Gratianus

We are having a wonderful time in Xinjiang, seeing all kinds of very interesting things. We have been up in the mountains to enjoy the Heavenly Lake where temperatures were even on the cool side, we have driven through the Gobi dessert and today we are in the old oasis Turpan (where the Silk Road passed through).

Here is a Jag idag-bild from Heavenly Lake on Thursday.

Today I am going with the Yale students who are in the Beijing program to Xinjiang, the westernmost province of China. (Or to be strictly correct: autonomous region). We are visiting several exciting places, like Ürümqi, Turpan, and Kashi (Kashgar). This will be fun. I do not know when I next will be able to update the blog, but I surely will get a lot of photos while I am there.

This morning I was happily surprised by an email in my inbox. Yale University Press has sent out my finished book manuscript to two scholars for peer review, and now I received the report from one of them. The reports are anonymous, so I have no idea who wrote it. I was still very happy that the report was almost embarrassingly positive. It seems that I have succeeded in what I have been trying to do with this book, at least as far as this scholar is concerned. Now I hope for a second report that is at least a fraction as positive as this one.

Before I fell sick, I went with Ningping to meet a former student in the Yale-PKU program, Eleni, to have lunch. We went to a Chinese fastfood place called "Steamed Kung Fu". The food was very good. I had "steamed chicken." This turned out to be chicken in a pot of bouillon. Very good. A chicken foot was in the pot!

Eleni was pleasant to speak with. She has stayed in China over the summer to teach English to 12-year-olds in Tianjin, but is soon going back to the States and New Haven.

So I mostly stayed at home, and partially in bed Sunday, for I came down with a cold. I was very hoarse and coughed a lot. Wonderful Ningping got me some cough syrup and some Chinese pills that I do not know what they are, or what they are supposed to do specifially. I felt much better after a long nap in the afternoon. Then I, for once, took a sleeping pill for the night, went to bed early, slept for ten hours and woke up feeling almost entirely recuperated. So today I have gone in to the office as usual.

Xiaojie was not at the office today, for she was at the airport meeting the Yale students who are arriving today to join the program. I have been preparing all day. I had a lunch meeting with one of my two teaching assistants, Qianyi, who will help me with the Eurasian Encounters course. She speaks really good English, seems really smart and enthusiastic, so I think we will have a good experience teaching this course together. She gave me a book, Chinese
Characteristics, by Arthur H. Smith. He was an American missionary (from Connecticut!) who lived for more than 50 years in Shandong province. The book seems great, and I look forward to reading it!

It is time to start thinking about packing for our excursion to Xinjian starting Wednesday. I will have to leave home at about 6 to get to the bus that takes us to the airport for a flight to Western China. Fortunately, Ningping lives across the hallway from me, so we can walk together. We'll stay there until Monday of next week. This will be very exciting!

And that will surely produce some pictures. I am sorry that there has been so few pictures the last few days. I have mostly been working, so not much of interest to photograph.

I have no idea why this is in Swedish; that is just how it came out when I was tired late at night.

Fast i morse steg jag upp tidigt nog för att vara tvättad och frukosterad och klar när min städerska kom. Hon var extra tidig idag, halv nio. Fast straxt innan hon kom så kom de från hotellet som jag bor i (det är ju ett hotell som har avdelningar som är som lägenhetshotell) och bytte mina lakan i sängen. Skönt att sova i rena lakan! (Jag hade sagt till om detta).

Under dagen har jag sedan varit på jobbet och arbetat med min lektionsplanering för seminariet jag ska undervisa. Det är klart såtillvida som jag har ett fullt utkast som nog duger att distribuera i början av terminen till studenterna efter några smärre ändringar. Jag har också skickat det till min assistent. På kvällen gick jag och handlade. Roligt här att man kan köpa vin i matvaruaffärer. Så jag köpte en flaska vitt kinesiskt vin. Riktigt drickbart, men smaken är litet annorlunda mot vad man är van vid (liksom på rödvin). Kineserna oxiderar vinet, vilket man i Europa försöker undvika till varje pris. Smaken blir litet mer spetsig på det sättet. Så jag har suttit här och druckit litet vin medan jag arbetat på min andra lektionsplanering.

Nu ska jag lägga mig! Här är i alla fall den giraffe som Yongle-kejsaren av Kina fick från Africa 1415. Den hade åkt med Zheng He till Kina. Han är en av de figurer som vi ska studera i min kurs och jag har en bild liknande denna på lektionsplaneringen som studenterna ska få.

Today I had lunch, for the first time, with Tina and Stuart. We went with Xiaojie to a student dining hall. That was an experience. The area where one picked up food was absolutely crowded with people, and one had to squeeze oneself to the counter, where plates of food were standing waiting for a customer. I got a stirfry with vegetables and chicken (I think) and rice. When going from one part of the counter to another, I held my tray high up. Being rather taller than most Chinese, this worked rather well for me. In the end, I paid with my dining card at a cashier's desk. There was something like an orderly line for the cashier, as there was not otherwise.

We had a nice meal, and I liked my food.

Otherwise, I have spent my day working on my syllabus for the course on Eurasian Encounters. It is fun work.

Here are Xiaojie, Tina, and Stuart outside the dining hall.

Tänkte försöka locka med detta så att jag får besök. Detta är längre ned på gatan Zhongguancun.

I have not written much in the blog the last two days. There is not much to report. I have mainly been working, plus I have got a slight cough. Nothing much to worry about; in fact I am surprised how healthy I have been since I came to China. Flying in airplanes and starting to live in a new place usually means being sick, as the body gets used to the new fauna of bacteria and virus. But I have been perfectly healthy since I arrived, except for this slight cough.

I am working in parallel on two things: getting ready for the start of the semester and my book. Both are fun, but both are realy work. In my office, I am now done with getting the computer there set up so that I can easily use it (no viruses, my accoustomed email program, etc.). At home I am working on the book. My wonderful editor has suggested changes and written comments in the margins of a printout of the manuscript. So I am going through page after page. Most of the changes are so obviously good that I only need to put them into the computer version of the manuscript. Sometimes she asks me to reformulate something, and that takes me some more time and effort. But it is fun to see the book take shape.

One is not recommended to drink the water here, at least not if one has a sensitive European stomach. The program has an extra water cooler, which I get to borrow while I am here. The nice man who first repaired and cleaned it, then delivered it, is actually from Datong. We talked a little about what I saw there, mostly with Ningping as interpreter.

Now I have signed up for 11 bottles for the price of 10, which he will deliver as I need them. I will always have access to cold and hot clean water.

It was interesting to eat in Datong. When I first arrived, I had my first dinner at the hotel. The menu was bilingual Chinese/English, as were to some degree the staff. But I did not much like the food, alas. Plus I woke up in the middle of the night with a bad headache, which may be a sign that the chef has been too enthusiastic with MSG.

So the next day, I tried a restaurant that I happened to pass in the street.



I was given a table and they sent forth a waitress who knew a little English. The menu was entirely in Chinese, so I could not really read it. But I asked in Chinese for diced chicken. I got what I asked for, but realized that I did not get any rice automatically. So I asked for that as well, plus a bottle of beer. All in Chinese, so I am proud that this was my first meal ordered entirely in Chinese, and it worked. The food was very good, and no headache during the night.



So I went back to the same place for my remaining two dinners. The second night, I ordered lamb, which also worked, and it tasted really good. The third night was more problematic. I tried to get noodles, but they did not serve that. So I tried dumplings (jaozi), but they did not have that either. Instead I got two steamed dumplings (baozi) with pork inside, and that was really good. I tried to get them with vegetables inside, but instead I got a plate of boiled vegetables, also very good.



All in all, this restaurant gave very good value. The meals were simple but very good, and I felt satisfied each night. That is why I came back. "My" waitress, whose name is 陈惠夏, Chen Hui Xia, was also very sweet and worked hard to understand what I said, and to provide good food.



For lunch one day, I had meat grilled over charcoal on the street. This woman fanned the charcoal when she grilled my meat. It was tasty and good.

Ningping took her son Tommie and me to dinner further south in Haidan. It was a nice restaurant that served food in a special provincial style. We ordered several courses and were unable to eat everything we got.

The fish was very good, but hard to eat with chopsticks for me.



The duck was a little dry but was served with his head. Ningping told me that duck's head is considered a delicacy in southern China; in Nanjing, duck's head is more expensive than duck meat.

Bilden från Beijings tunnelbana, linje 4.

Idag pratade jag riktigt länge med Elsa och Hjalmar.

In my old Baedeker from 1912, the map of Beijing still shows the old city wall, which is also mentioned in the text as something worth visiting. Its remnants were pulled down in and around the 50s to make way for one of the ring roads around Beijing. Only a small fragment of it survives, at the southeastern corner. I hope to visit this in the not too distant future.

Most of the old city wall remains in Datong. It is in rather poor shape, but it is being restored. Here are some photos of an unrestored piece of it just north of Xiangjiang Xijie. I am fascinated by all those doors into the wall. This would be on the outside, so I doubt that they are original. People must have dug chambers into the wall.



This picture is from where the wall has been broken to make way for the street.




Also from the same place. At point just to the left of the top of the modern wall, I think one can see clearly that the wall was build in bricks.



Later I spotted the wall towards the end of a back alley, so I walked down it, to find a garbage-strewn open place just inside the southwestern corner of the wall, and I got a closer look at the restoration works. At least from the inside I could not spot the tower that must once have defended this corner, but I have a feeling that it will be resurrected in the restoration.



Zooming in, one can sort of see the outlines of the original bricks. I am sorry that I did not walk closer to get better pictures, but all the garbage and the puddles of that empty lot did not quite invite someone walking in sandals to get any further. Besides, there were three ragged wild dogs looking for food there. They showed no signs of being dangerous, indeed a couple of them ran past me, but still...



Here is a wooden watchtower being reconstructed.



You can guess at the method of reconstruction: A new surface of new bricks is built on the outside of the remnants of the original wall. Notice the long line of cranes for the reconstruction of the wall!




Another picture from the ongoing restoration works, this one from just south of the Southern monastery, next to what must have been the central southern gate.



And finally some pictures from the almost finished restoration, on the east side of the city, at the eastern gate to which the Da Dongjie (Great Eastern Street) leads.



The great gate at the end of Da Dongjie.



I walked in through the gate into a double barbicane.



Perhaps not constructed in the same way as the original.



My impression, but I am far from an expert, is that this restoration seems rather similar to those made by Viollet-Le-Duc in nineteenth-century France: to rebuild the remnants in the way they "must" have looked when they were new. I hope this kind of reconstruction in China is preceeded by careful documentation by professional archeologists of what actually is there. I wish this were so, but I saw no signs of such archeological work.

The results of the reconstruction are, nevertheless, breathtakingly impressive.

See also a reportage from the BBC.

I stayed at a very luxurious but inexpensive hotel in Datong, close to the main shopping area on Da Xijie. Very good service, and very nice staff (who often struggled with English). I stayed on the top, eleventh floor with a nice view over Datong.





Read my review on chinatravel.net.

The same day as I traveled by train from Datong to Beijing, a train accident happened in south-western China. China Daily claims that there were no injuries, which is hard to believe. In the text of their article it says that "no casualties have been reported," which sounds closer to the truth.

Many rivers in that part of China are overflowing, because it has rained heavily. I suppose the bridge must have been undermined.



There is a reportage about this by the BBC. It explains that the cars remained dangling from the bridge for a while before they fell, which explains why there could have been no injuries (or no serious injuries, as the BBC puts it).

As I was waiting for my driver to come back to the car at the Hanging Monastery, I was approached by a vendor, who really wanted to sell me something. He showed me this cat first of all. He wanted 130 yuan for it, which is really too much. In any case, he would not go away, and I liked the cat, so I started to haggle with him, especially since the driver was slow in showing up, so there was not much escape. In the end, I got it for 50, which is probably too high a price, but still. I like it. It is a small tea pot made of brass. It was only when the driver arrived and I walked towards the door of the car that the seller agreed to my last bid. While we were haggling, he tried to sell me a lot of other things.

So I guess the cat is my birthday present to myself.

The seller apparently found my repeated "wo buyao" (I do not want) to be amusing, for he repeated it laughingly several times. I suppose there was something funny about my pronounciation (I think I make the b too soft).

Ningping made the understatement of the month the morning when we were leaving our apartments to go to the railway station for my trip to Datong. I asked her whether I should really take my hat, or if it would make me stand out too much.

"Anders, take the hat. You'll stand out anyway," was her response. As I have written below, the local people here certainly notice me.

I bought this at an indoors antiques market. Any number of busts of Mao with different expressions and in different sizes were for sale. And then of course I got his most famous book.

The bust will now join Carl X Gustaf, Socrates, Brahms, and other heroes of history on the top of my red book case.