comes out as “beut-edre ce madin”, and I have to yell “Qu’est que c’est?” But her vocabulary is much, much better than mine.So we can communicate after a fashion, though I must dive for my Larousse frequently.
She is living in Beijing while she works on her emigration dossier for entry into Canada.
Ainsi, nous parlons en Francais, et je parle en Anglais au Meng, et elle parle en Chinoise a moi! Nous sommes ensemble un maison avec trois langues! I have also hired a Chinese tutor, Sophie, a 24 year old graduate of Beijing Language and Cultural University. We work together now about five hours a week. I can now read and write about a hundred words. Today, I had my first real conversation in Chinese! I spoke with the owner of the little grocery store in our neighborhood; I introduced myself, and said where I was from. She said she could understand my Chinese. I’ll take that!
Meng loves, absolutely loves the CCTV historical romances, so we have many conversations about these TV shows. But I talk too much and Meng always politely reminds me that she wants to watch the show! Pardonnez moi! (or in Chinese, dui bu qi).
I have been completely busy, day and night, between work and music. My life here in Beijing continues to be rich and fulfilling, from scientific exchanges to music rehearsals and on to giving diction lessons to Chinese voice students.
There are many adventures I will write about, many pictures to show you, and many fascinating characters I have met.
I will be back soon - I promise! My scientific work is finally showing a little gleam of a bud of fruit.
This has nothing to do with beer. But I have never heard the Queen of the Night hit so many high F’s in a row, so I am sure that beer is involved in some way.
I have been unable to look at beer30 behind the Great Firewall of China until today. I don’t know why. iTunes was verboten, and now it is reachable. KPOJ has been blocked for the last three weeks until today. WTF? HuffingtonPost is completely unreachable.
Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! must have pissed off a lot of people behind the GFC. iTunes Error = -3259 [ firewall timeout issue].
The Philadelphia Inquirer has been blocked as long as I have been here.
But I can always read Fox News, if I wish to.
It is my duty to report that I suffered through the weekend by singing Christmas carols at the Weihnachtsmarkt at the German embassy and rehearsing Beethoven’s 9th. The Beethoven was sheer joy, and the Christmas market was extraordinary. The ambassador conducted us in “O Tannenbaum” and then served each of us mugs of gluhwein. I had two and felt completely snockered.
My own favorite was “Leise rieselt der Schnee”, which I had heard often as a child, but I never knew what it was called. There is nothing like singing in a German chorus to fix up your German in a hurry!
The beer was German, and was excellent. I have no idea what I drank, but it was delicious. The food was wonderful. VW Beijing is famous for making its own ketchup for its currywurst (8 squeals / 10 on the pig scale).
I had three different kinds of pig besides the currywurst. Barbecued pig on a seeded bun (8.5 oinks/10), pork-stuffed maultaschen (9.0 oinks /10), and grilled AND smoked pork sausage with Chinese mustard on a fresh roll (9.5 oinks/10, mostly because it had so much fett in it that the napkin underneath was as transparent as glassine paper).
I had a glass of champagne I couldn’t afford to turn down and tried to appear sober.
Of course, everywhere I went, I heard the Chinese kids (and their parents, sometimes) saying “Shèng dàn lǎo rén” - Christmas man. You must remember that I look like a 6′ cue-tip, and most Chinese think I look exactly like their iconic image of Santa Claus. I tell them that all westerners look alike, but they don’t get it.
I have been here in Beijing a bit more than three months.
There are times when things are a bit difficult for me. It is hard to be so far away from Maureen. We fell in love in San Francisco thirty-six years ago. I had not realized the full extent to which her companionship in itself sustains me, yet of course in her absence, it is all too apparent.
That, combined with the problems of quotidian existence outside of work, living in a country where one is illiterate, incommunicado, and dependent on others for assistance with the simplest tasks - such as buying energy - these can sometimes become more than I wish to bear.
There are many more days when Beijing is so wonderful, it is equally hard to bear, but only because I am afraid my heart will burst with joy.
The three previous days have been like that.
First, on Saturday, my friend Linda - the interpreter - and I met at Wudaokou. She had been at a job interview earlier, and she was dressed beautifully - this picture is from our trip to the Capitol Museum, and we had both been dressed casually. Now she was Quite the young urban professional. She looked as if she would be at home in New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco.
We did a bit of shopping. She helped me pick out a tea set for the apartment. We tasted a few teas.
This is a very serious enterprise. One must be very careful; some tea can cost 10 RMB a GRAM! I settled for a less expensive Pu’er tea that seemed promising in the second washing.
We took at taxi back to the apartment on Lindabeilu. I had pointed out to Linda the coincidence of names.
We headed off to my favorite local noodle shop for lunch. I was pleased with my dish, but I was sorry that Linda did not care for hers. She has a good palate, so her diffidence aroused in the me the suspicion, “What exactly did I just eat?” - an important question that comes up now and then. Sometimes I have been glad I did not know ahead of time.
We went back to the apartment, and I showed Linda some of the web sites that I use in teaching diction to the grad students. She is diligent in the utmost. She made quick progress. She also taught me a trick about pronouncing the Chinese “r” which had heretofore eluded me.
It should come as no surprise that the vocal techniques we use in singing are just as applicable in speech. The physiology of the vocal tract, articulation of the lips, tongue, teeth, mouth, and jaw, all of these are the same. So all that I have learned from my voice teachers over the years has turned me into a competent ESL instructor! I think that I can produce a significant improvement in diction quickly and effectively with most students. And having a good student is very satisfying. ESL instruction tends to be one-on-one, so I learn a lot about the other person , too. I am sure that is the source of my enjoyment in it.
Linda and I had a chance to talk with Maureen and Kate while they were together in Berkeley celebrating Kate’s birthday. We used streetview in Google maps to look at Kate’s apartment and our house in Portland. Linda and I talked quite a bit. Linda is a quick study - sometimes so quick it takes me by surprise - and a pleasure to work with, as well as interesting. At 4 PM or so, I got her a taxi back to her apartment in Wangqing, in the northeast part of Beijing.
I cooked a nice meal of rice - breaking in our new rice cooker - and a sichuan-style dish of chicken sauteed with onions, garlic, and hot peppers. I made a pot of Pu’er tea. It was very good.
Here is a bit about the chorus, in a sort of breezy, Wodehouse way:
The International Festival Chorus (IFC) is the brain-child of Beijing based British conductor Nicholas Smith and singers James Baer and Nancy Fraser. After a performance of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance Smith, Baer and Fraser sat down and realised that there was clearly a demand for a choir of talented, amateur singers who wanted to join the Beijing musical community, while at the same time introducing Chinese audiences to Western classical music. And so it was that in March 2002 the IFC burst onto the Beijing classical music scene with a sold out performance of Mozart’s Requiem at the Forbidden City Concert Hall. Since then the chorus has established itself as Beijing’s premier choir.
The audition was at 8:00 PM, in a a part of Beijing unfamiliar to me.
Quite by myself, I got off the subway and immediately felt quite disoriented. It was night - black, black night, smoggy, foggy, with huge mammoth buildings towering all around me obscuring the skylines - and the heavy traffic and complete absence of street signs in Pinyin did nothing to assuage my regret at not looking beforehand at Google Earth for a close-up view of the area.
After 15 minutes or so of wandering, I was able to orient myself and made my way to my audition with plenty of time to spare.
I sang one of my favorites, “Questo Amor”, from Act 1, Scene 3 of Puccini’s Edgar. I had to sight-sing a devilishly tricky vocal line written by the conductor. I felt happy to get through half it before becoming lost. The three people who heard me seemed to like my singing.
After another long subway ride back to Haidian Qu (District), I got back to my office by 10:30 and another hour of work before heading back to Jingshuyuan, at midnight (just in time for the construction crew to get to work!). It had been my first solo essay beyond Haidian into Beijing.
Three days later, I heard from the IFC. I had been accepted! The first rehearsal was Sunday, November 9th.
Sunday the 9th for our first rehearsal of Beethoven’s 9th!
Sunday was a glorious day in Beijing, one that seemed to brush off the dirt, hide the potholes, cover the rubble, leaving the rest to shine in splendor.
I had a long subway ride from Zhichunli to Liangmaqiao (”Light Horse Bridge”) on Line 10, on the other side of Beijing.
The subway was packed. This was not the first time I had experienced the sudden rush that squeezes a crowd into a subway car, compressing the human throng like an accordion. It was just the most violent. I think I was pushed a meter and a half or so. That is really quite a bit when you think about it.
Beijing beckoned as I came up to the street from the chthonic depths of the subway, two stories underground at this station.
I took many pictures. The afternoon was quite beautiful. Fall colors, cool breezes, the Liangma river gleaming.
I made my down Sanlitun Road toward 6th street (Liujie). Further south, Sanlitun has a reputation as a bar hangout. here is a bit of Beijing trivia from Wikipedia:
Prior to 1949, the Beijing Legation Quarter was the center of diplomatic activity in the capital. After the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, the government wanted to move the diplomatic district outside of the inner city and Sanlitun was chosen as the area where foreign legations and embassies were to be reallocated in the late 1950s. The area was called Sanlitun to designate its location from Dongzhimen gate (东直门). Tun, like dian (e.g. Shibalidian), means no more than “locality”. San li means “three li”, and a li was 0.5 km — thus, Sanlitun was 1.5 km away from Dongzhimen Gate.
There is your trivia for the day!
I had an extra half hour or so, so I wandered along the row of embassies, the street quite empty, but lovely in the early afternoon light. Couples lounged by the bridge. Men sat along the river banks, fishing in the shade.
Taxis sat on the side of the road, cooling below the canopy of poplars lining the streets, their drivers taking a break mid-day.
The light in the trees behind the Cameroon embassy was brilliant orange.
The sound of a piano gave directions as clear as one wish for.
We had introductions. Then we sang.
Music. Sweet music. Charles H. H. Parry’s “Blest Pair of Sirens”, and, after the break, Beethoven’s 9th. I was transported into the heavens!
After singing opera for the last three years, the Beethoven was actually easy. The Fortissimo F above middle C that was a bit intimidating a decade ago is really quite easy for me now. It sits well, right where my voice is strong. The diction in the Prestissimo is still tough. No way around that; it will take some thorough practice. The Parry is pleasant, straightforward but unfamiliar to me. I don’t think it will be hard to learn.
At the break, I was introduced to the conductor of the Deutscher Chor Peking, Svetlana Lundgren. I had overheard her talking about a performance of Carmina Burana here in Beijing. She said it was the coming weekend, and already sold out! I so wanted to hear it. I told her I had sung it many times, including once - thank you, Carol! - with Portland Opera, staged as half a show with Pagliacci. Then she invited me to sing with her choir! A multitude of riches!
As I walked back to the subway, the rich afternoon light made everything shimmer with gold.
Trees that had three hours before been quite ordinary now glowed brilliant orange. Those that had stood out earlier were now blazing sentinels. The city was awash in gold.
The Liangma river was a mirror, placid, its tranquility almost magnetic.
Even the plainest buildings seemed fantastic.
At Liangmaqiao, I met Xu Yi, one of the IFC organizers. She was headed to Haidianhuangzhuang, near her university, where she is studying “Medical English,” a field new to me. She is interested in translating the terms of traditional Chinese medicine into English, as part of an overseas marketing strategy.
We had a pleasant conversation during our long ride back to Haidianqu.
I got back to Wudaokou, and celebrated by going food shopping for a nice dinner at home - more about that in a later post. I feel quite strongly that one never really lives - not merely exists - in a place until one plans and cooks a real meal there. The meal was a success. Jinglun said he thought it was better than restaurant food.
NOW I can say I really live in my new apartment.
And, no, not like Peggy Cass’s “I Lived!” as Agnes Gooch in Auntie Mame.
Sunday night, I heard from Svetlana. We rehearse three times before the concerts, which are Saturday and Sunday. My first rehearsal is tomorrow, at the German Embassy here in Beijing, on the other side of town. This was the second wonderful day in a row, and it was already almost more than I could bear.
By Monday, I was so excited I could not get to sleep! I had been listening to the Orff over and over. And the Brahms Requiem, and Der Fliegende Holländer, among others. Previous scenes of the crime, perhaps.
Imagine! Singing Carmina in Beijing!
Third, yesterday, Fan, one of Jinsong’s postdocs from Peking University - a very bright, energetic young man, with a terrific wife who writes for an environmental news paper, both of whom are interested in music - took me out to dinner to a Xinjiang-style restaurant. It was perfect. So powerfully hot! Beijing had felt so cold yesterday. City heat gets turned on in a few days. Until then, BRRR! And the heat didn’t work in the office until late in the day. I had been thoroughly chilled most of the morning.
We ate tiny dumplings in spicy tomato sauce, grilled mutton, and Xinjiang-style grilled chicken wings coated with a searing mixture of turmeric, finely ground sesame seeds, incredibly hot pepper powder, salt, and a pinch of cumin. The same mixture appeared in the equally delicious Uyghur naan, Xinjiang-style bread. We washed everything down with cold Yanjing beer, the local brew. My mouth was thrilled beyond description.
Fan told me that it is so dry in Xinjiang that there is not enough water for bread-making. The bread is made in enormous quantity ahead of time and stored through the dry season. He said it keeps for months! That hot pepper mixture might have promise as a universal bactericide.
NERD ALERT!*
After dinner, I talked at length with Fan and Professor Zheng Zheng from the Applied Physics Department at BeiHang University about my theoretical model of the coupling of the evanescent wave with a chromophore. It was a good discussion for me. I think I am on the right track. END NERD ALERT!
I made it home around 11 PM. All was quiet. No sounds of construction.
I collapsed and slept the night in the arms of Lethe.
Běijīng hǎo. Beijing is good.
I have put pictures online here.
Or you can view the slideshow below.
I was working in the apartment this morning, when all the lights went out. The bathroom was a dark cavern. The kitchen as well.
Each apartment has a meter with a slot for a card - like a credit card - with a small memory chip embedded in it. One buys kilowatt-hours at a local store, and information about the purchase is written onto the chip. The card is inserted into a slot in the apartment’s energy meter, and those kW-hs are now available for use. There is a little discussion of this practice in Beijing here.
Jinglun had said he would take care of buying more energy, but he must have back-burnered it. He was busy all day, and I had no idea what to do. I also had no money, and couldn’t have paid for electricity even if I knew how.
I went to work, went to the bank to see if my reimbursement checks had been deposited. Nope, still 17.diddly RMB in the account. So back to work, borrowed 2000 RMB from Jinsong, and tried to find Jinglun. I had a lecture to prepare for my 4:00 American Culture class - “Analysis of US Elections” - that absolutely had to get done. It was a busy morning.
Jinglun finally called at 3:15, and said that he was busy and wouldn’t be able to get to the store to buy more kW-hs. He suggested that I find another grad student to help. I looked around the center, and it was if all the grad students in Jinsong’s group had been kidnapped. I found no one. I found out later that the entire group was cleaning up the research labs. In a bit of a panic, I called the HR office, and Hailian - who is assisting me in this American Culture class - found a grad student (majoring in Physical Chemistry! Hurray!) who spoke enough English to help me. We conferred with my landlord by phone, and the grad student now knew where the store was. So off we went by taxi to buy some energy.
Once we were there, it was straightforward enough. The store was staffed by a couple of young women, both eager to assist the lǎo wài (foreigner). I bought 600 RMB worth - about 5 months at 0.48 RMB/kW-h, using 60 kW-h/week.
We got back to the apartment, stuck the card into the meter, which reported 1230 kW-h credit. But when I went inside, there was still no power. My grad student assistant called the power company, and they figured out that a circuit breaker was popped. Sure enough, that fixed it and we once again had power.
I got back to the nanocenter half an hour late, but all the students had waited patiently. We spent half an hour introducing ourselves, and they loved a chance to talk about themselves in English. We spent about 50 minutes talking about Obama, race in America, and the impression the rest of the world has about the election. Since decisions here are party matters, there was some curiosity about voting as well - participation, eligibility, registration and the like.
After the class, the group invited me to join them at Partyworld (9 Chongwenmenwai Dajie, Zhengren Building, Chongwen District), a Beijing KTV bar, where the room rents for somewhere between 40 and 400 RMB/hour depending on the number of people and the buffet-style food is free. We stuffed ourselves silly with snacks, delicious fresh vegetables, and sushi,among other things.
I wound up singing “Somewhere over the Rainbow”, “As Time Goes By”, and “Hotel California”, and some Chinese pop song with Chingrish lyrics. I had a great time.
We all wound up doing the last number together. Four hours flew by. Two members of the group actually have decent pipes. The rest were enthusiastic but genearlly terrible. It didn’t matter a bit.
I felt a bit light-headed afterward, from the combination of elation, MSG, and hot peppers. It was quite an adventure. But then again, every day in Beijing is an adventure. Every day. Every single day.
One thing I noticed: it was really, really, really loud - another piece of evidence that people here must be deaf!
Today Jinsong asked me to buy him two bottles of good red wine, since he was going to have dinner with a Russian scientist and two other Chinese scientists, and he wanted to impress them with a good bottle of wine.
On my way to the wine shop, a young man on a bike asked me if I would be willing to record about an hour of English phrases for a new Korean cell phone company. I would be paid 150 RMB. Since I was down to 17.42 RMB, this sounded serendipitous. Manna from heaven and all that.
The company was up on the tenth floor of building 8 in Huaqingjiayuan, the heart of expat territory - which I usually avoid - right near Wudaokou. As we passed “Lush”, an expat hangout, a HUGE roar went up - Obama had just been declared the winner by all the networks. Even the Chinese are excited about the election.
Mazhen had asked me. “Jim, what do you think about a black man being president? Is it a problem?” I think the horror that must have shown on my face - I do NOT have a poker face - alarmed her. I said that it didn’t matter to me, that I was very happy Obama would be president because I thought he was the best candidate, but I was also glad that my country would have an African American president at last. I added that I thought people for whom this would be a problem were terribly wrong. Mazhen looked relieved and quickly added, “Yes, I think so too.” I was glad to hear this from her, because antipathy to African Americans is not unknown here.
The recording session was mildly interesting, with many phrases in Chingrish, and long strings of times and dates. More or less along the lines of Deuteronomy.
I made it back to the wine shop with extra 150 RMB in my pocket. But a bottle of dark Havana Club Rum would set me back 210 RMB, so celebrating will have to wait for a fatter wallet.
One of the shop girls recognized me from my two other forays - both for Jinsong; the shop is too pricey for me - and came up and chatted. I told her where I was living, and that I was learning a little bit of Chinese. She immediately started chattering away in Chinese, occasionally offering me bits of translation. I taught her a little French pronunciation; we both seemed pretty pleased with our new skills. I bought a decent Medoc and a high-end Chilean for 518 RMB, 18 RMB more than what Jinsong had given me, so the wallet got a little thinner again. I knew he would like the wines.
The young lady who had helped me rang up the total, and I beat her to the punch by saying “wubaishiba” - 518 - and the shop girls were so delighted, they laughed and whooped with pleasure. They all called me “Christmas man”, and begged me to come bring them presents in December.
Every day in Beijing is an adventure.
Postscript: Jinsong made the mistake of trying to keep up with the Russian when the vodka came out. Jinglun brought him to our place in a taxi, and the three of us spent a comfortable, tranquil night in our new apartment.
For over a month, I have been working around the clock on an article based on my research with Wang Zhiyou and Zhu Jingsong. it is titled “Accurate and Precise Polynomial Approximations to Angular Interrogation Surface Plasmon Resonance Data.” I know that, with a title like that, everyone will be most eager to read it.
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