My first day in Beijing

I arrived today in Beijing. I am finally here, after so many year of looking forward to my China sejour in the distant future. The flight was good. I slept for several hours, without any sleeping pills (except for some Chinese red wine), woke up (above Irkutsk!) just before breakfast. I thought the seats on Air China were more comfortable than the seats on most transatlantic flights I have taken with western companies. Food and service was comparable (but Hjalmar and Elsa should know that they won't get any individual movie screens).

Immigration and customs were very easy (much less complicated than in the U.S.). The PKU-Yale office assistant Xiaojie Zhang waited for me outside. A car service brought us to the Peking University (PKU) campus through streets that were not as shockingly busy as I had been led to expect (Djakarta in 1990 was much, much worse).

I was given the key card to my apartment which is in a hotel that is not managed by, but has borrowed a part of its name from PKU: Zhongguanyan Global Village PKU. The apartment is gorgeous: new construction (less than a year), mostly with hardwood floors. It is very spacious. I have a huge living room, a master bedroom suite with a bathroom. A guest room with a separate bathroom, and a small kitchen (hot plate, microwave, water boiler, fridge, freezer). There is also a washing machine in the kitchen. I will be very happy here, I am sure. Alas, even though this is luxurious new construction, it seems that it has not been quite properly built. There are small flaws here and there, which the trained eye easily spots (and thus I don't see them). But the apartment is very nice, and close to campus. I hope to put up pictures tomorrow.

Xiaojie and the program director Ningping Yu took me out for lunch. Here they are:



We had Three cups chicken, which is a Taiwanese course. I liked it. I am a little unused, thought, to leaving the bones in the chicken when making a stew. One constantly had to pick small bones from one's mouth. After lunch, we went to the program office, which is very handsome indeed. Since I am the first teacher to arrive, I got to pick my office, and I picked the only office with a black board. I put there my box delivered from New Haven:



On the blackboard, Ningping helped me write "Professor Wen An De's Office" (Wen An De jiao shou ban gong shi). That is, I wrote "Wen" (the first character), which is easy, and she wrote the rest (not so easy).



After the office visit, where I also received my new edited manuscript of Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries (thank you, Jennifer! I liked what I was able to see of her edits), Ningping and I went to a supermarket so I could shop. She first wanted to take me to a Carrefour, which is a French supermarket chain. They have western and western-style produce, but I rather go to a Chinese supermarket. (I can deal with the French on my own, I think.) I got the most urgent necessities, such as tea, soap, and a towel).

Xiaojie and Ningping are incredibly sweet in taking such good care for me!

In the afternoon, I had technicians from the Global Village staff here to help me get onto the internet. The first one did not quite manage, but when a second one came to help, they managed to get it to work. Now it does work, although the connection is shaky.

After a short nap, I went with Ningping and her husband to a Chinese restaurant for a wonderful meal. We had fried lamb, deepfried eggplant + shrimp (a delicacy, it turned out) and a very tasty green vegetable. Plus we shared a large bottle of local beer. A very good dinner. Thank you!

I visited the bathroom, which was of the Asian-style squatting type. (I am familiar with those from my visits to India and Indonesia; I learnt to use them on the Punjab Mail express train between Agra and Bombay, so using one that is solidly connected to mother earth has no fears for me).



(Sorry for the blurry image).

Kommentarer
Postat av: h-ej

Congratulations for your arrival in China and the fine words around your first hours there. Must be very interesting.

From a cloudy early morning in Sunnansjö.

2010-08-12 @ 05:52:15

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