Cruising for Pearls

Today was the first day of the conference proper. The conference is called "The 10th Guangzhou Convention of Overseas Chinese Scholars in Science and Technology". It is basically an excuse for the Chinese government to show off how wonderful it is to live and work in China. So, the conference today was a series of presentations about what it's like to work in China (hint: they say it's grand). Unfortunately these presentations were all in Mandarin, so there was little point in me attending. So, I spent most of today being intensely useless.

It turns out being left on my own all day was pretty good, because it let me get over the rather extreme level of crankiness I had going on yesterday. I'm not sure exactly what caused it, but I suspect it was being in a city where I can't be sure that any given person, or even some given people will have any understanding of English, which is pretty scary. But I have had all day to deal with it, and I feel much better now.

So, until about 5 pm, I did pretty much nothing, except finish reading Arthur & George (which is a fantastic novel by Julian Barnes that I would highly recommend), and begin to learn some Mandarin, so I at least would not be completely in the dark.

However, after 5, we got ready to go out on the Pearl River for dinner. We hopped in a bus that took us around Guangzhou, while a guide talked about the various things we were looking at. Unfortunately, it was in Mandarin, and Dr. Chen fell asleep, so I have no idea what they were saying. But Guangzhou's downtown is pretty impressive. It is even more impressive from the water. Turns out our dinner was on a river boat that went up and down the Pearl (which is the third largest river in China, and about the size of the Fraser at Vancouver).

The Chinese have this fascination with neon and LCD displays. For no reason I could discern, except possibly that it looked cool, the entire river wall was lined with an LCD strip that had blue blocks of light running along it. It was pretty impressive. Also, there were numerous buildings which were advertisements themselves. The entire side of the building was one big LCD display, used to show advertisements, and in one case to show a neat pattern of lights that was either meant to be pretty or hypnotic.

Along with this rather excellent view (which was explained, once again, in Mandarin), was the first dinner I have had in almost a week where I didn't once feel like gagging. (Perhaps you think this is an exaggeration. It is not). I have talked a fair amount about what I've been eating, but how it is served bears mentioning as well.

The Chinese loves them some buffets. Practically every meal has been a buffet of one sort or another. Even when they serve your table, they serve it in a Buffet style. This is pretty cool, let me tell you. What they do is they bring you some stacks of bowls. The bowls are cylindrical, so they stack without mashing what's inside. You take things out of the top bowl put them on your plate, and then move it to the bottom, revealing what was underneath, which may or may not be the same thing. The waiters constantly come to the table to take away old bowls and bring in new ones. If the things in the bowls were more edible, I would have really really liked this idea.

The other thing, which is pretty obvious, is that they use chopsticks for everything. I'm getting fairly adept with them, since I have to use them three times a day or I'll starve, but you will never, ever convince me that they are better than a fork. In fact, using chopsticks basically requires you to eat in a disgusting manner, slurping the food into your mouth, if you want to get all of it. I COULD request a fork, since we are at a hotel that caters to westerners, but I don't want to appear a boorish foreigner, even if that is what I am.

Anyhow, after the tour we (Dr. Chen, Dr. Lo, some other Prof from PG and myself) decided to take a walk down the river. This walk was one of the most awesome things I have done so far, for two reasons. First of all, under a bridge there were a group of street people who have monkeys they make do tricks for money. Now, I am saying it is awesome because I saw monkeys. But for these monkeys, things are not so awesome. I saw them while they were on their break, and they are kept on a rope about 18 inches long, tied to a railing, and given the condition of them and their owners, I suspect they are not fed very well. On the upside, they can console themselves with the fact that they are monkeys, and monkeys are awesome.

Secondly, as we were leaving the dock after the cruise, three women who were standing in a group saw me and ran up to me to push a card each into my hand. This is pretty standard around here, but usually if you don't hold your hand out, they won't give you anything. These ones chased me down and shoved it into my hand. I figured it was an advertisement for something or other. So, I was somewhat shocked when I looked down at what was in my hand and discovered a naked lady (whose name, it turns out, is Lily Mike. The card reads as follows: (warning, this is racy. So if you are say, my parents, you have been warned)

"Virgin Pink Lady Russian lady Boy Service: You Want beautiful Young Chinese girls for Massage and sex? Yes, that's What we have. We are Providing Professional Massage service. Excellent quality Of our girls is guaranteed and fast delivery is our promise. We Will Assign girls according to your special requirements, your comfort, our Pleasure! Do not hesitate, call now!"

It then goes on to list the various types of "masseuses" you can have: Virgin, Sparetime Model, Beautiful women, Student Girls, Young girls, Russian girls, Office girls and Factory girls.

Now I find this entire idea hilarious. Also sad, since it must work, or they wouldn't be doing it. But I find myself wondering what "Boy Service" is. And why "Russian girls" is its own special category. What about Hungarian girls, hmmm? What's interesting here is that they didn't try to give cards to any of the other people I was with. Just me, and they actively sought me out. I'm hoping it's because I'm foreign, and not because I'm radiating desperation or something like that.

Anyhow, although I saw lots of interesting things today, my camera is out of batteries, and I am having trouble finding some new ones (since the hotel is about a half kilometer away from anything else). So I have no pictures to share. Dr. Lo took a bunch, but he took off before I could steal his memory card. So, tomorrow I will put them up, since the only real exciting thing I'll be doing is seeing a movie or something. Oh and going to the exhibition. So, we'll see how that goes.

P.S. If anyone wants the number of a "Beautiful Girl Boy Virgin Service" (another of the cards I got) the number is 135387 58786. It says right on the card it'll be "SEXy".