Its Fleece Was White As Snow

Before I continue with my Sichuan trip, I’d like to tell you about yesterday’s lunch. My friend JJ seems to know everyone, including a lot of rich people – and I mean VERY rich people, billionaires (though he himself falls outside that category).

He invited me to join some of his friends and him for lunch, partly as a business lunch and partly as a farewell luncheon for me. JJ is very frugal, and though I know he can afford taxis, he takes the bus whenever he can. So we met in the park at 11:00 and walked a quarter mile through the Renmin campus to the bus stop.

We got on the bus and he said it’s only about 3 stops. We talked. The bus came to a stop. And he looked up quickly, then jumped off the bus even more quickly. I followed. He said we went 1 stop too far and had to walk back a few blocks.

It was hot and muggy. We started walking. I said, “Are you sure we came too far?” He stopped, looked around, then said maybe we got off a stop too early. We crossed the street and went back the other direction, hopefully toward the restaurant.

We passed a group of people, some sitting on the sidewalk, some lying on cardboard.

I thought they were homeless people, but I know those are not allowed in Beijing. It turns out they were people waiting in line to see a dentist at the dental hospital. (In Beijing, maybe throughout China, doctors and dentists are associated with hospitals and see patients there. Generally they do not have private offices.)

We finally made it to our destination, which is a well-known Mongolian restaurant.

Our luncheon was early (11:00 a.m.) so when we arrived the large restaurant was devoid of other diners.

Along the sides of the restaurant, on the second floor, are private dining rooms, and we were in one of those.

In China, as it is in other Asian countries, the placement of people at a meal table is important and I’ve learned to hang back until the host tells me where to sit. The seat of honor today, which is the seat farthest from, and facing, the door is the eldest person present, a retired government official.

I was placed to his left. To his right was the host, the guy with the short-sleeved white shirt and the dough.

Continuing counterclockwise around the table you see my friend JJ, his wife, and the RG2 (whom I think I introduced you to ages ago).

RG2 stands for Red Generation #2, meaning that she is the daughter of an important military official who was part of the revolution that established current-day China. I think he is currently head of China’s missile defense system and JJ semi-jokingly said that if the U.S. and China came to war, RG2’s father would be in the front line.

The host placed his daughter next to me because she speaks English and wanted to talk to me about universities.

Then the food started coming. The first dish was something that looked like a common Chinese seaweed dish but turned out to be a special type of grass that grows in Mongolia. It was good.

We had some fat, slimy noodles (looked like they were made from rice) in a delicious brown sauce.

An unusual dish then came: jellyfish. A bit too chewy for my taste.

There was a very nice salad of lettuce and cantaloupe,…

…hot milk,…

…and fish pieces with snow peas. Good.

Halfway though our lunch the entertainment began in the form of a woman singing traditional Mongolian songs.

More food: pig’s feet pieces in a sweet sauce with slightly dried plums,…

…the ever-present tofu with two dipping sauces,…

…turbot in a wonderful dark brown sauce,…

…a strange green vegetable (green squash?) I have not seen in the U.S.,…

…huge shrimp baked with garlic and scallions,…

…and what seemed to be a whole, small lamb.

This was accompanied by small pita-like pieces, 4 sauces, and spears of cucumber and scallions.

By this time I was so stuffed that all I could manage was to stuff a bit of lamb into a pocket and force it down.

Finally, as is customary in China, we ended with a soup. Instead of the usual light broth, however, this soup had noodles and potatoes and a delicious but unidentifiable liquid.

Fortunately I was able to waddle home.

保罗

Hot Diggity Dog Diggity Boom

(Most of you probably don’t even know who Perry Como is, but in 1956 this was America’s #1 song for a while.)

I have several close friends at the school, but to keep my sanity, I’ve needed a couple off-campus friends, too. I’ll remind you that these are JJ, the retired government worker who’s about my age, and X23, the grad student in mathematical logic. JJ and I talk mainly about economics and politics. For example, yesterday JJ broke the news to me that a high level marshal in the People’s Liberation Army was arrested – for bribery, of course. That makes two in the last 6 months. X23 and I talk about her boyfriends, her girlfriends (all of whom are glamorous), roommates, and philosophy. We tried some logic puzzles in the park one day, but I felt really stupid: I’d look at the problem for several minutes, scratch my head, and suggest an answer – invariably wrong. She’d look at a problem for a few seconds and then state the correct answer. I found an excuse to leave.

Everyone who comes to visit me likes these two people; I don’t tend to waste my time with also-rans. X23 and I have become very close friends primarily, I think, because we’re both a bit anomalous within our respective groups. I’m not Chinese, and thus the Chinese teachers tend to come to me and spill their guts about everything; X23 stands out in her crowd because she’s so much smarter than they are. She’s also not the glamorous type as the rest of her crowd is. We have bonded to the degree that we’ve actually talked about marriage – between my son and her. I showed her his picture and she said she’d like to meet him (after I said he was as lively as my daughter, whom she’s met). Believe it or not, there are still a lot of arranged marriages in China. (JJ and a friend of his are trying to get his son and her daughter together.) I haven’t told her yet, but I suspect the only thing Charlie and she have in common is that she likes beer (though not to the extent he does). She comes from a small village in rural China and is a very conservative, traditional Chinese girl. Probably not Charlie’s type. Still, you never know.

Anyway, X23 and I went to Sichuan Province for a week’s vacation. When we arrived at the airport there was a torrential downpour, and all flights were delayed. We waited and waited for information, but the Chinese airports are notorious for NOT telling passengers anything. Finally, the natives got restless and started yelling at the gate agents. That’s when they decided to bring out some food. We each got a little bag of “goodies”: 2 small rolls, a tiny hot dog-like thing, and a sealed bag of pickled cabbage. Yum.

I tore my roll in half and peeled the plastic off the hot dog thing,…

…put half on one of the rolls,…

…added the pickled cabbage (at this point I was so hungry that I would eat anything),…

…and ate it.

X23 did likewise.

We waited hours. Can’t remember how many. People were yelling. I suggested to the agents, in my typically modest tone, that people would settle down if they’d just give us some information.

Finally we were informed that our flight would not take off this evening and that we should follow this guy here to board the buses that will take us to a hotel. We drove for about 45 minutes (I could have gone home!) and we finally arrived in the middle of nowhere at what I first thought was a gaudy place…

…but that turned out to be just the entrance building. Behind it was the understated entrance to the actual hotel.

Thanks to my strategic planning and X23’s quick feet, we were among the first ones to get rooms, so we took a few minutes to take some pictures while everyone else was still checking in.

In front of the hotel was this elaborate stone carving, surrounded by little carvings.

Each one was different.

At the top was a guy on a dragon.

Inside, in the lobby, there was fancy, carved wooden furniture everywhere,…

…and what I think is very expensive pink jade.

We asked the powers repeatedly when we should get up to go back to the airport but got no reply that made any sense, so we set our cell phone alarms for 7 a.m., assuming this would give us time for breakfast before we returned to the airport.

Anyway, that was Day 1 of my vacation.

保罗