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Published: April 11th 2011
Woah! I feel like I have so much to report on this week, and I am not sure I will be able to remember everything! The week started off with a holiday (Qingming Festival, otherwise known as Tomb Sweeping Holiday). It is basically a day similar to our Memorial Day in which families go and clean the tombs of their loved ones and honor their national heroes who have died. Thus, because of this holiday, we had two days off from work. On the first day, Cathy and I spent the morning and afternoon catching up on some work and then I took her to downtown Jinhua in the evening, where we had Western food and did some sightseeing. The following day, we met up with Kang, his family, and several other professors from the psychology department to go hiking. Actually, we were first told that we would be hiking, then we were told that we wouldn't be hiking, and then we were told that they didn't even know what we were going to do, haha. Well, we ended up driving for about an hour or so to a remote area outside the city of Jinxi, where we began the trek
up a series of mountains to a Buddhist temple. It was absolutely beautiful scenery, and I am glad I ended up wearing my comfortable shoes because it was A LOT of climbing! Some parts of the trail literally wound around the side of a mountain cliff and you were walking along a tiny, narrow trail and holding onto a small guardrail that would supposedly prevent you from falling to your death. Anyway, it was really cool and we all had a lot of fun. After the climbing expedition, we all went to a small farm/restaurant out in the country, where we were served a great lunch with some really strong rice wine. Cathy made the mistake of telling the table that she has good alcohol tolerance, so then they were constantly refilling her glass and making her do cheers, saying, "Bottoms up!" It was quite entertaining to watch!
After the holiday, it was back to work for only one day, which I spent testing in the kindergarten and then training some of the research assistants on a modified version of an experiment they previously tested on. It is the same PSAP (Point-Subtraction Aggression Paradigm) task as before, but now
we need to test a new series of adults- all competitive athletes. We had some computer issues that day which prevented us from testing in the evening (the main system in the testing room somehow got a virus), but it's all resolved now, so I'll be ready to start testing again next week when I get back.
After such a long work week (ha!), I was ready for a holiday, so Cathy and I packed up and flew to Beijing on Thursday morning. We arrived in Beijing at around 2:00, and a grad student from the Chinese Academy of Science picked us up at the airport and took us to our hotel room outside the Forbidden City. We unpacked a bit, then walked to Tiananman Square, which was only about 5 minutes from our hotel. The Square is huge (it is ranked as the largest public square in the world), and it was really cool to stand in front of a place that I have read so much about and have seen so many pictures of. We were there around sunset, so the soldiers were preparing to lower the flag. Well, this is when the naive American (aka me)
and the too-trusting Canadian (aka Cathy) got into trouble. We were approached by two Chinese university students who seemed really nice and chatted with us for awhile. The students then asked us if we would like to go for tea with them. This seemed acceptable, so we agreed and went with them to a restaurant. (Keep in mind that we have been hosted by Chinese students during most of our stay here and all have been so nice and helpful, thus our guard was down and we were used to going out with Chinese students!) We had tea with them and everything seemed okay, when suddenly we were handed a bill for a large (by Chinese standards) amount of money. Supposedly, the students paid for half of it and we were to pay the other half. Thus, we ended up having to fork over all this money for this supposedly really rare type of tea that I doubt was really all that special. We were later informed that this is a common "tea scam" that targets foreigners all the time. I am still really mad about this, not so much about the money as I am about the fact that
these supposedly nice people lied to us. Oh well, live and learn! We were thus super cautious the entire rest of our trip and unfortunately, observed many other foreigners who had been caught in similar situations.
After this tea scam incident, I was a little annoyed with the entire city of Beijing, but thankfully the rest of our trip was great and made up for it! On Friday, we were picked up around 10:00 by a grad student and professor from the Chinese Academy of Science. We drove for about an hour and a half outside of the city and then arrived at the Great Wall of China, one of the seven wonders of the new world! The wall runs for over 5000 kilometers across one of the northern borders of China, and it is broken up into numerous sections, which are in various states of repair/disrepair. We visited the Badaling section of the wall, which is the one most frequented by tourists and is in the best condition. The wall was initially built around 2000 years ago and then underwent restoration about 1000 years ago. I've seen tons of pictures of it on the Internet, but nothing can
really compare to the feeling of actually standing there on it! Cathy, Dr. Liu, and I ended up climbing around on the wall for about 2 1/2 hours. Some sections are REALLY steep; sometimes they have stairs and other times they just have big sloping inclines. The wall weaves up and down along the crest of the mountains, and I personally thought the steps going up were the most strenous, but Cathy said she didn't like the slopes going down because they were so slippery and you had to inch your way down or you could easily lose your balance. I solved this problem by just riding the railings down the slopes! That was probably my favorite part of the whole trip- sliding down the railings of the Great Wall of China! (Now how many people can say they've done that?!)
After we finished hiking along the Great Wall, our driver took us past the Bird's Nest and Water Cube from the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. They are both really impressive structures, and it was cool to see where all the action took place two summers ago. We then went to the Chinese Academy of Science and had dinner
with the professor who took us to the Great Wall and two graduate students. I got to try "Chinese pizza" at this meal and have decided that this is one of my favorite foods here! Following dinner, we headed back to our hotel and ended up going to bed pretty early because we were so wiped out from all the walking. The next morning, we got up early and headed straight to Tiananman Square because we wanted to see Chairman Mao's mausoleum and it is only open for four hours every morning. We arrived to the mausoleum (which is in the heart of the square) and came across the biggest line I have ever observed in my life! I have never seen so many people lined up for one attraction- it was like the entire city of Beijing was there in this line. We saw that the line seemed to be at least moving fairly fast, so we joined it and had waited for about 10 minutes when Cathy noticed that no one seemed to be holding any bags. I had read in advance that there are no photographs allowed inside, but I had assumed you could still bring your
bags in so long as your camera was packed away. Thus, Cathy held our place in line and sent me over to attempt to communicate in my abyssmal Chinese with one of the security guards. So, I walked over and just said, "Bu tù piàn? (no picture?)" And he said, "Méiyǒu. (no)." How's that for a succinct conversation? So then I walked away and told Cathy we had to get out of line because we had bags with cameras in them and we couldn't even take them in.
Well, as we were walking away, the security guard sent some guy in a suit over to us and, though he didn't speak much English, we gathered that he was going to help us get inside. Long story short, he seemed to be pretty high-ranking because he took us to a locker room where we could store our bags, let us bypass security, and got us close to the front of the huge line. It basically saved us over an hour and a half of waiting! As we got closer to the front of the line, we met this really outgoing American from Florida who provided great comic relief as she
regailed us with her stories of traveling in Asia (she has been here since last July). She told us of the many times she was scammed in Thailand and Laos, and it made me at least feel better that we weren't the only people who have been fooled! My favorite story was how after a few days in China, she thought she had learned the way to say, "How much does this cost?" So, she was often using this phrase while shopping and kept receiving funny looks from the sellers. Well, after a week or so of this, some random Chinese student told her that she had actually been saying, "Charge me whatever you want." No wonder she thought everything in China was so expensive- she was actually being ripped off with every purchase!
We finally got to the front of the line and went inside the mausoleum. The casket is actually made of glass, so it is really kind of weird. I'll have to report more on this when I get home. After we got back outside, Cathy and I decided to head to the Forbidden City, which is on the north end of Tiananmen Square. The Forbidden
City was the imperial seat of China from the Ming to the Qing dynasties. It was built in the early 1400s, and there are over 900 buildings inside the palace walls. Cathy and I spent around two to three hours inside and hardly scratched the surface of all the places we could have gone. At some parts of the city, it was SO crowded, while other parts you would only see a few people. There were tons of tour groups going through and the trick was to avoid getting caught in the middle of them because if you did, it was like you were being swept away by the tide of people wearing matching hats. When we finally emerged from the Forbidden City, we walked across the street and went to both Jingshan Park and Beihai Park. By this time, we were starting to get tired and thus began the trek back to our hotel. Boy, did it seem like a long walk! I don't think we had realized just how far we had walked to get to the far end of Beihai Park (which is near the water), and it felt like it took forever for us to make
our way back to the hotel. By the time we arrived, we were so tired, we just went to the restaurant in the hotel and then stayed in our room reading for the rest of the night.
The next morning, we took a taxi to the airport and then flew to Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province (where I had visited Xi Hu two weeks ago). This is where the Conference on Social Cognition and Neuroscience is being held. A grad student picked us up from the airport and drove us to the conference hotel, where they have really rolled out the red carpet for all the visiting researchers! We are staying at a place called Wuyunshan Resort, which is this beautiful facility that is typically used for visiting medical doctors when they come to do their annual exams. We have all been given private suites, and I think my room is bigger than my entire apartment in Canada! I am going to get spoiled here!
We have been at the conference for one day now and tomorrow I am up to present my research in a 45-minute talk. In fact, I should probably practice a bit more
this evening, so I had better wrap this entry up. Thanks to all those who have sent me comments, private messages, and e-mails over the past few weeks- it's so nice to hear from people back home! I'll be here in Hangzhou for two more days and then it's back to Jinhua for two more weeks.
Much love from the other side of the world!
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Sarah
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This is all so amazing Linds! I'm so glad you are enjoying your time there :) We do look forward to having you back around the lab, though! Good luck giving your talk!