Hello Guangzhou

This morning, I had my first real encounter with racial discrimination. Or at least, I suspect that was the case. I was still trying to sleep when Dr. Chen and Dr. Lo went out for breakfast, so I had to go out by myself. I went to the same restaraunt as I have the last two mornings in a row, so I feel I have a pretty good understanding of how things are supposed to work. I sat down, expecing someone to bring me a menu. No one did. I had to flag a waitress down. I also had to flag a waitress down to order my food, get more water and get the bill. This is exceptionally odd, since they usually bring you the bill right after your food. On the upside, the food was pretty excellent. It did however make me very behind for packing.

I frantically packed, and then left the room very quickly, in the process forgetting a thing or two. In fact, when I got to the train station, I suddenly realized I did not have my $300 worth of Rembini. I frantically phoned the hotel, and they said they would look for it, but since I was trying to board a train, it was difficult to hear what was going on, so I promised I would phone them back. I was not very impressed with myself losing this. If you know me very well at all, you know I don't really have $300 to throw around.

We then boarded the train for Guangzhou, which was very, very nice. I would take the train over a plane any day of the week. The only real problem was the screaming babies. They really ought to gas them. This is China after all.

I don't want to be accused of being seditious, but the biggest thing I noticed after leaving Hong Kong is how poor everything looks. Except for in the centres of cities we passed, the buildings were all in shambles, and the people just looked poor. It was very unfortunate.

In fact, when we got to Guangzhou, I was accosted by a homeless man who wanted to carry my suitcase for money. However, as you might remember I didn't have any money. So he was rather out of luck. Also, he kept hounding me, as opposed to anyone else who might have been able to tell him off in a language he understood, although you would think headshaking is rather universal.

All the poverty stopped the minute we entered the Guangzhou Baiyun International Convention Center. This is about the most fancy pants place I have ever been. However, as with the rest of China, they seem opposed to automation (the theory being, I suspect that they have 1.2 billion hanging about, why waste work on machines). So, checking in was done entirely through paper (with carbon copies and everything). This took something like half an hour, for reasons that had something to do with me not being Chinese. Eventually everything was sorted out and we got to our room, which is very VERY nice. Plus: free chocolate.

Interestingly enough, even though I was already IN China, I had to go through Customs again at the train station in Guangzhou. I guess they want to make sure you don't import any capitalist ideas from Hong Kong. What I thought was neat is that they had a big sign behind immigration scrolling through Customs law, in big letters you couldn't miss:



Then they had the table of contents:



Then the law, paragraph by paragraph:



Once in Guangzhou, I called the Hong Kong hotel back, and they said they had not found my cash. So, I did a frantic search of my baggage, and it turns out I had very cleverly stashed it in a locked pouch of my suitcase. Hooray for me!

Then we went to dinner. If you are the sort of person who doesn't like meat, or who doesn't like gross things, I would skip right on over this paragraph. It is about to get very disgusting. Because you see, the Hotel is very fancy, so they had all sorts of Chinese Delicacies, which I decided I would like to try. I had beef tendon, leg of duck, pig's foot and duck's head. This last was very difficult to eat, because it basically looked like they had plucked the head, cooked it, and given it to me. Plus, it was largely bone, since there is very little meat inside a duck's head. Tomorrow they threatened me with cat and snake, but I adamantly refuse to eat cat or dog, on the grounds that I like cats and dogs. I don't really like any other animals. I'm always suspicious they are plotting a revolution.

On an interesting note, I am able to connect directly to this website, facebook, myspace and google, even though I am within the great firewall. However, Dr. Chen had some troubles accessing Yahoo Taiwan, as the CCP doesn't want anyone inside China to hear Taiwan's heretical claim that they are an independent state. (Interesting note: Taiwan calls itself the Republic of China. No one else does though) I'm almost tempted to do a search for certain banned keywords. But I don't think I will. I don't want the nice young people in the People's Liberation Army to come knocking on my door.

Tomorrow the conference starts, which means I'm going to be spending a lot of time staring off into space, seeing as everyone here speaks Mandarin. I am the only white person in the conference, I think. Perhaps I will learn Mandarin for tomorrow. Perhaps I will go to sleep because I am exhausted.