Shanghai Solar

You live, you learn

2008-07-31T03:44:00.000-07:00

Have been spending most of my off-teaching time haggling for products over the last few days. Got a bag (last year, 300RMB) for 80RMB; and today another friend and I got one for 50. Got a 32GB flash drive (yes, it is that ridiculously huge) for 50RMB (last year, 2GB for 170RMB). Also bought some Foakleys for 25RMB (last year, 50) and various other things at a 2RMB shop that cost 10-20RMB last time.

Also got a tailor to make me some suits (a white tie penguin suit and a white suit for garden parties), not much cheaper than last year but I'm a little wary of haggling too hard with a tailor as I actually have to rely on their services for the week or two after purchase. Going for the fitting tomorrow.

Back to Zhaoqing!

2008-07-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

We went back to Zhaoqing for two days on Friday and Saturday to lead a rowing session for the students (the 'Oxbridge Experience'!). No photos yet but some on their way.

There was a massive lake and a few of us stayed overnight for an early morning row in the sun. The coach there was 2 metres tall and MASSIVE - he'd been an olypmic torch-bearer not long before and we all saw and posed with his torch (they're allowed to keep them - only the flame needs to be continued).

The students got a little time on the water and we ran a rowing machine competition with prizes for the students with the best time (although I actually won, hehe)

4-hour bus ride back afterwards we sang lots of songs and made a racket.

The Beach

2008-07-21T23:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday after classes a few of the seminar leaders decided to try and find the beach. We had directions from one of the Shenzhen locals.

The beach was really nice! We got rubber rings and splashed around. My first time in the Pacific! (Does the South China Sea count as the Pacific?)

ShenZhen

2008-07-20T06:04:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update, arrived safely at the school (Shenzhen College for International Education) and bedded down. The accommodation is slightly spartan - in dorms of four 'beds' (read 'wooden boards') and chinese style toilets, but we get a shower between us as well and a washing machine so its not too bad.

The students are very respectful although it's not quite clear how much they understand us. I've been paid, and the other foreigners here are a lot of fun.

More to follow when I have some photos!

China is... wet!

2008-07-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

China (or South China, at least) has lots of water. On the way out of Guangzhou we went over so many bridges, and it reminded me of my train journey out of Shanghai last year which was just the same. All the rivers a crawling with boats going in all directions.

Chinese has two words for rivers, Jiang for a big one and He for a small one. River number 5 (above) was only a He. All the others were Jiangs.

In addition to rivers, the who countryside was covered with these fish ponds, with funny fountain things in the middle (for food, I guess)

With all the water, its not surprising that everything is so wet (the ground, the air, your clothes, you, ...). The growth is explosive - everywhere is covered in trees, plants, shrubs and animals, particularly insects that love my legs as much as they did last year.

The Pearl Sea

2008-07-15T08:41:00.000-07:00

We moved from Guangzhou, and have been in ZhuHai for a few days. It's a (slightly) smaller city next to Macau on the coast. It's a fairly modern development, as is much of the recent growth of Guangdong province (the richest in China, both absolutly and per capita), and many of the tourist atractions have a slightly artificial feel about them.

On our first night we took a boat cruise along the river and out to sea. It had a buffet dinner followed by dancers on the open-top, apparently with a Portugese theme, as we sailed past Macau and back (formerly a Portugese colony - a bit like Hong Kong but with more casinos)

The 'Portugese' guy was very funny! Later on the people on the cruise got involved as well, and at the end there was a magician - all slightly strange but good fun!

Macao off to one side. It returned to Chinese control in 1999, two years after Hong Kong.

The next day we went to the Yuan Ming Xin Yuan, a partial rebuilding of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, burnt by invading forces in the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century (still a sore point to the Chinese apparently, in the catalogue of foreign abuses of Chinese soverignty drilled into all of them from a young age). It was very pretty and quite large - easily a day's work to enjoy fully. There were more dancing performances, including my highlight which was a re-enactment of the emperor choosing his newest wife - with the emperor chosen from the audience! Also a Chinese orchestra, after which it started to rain and we vacated (it was getting late, anyway).

There were also lots of shops selling typical touristy odditys, and lots of places with costumes selling photos that I got talked into buying one of:

Me as the yellow emperor, much to the amusment of all nearby people - a foreign emperor!

Another area had a great exhibition of most of the various imperial lines in China - in fact, many of the emperors were 'foreigners', Ghengis Khan's descendents who founded the Yuan dynasty and the most recent Qing dynasty to name a few. Chinese culture became very effective at sinocising various foreign powers throughout the ages, like the Greeks in the West. China had one emperess in about 700AD, and after realising their mistake they never let it happen again, although in various periods the cheif wife of the emperor was in defacto control after his death, most recently in the late nineteenth century, the infamous emperess dowager CiXi.

Downstairs was a darkened chamber with pictures of emperors in various naughty poses with wives and misteresses (and often a combination thereof) - photos had recently been allowed but none are online or for the faint-hearted!

Today we went a little further afield to the 'Pearl Spring Resort', an amusment arcade a little out of the city. After paying RMB 110 for a ticket to get in I felt slightly like I'd fallen into a tourist trap, but the rides inside were all free so it wasn't so bad (Yuan Ming Xin Yuan was RMB 120 a ticket, again the performances and things inside were mostly free, and apparently we could trade the tickets inside for a free goodie too, but we never found the place - no big loss though, it was the usual tourist bangles and jade buddhas).

Spring Pearl Resort

Continuing the Guangzhou themes, there were dancers and paddling boats, and lots of rides (I went on what was possibly the first roller-coaster I've ever been on, quite fun!)

dancers...

and the aftermath of the rollercoaster! Thankfully breakfast was some time ago.

And another ride, this time a vertical one with a very good view from the top.

The surrounding area was very pretty, much less clustered than the city. There were lots of fishing boats on the river/sea around the resort and the sun was slowly going down. The beaches were rocky but nice to look at (the resort itself had fake sand beaches with swimming areas, but sadly I'd left my trunks at home and didn't want to buy the over-priced ones they were selling

The resort's hotel (NOT where I was staying!)

Tomorrow we're leaving the Pearl River Delta and going a little further inland to ZhaoQing city.

Food

2008-07-13T06:38:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a strong inverse relationship in China between the price of food and how good it is. My favourite meal last time was the noodles that they served in the university canteen, and this time I've noticed again that you can pay a lot for fancy food that's not actually that nice, but you'd be much happier with a cheap meal at the local restaurent. We paid RMB 200 at a fancy restaurent (a week's wages for a labourer here, by comparison) for food that was alright; below cost 30 RMB and was fantastic.

Guangzhou and nearby

2008-07-12T07:47:00.001-07:00

Went boating on the Pearl River in Guangzhou yesterday evening, very pretty.

Today we went a bit further afield (3 hours and 3 bus rides into the countryside) to go to something. We got there and found that because of the recent rain, whatever it was was shut! But luckily some local people took our money and drove us round the back way - although we had to climb a mountain to get there! It was good fun though, about 800 meters up along a stairway next to a water pipe (secret way up, apparently!). The Chinese couple that came with us gave up, too much effort, but we persevered, and got some nice photos on the way up:

We finally got to the top and discovered that it was a waterfall and revervoir, and it certainly was very nice and a fun day out. Got back to Guangzhou quite late, so that's it for today (after dinner, of course).

At the top

Guangzhou

2008-07-11T01:38:00.000-07:00

Arrived in Guangzhou, its like I've never been away! Hot but not too hot so far, lots of food. Went to see a few things today, a monument to Sun Yat-Sen and various parks. Going to the river tonight and shoppingtomorrow!

The Return

2008-07-09T01:57:00.000-07:00

I'm going back to China, leaving this afternoon for the southern city of Guangzhou (Canton). My plan is to explore the south a little, before going to Shenzhen (next to Hong Kong) for two weeks to take part in a seminar programme - I'll be talking to Chinese school students who want to attend UK universities on transferable skills and banking. Finally, I hope to fit a trip to Shanghai into the last week or so before returning to Blighty in time for a cousin's wedding on the 9th of August.

On the PhD front - we've just subbmitted the first paper that I've been involved with since starting (on high-magnetic-field quantum oscillations in oxypnictide superconductors, http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0806/0806.4726.pdf) to Nature - hopefully we'll know wether they've accepted it by the time I touch down in China (tomorrow evening)!

A week in the country

2007-09-18T19:29:00.000-07:00

I've just arrived back from Hunan and I'm in the cybercafe passing the time until midday when I can check in to my hotel and have a shower! I've got lots of photos but the cyber cafe I'm in doesn't have the right slot for me to fit my digital camera into! So, photos will come later (so keep checking this post!)

Last monday I got on the overnight sleeper from Shanghai to Changsha in Hunan province. The overnight trains are about 18 carriages long and are seperated into seating carriages and sleepers. I took the sleeper, there are about 60 beds per carriage, split into 6 per compartment. There were two girls from Shanghai in my compartment so we chatted until lights out (10pm!).

I arrived in Changsha the next morning and was met by a student from Zhong Nan Da Xue (Central South University, apparently one of the best in China, possibly the best outside of Shanghai and Beijing) called Xie Wei, and taken to the university. I met the professor who had organised everything for me (it turns out he is very famous, one of the 12 school teachers who's photo hangs in the library). He is the president of the 'Hunan Science and Technoilogy Association' which helped with the organisation and invited us to lunch with them which was at a very nice restaurent with our own room and attendents. The food was very tasty, and I ate lots - in fact, I was the last one eating at the end, although not least because Chinese people eat VERY fast. They also don't hang around after a meal, as soon as I finished, we left and headed to the farm that I and Xie Wei would be staying at, near Yiyang city about 45 minutes drive north of Changsha.

Our farm was about 6km outside of Yiyang, in a very nice little area with lots of rice, fruit trees and fishing ponds. There was a restaurent nearby that a lot of the local aspiring middle classes from the city escaped to at the weekend - we saw a lot of them wondering around (and met a few - see later!). We stayed in a small building that had two bedrooms, each "ensuite" Chinese style (if you don't know you can wait for the photos!). I thought it was great.

We called the farmer Uncle Tang (here uncle and aunt are used as familiar terms for respected older people. Often people will call their cousins or even their good friends brother and sister, which can be confusing at times). He seemed to be an admirer of the great helmsman, whose picture hung in many places throughout the building. He was also a dab hand at Chinese chess: Xie Wei and I played him many times, he only lost once (to me!!). (Chinese chess is a little different to international chess in the number of pieces, the way a few of them move, and the board is a slightly different shape, but a lot of the concepts are transferable. I got tought to play on my last day at Shanghai by one of the other students)

The next day we went for a walk around the surrounding area. Although there are lots of people, because it's not harvest season there is a massive surplus of labour so a lot of people get on the train and go to Guangzhou for a few months to work as labourers. Nevertheless, there were still lots of people about, mostly building things. There is also a power station being built in the background - one of the many new coal fired ones that China is having installed at such a rapid rate.

After our second night, we decided to go to Yiyang and explore the city. We took the bus (just like Shanghai it was 2RMB, or 12p UK) which was very quick and afforded good views of the surroundings. When we got there, Xie Wei suggested we find a cybercafe, which sounded ok to me to check emails etc. It was very funny at first, many people seem to camp in them (they are very cheap) all night and play video games. I needed about 20 minutes to check my emails and things and I was ready to go. Unfortunatly, that was when I discovered Xie Wei's passion for the internet. He trades stocks online. He told me and I think expected me to be impressed. Alas! I tried to explain to him that I'd worked for a bank and seen how much voodoo it all is but to no avail. Two and a half hours later I finally managed to drag him away!

Anyway, after that we had a good walk around Yiyang and had lunch at a middle of the road local restaurent. (I can't remember if I've said before or not, but eating at restaurents is much more common here than in the UK, and doesn't have the luxury associations. It's easy to find a relativly good meal for just a few RMB). We wondered around some streets and examined a local park or two. I've found it hard to find much about the city's history on the internet but from the look of a lot of the city I would say it was probably built up in the '50s during the 'russian' phase here, a lot of very drab tenements in the soviet style!

After a wonder, Xie was eager to get back to the internet bar so I went off for a wander by myself and found another buddhist temple here. I didn't go in: it was quite pricy at 40RMB and to be honest I've seen quite enough of them now!

This has reminded me that I in fact also went to see one in Shanghai that is quite famous before catching my train on monday, it's so difficult to put it all together in my head without the photos! I'll add that bit to this post later. However, midday has now arrived so I'm going to check in and have my first shower in a week that isn't pouring a pot of warm water over myself! You'll have to wait until later to hear the rest and see all the pictures.

Countryside

2007-09-15T19:40:00.000-07:00

I've been in the countryside this week and it's been wonderful. Internet access is limited but the student who's accompanied me lives his life on online games so we've made a few trips to a nearby cyber cafe.

This is the farmhouse we've been staying in. I have lots and lots of photos so will add more when I get back to Shanghai. Yesterday we met lots of teachers from a local schooland the english teachers have asked me to go in tomorrow and converse with the students!

The air is fresh and the food is quite nice, much hotter than in SH. However just like in SH they hardly ever drink anything with meals, I think I've been getting quite dehydrated (just bought about 10 bottles of water for the next few days!).

Leaving Uni!

2007-09-07T16:38:00.000-07:00

I'm about to leave Shanghai university for good, heading into Shanghai for the weekend and then out to Hunan on Monday (arriving Tuesday). Apparently there is a typhoon there, so it may be a little wet!

Yesterday I went shopping at Shanghai's cheapest bargain road, Cheapalu, where they sell loads and loads of fake things at very low prices. I bought a lot of stuff!

Posts may be a little less frequent for the remaining few weeks of my stay as I'm leaving my computer here when I go, so will be reliant on cybercafes!

On tour

2007-09-04T23:24:00.000-07:00

As this is my last week, there were a few things that needed to be done. On monday, another student and I went to the other part of the university to collect my certificate (they've really excelled themselves here, its a lovely one in a nice red covered folder with golden lettering, nice!), and bought my train ticket to Hunan for next week on the way.

In the afternoon, our professor took us to see the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, not far away but there was heavy traffic so it took about an hour to drive each way! They have some fairly advanced kit there and do lots of experiments - some of the students from the university go there to do various things to their samples.

This is our professor admiring a poster of the Pelletron that they have there. It was imported from the states in the 80's but is still very useful. The big round bit was as big as a room, and generates a very high energy ion beam.This can be sent down any of the five tubes and used as a very powerful microscope. It is currently being used a lot by environmental scientists trying to clean up Shanghai's air pollution.

The things that are really standing out to me from the summer are the difference in the amount of experimental work we do at Cambridge and here at Shanghai. I've done 4 years and got a masters already, but the only serious experimental work (besides a few assessed practicals in the first few years) we do is our 4th year project - and even then, mine was computational so not a clamp stand in sight! By contrast, in Shanghai a masters takes 6 years (although they have to study a fair amount of compulsary English and 'Politics' as well during that time), the last two of which are purely practical, doing experiments and publishing papers. Some of the 4th year projects at Cam might have lead to papers, but on the whole we don't start publishing until PhD level. I'm quite looking forward to actually doing some experimental stuff after my time here!

This is an electron microscope they had. The two darker bits on the left were actually made in England - they were imported from one of the more mediocre universities there that shares it's hometown with Oxford Brookes.

Boating on the Huangpu

2007-09-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

This week has passed fairly quickly. Got the results for our experiment through on Thursday and I've been playing around with them making some graphs and the like. As I mentioned before, the results were not quite as useful as I might have liked due to the alteration in the process now used at the factory, but it's been fun either way and we'll see what I come up with. We measured lots of weights at different stages in the process which we can use to calculate thicknesses and things, and also power output of the cells which we can compare to thickness, weight etc.

Today (Saturday), I decided to go on the Huangpu River cruise. There are a few versions, but they boil down to a 1-hour tour that basically covers the Bund for about 60 RMB, or a bumper 3-hour cruise 60km downstream to the mouth of the Yangtze and the Pacific Ocean for 150 RMB. Being a purist and on the advice of my guidebook, I went for the longer one. It was good, and my first view of the ocean not from an aeroplane, but in retrospect I think 3 hours is a bit gruelling - advice for others, go for the shorter cruise! Although it is certainly worth doing that one.

Jack plans revolution with his Bolshy buddies near the pier

Leaving Pudong behind...

The gate to the East

Afterwards wondered Xin Tan Di and Huai Hai Lu with a few others (the nice bits of town!) and restaurented and malled. Developed a game for malls: essentially you need to travel the men's floor without retracing your steps, and return to your initial position (if lift, or the down escalator otherwise). The catch is, if there's a plastic clothes model with it's shirt tucked in, that walkway section is forbidden!

blocked!

China's military will soon be able to take over the World, but like the Americans they appear not quite to have grasped 'soft' power yet. Their attempts at cultural supremecy have so far only won over Alan from 'Two and a half men' and my younger, and far wiser brother.

Tomorrow I'm off dragon boating, and then next week (my last!) is quite action packed, with a visit to a couple of other research institutes in Shanghai and possibly poping over to the other campus in Shanghai Uni to see what goes on over there, and hopefully I'm going to be allowed to sit in on some undergrad lectures (which have just started) and see what they're like over here.

For anyone ever frusrated when trying to learn a foreign language...

2007-08-30T03:01:00.001-07:00

Pity the souls whose sole aim is to understand this

http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Literacy/reading.asp

Living life on the Sky News diet

2007-08-29T23:47:00.000-07:00

The PRC takes an active role in helping its citizens to lead upright and moral lives, and so takes it upon itself to help filter out corrupting foreign influences that might lead citizens to question the government, or other unethical activities. The BBC and CNN among others are of course prime examples of foreign scaremongers and rightly blocked in the glorious worker's republic.

With all decent to mediocre news sources blocked, I've been forced to do the unthinkable for the last few weeks and read Sky news. On the plus side, it does have lots of pretty pictures as well as a whole section on the termoils of the McCan family alongside Politics and World News (who's more minor subsections include from time to time the genocide in Darfur and nuclear tension in Iran).

Sensationalise? Us?

Hanzhou, Experiment, Art

2007-08-26T23:43:00.000-07:00

Last saturday I went to Hanzhou. As i mentioned before, Hanzhou and Suzhou are supposed to be the most beautiful places in China. Personally, I'd cut Suzhou out of the list: Hanzhou was much nicer! It's a medium sized city built around a huge and lovely lake, surrounded by hills with tea plantations and lots of temples and pagodas. The gardens of Suzhou are indeed beautiful, but all of Hanzhou is.

We arrived quite late (circa 9.30pm), but were able to relativly quickly find a restaurent that opened late (cf. McD's in Suzhou!), before retreating to a moderatly priced hotel. However, their air conditioning was broken, so they shipped us upmarket for the first night for free! What a score. Next morning we had a breakfast buffet, all you want of a wide array of eastern and western foods.

I knew that my friend and regular blog correspondant Lisa Gao had planned to come to China at some point this holiday, but I hadn't expected to find her in my fruit bowl at the hotel

Breakfast isn't big in China so its always slightly eclectic, but not here. Lots of chinese dumplings, noodles etc., but also the full array of bacon, potatoes, cereal, cold milk, fruit, fruit juice, french pastires etc - I stuffed myself full for the day.

On sunday we visited the Lingyin Temple, a big budhist temple. It's just over the hill from the lake and is in the middle of the tea growing areas. Next to it is a famous hill called "Hill flown in from afar" after a travelling Indian buddhist mistook it for a hill from home which it resembled, which we climbed. The temple itself is still home to several buddhist monks, who climb another even taller hill each day on their hands and knees to visit another temple (which you can just see at the top of the tea field photo below, with a cable car for lazy tourists), and clean, worship and practice martial arts (allegedly). They seem to have struck on a winning revenue stream though - there are thusands of tourists daily, who come to burn incense and worship their family gods (apparently buddhism adopted gods when it reached china).

buddhas carved into 'hill flown from afar'

despite numerous signs informing that for true buddhists piety is more important than incense, the vendors outside still made a healthy taking. The chinese aren't the most religious of people, but they have a very special way of sinocising foreign ones

Buddhism, much like Islam, is a religion of peace

After the temple, we went to try and find the tea museum, but it was unfortunatly out of season. Instead, we got taken to one of the tea villages to a little tea huse to have tea explained to us by a local woman. We wondered the village for a bit and bought some overpriced locally cut stuff, then returned to our original hotel (unfortunatly repaired!) for a shower.

proof I was there

A tea field. I want one of these!

In the evening we went to a nice restaurent on the lake (my first glimpse of it so far!) that was packed, apparently Zhou En Lai ate there back in the day so it's always popular with domestic tourists. We wondered a bit afterwards, along one of the long causeways that cross the lake, before returning to the hotel.

We woke early the next morning for another marginally less impressive breakfast, less bacon and more rice but still palatable. No black tea either unfortunatly. We went back to the lake and hired bicycles from one of the many hire places around the lake and cycled round it for a few hours, which was really good fun and very pretty.

part of Hanzhu's beautiful West Lake

It was almost time to go after this, we had lunch at a nice Guangdong themed restaurent (the bit of China nearest Hong Kong, known for eating anything!) and headed back to Shanghai in the glorius monday sunshine.

All was good until I got back home, and discovered to my horror (and for the second time) that I'd lost my debit card. Further, my laptop seemed well and truly broken and I was a bit gutted. Luckily, some frantic calls later revealed that it had been left in the first hotel, they were very good and sent it off almost straight away. Laptop was less positive.

On tuesday Professor Ma arrived back, and the students and I and he discussed various plans for experiments. I got the go-ahead for mine, and my and another student decided to travel over to Pudong on wednesday evening. It was Yaoyao's birthday dinner in shanghai that night in Shanghai, she took several of us to an 'italian' restaurent. It's no wonder that Chinese people think they don't like western food - the imitation is pale (much like chinese takeaway in the UK i'm sure!). The pizzas we had were greasy, covered in horrible rubbery cheese, not a tomato i sight, the tuna (I'm a big fan of napolitana in the UK...) could have come from a can, not enough vinegar, bread too thick, no chilli oil, no pepper mill, etc... The potato salad side order was very good, however!

In the day on Wednesday we had some american visitors to the lab who I chatted to for a bit, they were the investors from the company but seemed to be more on the business than the science side. When we arrived at the company that afternoon I saw them again and told them my plans! It was late so I and the student (his english name is Bob!) headed to the dormitary nearby to start the next morning.

Our village, complete with a few words from the big man himself (5 ft 0 Deng. Party man Bob is a very big fan)

The village that the dorm is in is right on the outskirts of Shanghai where it merges with the countryside (and the coast!), and I've got some good photos of it. When I left it before a few weeks back, some workers had been clearing weeds from a large area of ground, which has now just about been turned into a nice paved area with trees and benches. Development is rapid.

then

and now

Shanghai's eastern edge

By Thursday morning, I was very keen to get by experiment under way. I'd spent some time fighting through paperwork, and finally got to the factory floor by about 10am, to find that the crucial stage of the process for my experiment is no longer used! We had to adjust it somewhat, and the results were less useful that I'd hoped. However, carrying it out was good fun and the company are planning to do my original experiment themselves at some point now which is great.

We finished early on Friday afternoon, and Bob and I returned via SHanghai centre. We went to a nice little market, and did some souvenir shopping. I have purchased a Chinese chess set which I now need to learn to play, and several other amusing nicnaks. I also aquired the newest harry potter for 20 RMB (1 pound 30) and a compilation of shakespeare plays in english and chinese.

Certified 'World VIP' Ma Sun carves me a name stamp

On Friday night I went out with Valencia and Kenny and several others, first to an interesting club in south Shanghai called 'Absolute House', before moving on to Attica. As usual Valencia had obtained us free entry to both places and drinks so the night was very cheap. After we left attica we wondered shanghai and ate funny shellfish as the sun came up!

On Saturday I went with Toshiba to Century Park - a very large park in central pudong not far from the Jin Mao tower. It was very nice, with a big lake in the middle that we were able to hire a boat and sail around on for a bit! After that we went to see the latest Harry Potter in the cinema (I'm not addicted!) and had dinner at an italian place much nicer than the one I went to on tuesday! Still not enough tomato tho and very overpriced this time: someone needs to bring Pizza Express or ASK here.

captain Jack

Shiji Park

On sunday, Valencia wanted to go to the Shanghai art museum. Very tired from the busy week I skipped Dragonboating to sleep, and on a whim joined her in the afternoon to go and see the special exhibit: lots of Gaudi's work from early 20th century Spain. We explored people's square afterwards, and got the usual approaches from 'tea shop' people trying to get money out of us - she was very surprised, and said it was a totally different experience from when she was alone! She thinks they might not know how to deal with a western woman, but I put it more down to her fluent Chinese - a good few people were taken by surprise when she jabbered back at them!

Gaudi was a big fan of 'hyperbolic perabaloids'. Obviously.

upstairs they had quite an strange mix of his furniture

he had a change of heart on his death bed - form AND function

Anyway, she had had to visit a nearby restaurent at some point as part of her job, called Saigon Blue, so we decided to have dinner there (unsurprisingly Vietnamese). It was a lovely little restaurent but a little bit out of the way, a few streets south of Nanjing Road and not quite in the french concession, and also hidden by a large strange hotel-like building (but not a hotel, apparently) called the 'Overseas Chinese Development Center'. You had to actaully leave the restaurent and enter the building to go to the loo, which might have been cold in the winter and felt a little strange! They want to change the place into a bar with V's company's help, but she wasn't massivly enthused. The food was very good though: we had lots of fresh veg in salads and spring rolls, which made me realise how much I've missed them - almost all vegetables here are stir fried or cooked in sauce (side note: I also spotted a subway tucked away near people's square which I will be visiting SOON!).

We wondered a little bit afterward before heading our seperate ways - she made me laugh at one point by suggesting we go for a foot massage - before I realised she was serious! After all the dodgy 'massaji' calls that one hears outside clubs in the early morning I wouldn't even have thought about it, but she told me about the wonderful massage she'd had the week before. It's a very different experience here for men and women! She has promised to take me with her next time she goes to translate for me and guarantee no unexpected surprises!

Laptop broken!

2007-08-18T00:26:00.000-07:00

My laptop has broken so posts may be a little less frequent until (if!!) it starts working again.

Going to Hanzhou this afternoon for another tour - another beautiful little city about an hour and a half away on the train thats built on a lake and is supposed to be lovely.

I'll be back on Monday afternoon in time to get Prof Ma to hopefully take me to the company on tuesday. (Although the lab here apparently has some international visitors on Wednesday so I can't help thinking he might contrive to take me on Thursday to show off his exchange student!)

Experiment

2007-08-15T22:39:00.001-07:00

I got a good news phone call this morning from one of the guys at the solar panel ompany, they've decided to let me do the experiment that I've been planning for a bit! Basically the massive majority of the cost of solar panels is the silicon that they use for it itself. It has to be so pure that they need some very energy intensive methods to purify it far enough (solar panels aren't quite as green as people like to think, they spend about half of their lives paying back the energy it cost to make them and they also leave a trail of chemical nasties) which is expensive. Consequently, people are looking at many new types of panel that need less material to work.

The easiest solution, of course, is simply to use thinner panels - which is exactly what I want to try. The problems include that they will be more fragile, and also that they will bend more during the sintering (heatin at about 500 degrees C) that they undergo, which might make them not work. On the other hand, any thickness reduction means big cost cuts, so it might be worth it. I want to basically thin some slices down about 10 or 20% and see what the effect is on their power output at the end, it's something that they've been interested in before but haven't actually tried yet, and I think they're keen to see what happens. They also have a new machine fairly recently that will allow very good thickness measurements.

My professor returns on Monday, so I'll probably try and get over there on tuesday to begin, and it might take the rest of the week to get done, but should be a lot of fun!

In other news, I finally cracked last night at the expat event and ordered the following monster:

I've been told on certain streets you can even find proper Turkish kebabs in polystyrene boxes, so I'm going to have to hunt one of those down next time. There is documentary proof of my betrayal of chinese food at http://www.shanghaiexpat.com/modules.php?set_albumName=album06&id=IMG_1010_001&amp;op=modload&name=mdGallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php it's photo 19 if it doesn't come up automatically!

After the expat event Valencia got us guestlist entry and free drinks at the surprisingly retro disco club G Plus in a swanky mall in Xin Tan Di (her company helps market things in Shanghai. Apparently the locals tend to spend more in clubs than stingey foreigners, but they prefer clubs that have a few around and thus spend even more, so clubs like to encourage us to visit them). Very good club with good music and a very '80s mirrored theme, my only complaint (as with so many clubs here) was the narrow passageways and the insane amount of space dedicated to tables (which is how clubs here seem to make most of their money). On the whole big thumbs up tho!

How NOT to seduce a beautiful peasent girl...

2007-08-14T23:59:00.000-07:00

Back when I was working in the company at Pudong, I got ton know some of the workers there quite well. As with everything here, it was very heirachical and segmented. To get a good job (engineer!), you need most likly a masters degree or better PhD, and a very good recommendation from your teacher. Alternativly, if you have a bachelor's degree and your teacher knows someone who works in the company, that's probably ok - in fact you'll probably even earn a little more than the masters candidate, or if you have studied abroad they'll snap you up (and give you a big salary bonus!). Basic salery here is about 3000 RMB a month, and there are reasonable promotion opportunities after a few years I'm led to believe.

If you started work after school, you become a worker, and that's more or less as far as you will go (one worker who had lots of experience and defected to the company from another one became the forewoman in her room, and got abot 20 more than the average worker. After 9 years.). You wear different clothes to the engineers to highlight the difference, work at the same station for months on end (although it wasn't quite the sweatshop hours I was expecting, usually about 8-5 with free lunch provided at the onsite canteen) and generally do whatever you're told. You earn about 1000 RMB a month, probably share a room with another worker for about 200 RMB of that each, spend another 200 or so on food and transport, and end up with about 600 RMB each month. Not the greatest of jobs.

However they all work with a smile and are generally really friendly, although none speak English (but they know the premiership results better than me) and often don't even speak regular mandarin chinese all that well (so I'm told), prefering their local dialect.

Since the student engineers there have some time on their hands, and there is a set of benches near one particular work bench, we got to know the workers there very well. One was a very pretty girl from Anhui province (reknowned for being undeveloped) who was very chatty and generally amusing. She took it upon herself to teach me Chinese in her spare time during the day, then stole my mobile number from another engineer andbegan a texting campaign, letting it be known that she wanted to be invited out to dinner.

Great, I thought, a chance to get to know someone a little different from the rest of the Shanghai croud (Shanghai, everyone says, is very different to the rest of China; much more modern, fast paced and materialistic). So I invited her to a restaurant for dinner one time... or that's what I thought.

I was a bit surprised when she said no, after all the efforts she'd gone to, but recently I found out why. I'd asked her to a fan dian. Now fan is rice, which is used very often here to mean food generally, and dian is a building or shop. However, apparently when you put the two together it means... hotel! I bit my lip but couldn't help chuckling inside when I found that out a couple of days ago, another Chinese mystery explained!

For all you Romeo's out there, a much better way to ask a girl to dinner is, as I now know, "Wo (time and date) qing ni qu chi fan", literally 'I invite you to eat rice' - the same fan but not a dian in sight!

An Underground European Club-Bar

2007-08-13T06:04:00.000-07:00

This Saturday I toured the Shanghai Development Office in People's Square. Now as dull as that might sound, it's actually a Museum and they get lots of recommendations because on one of the floors, they have a cardboard replica of most of the city, with every building and tree painstakingly recreated. It just goes to show how far out I've been living that neither of my residences so far were on it, which was a disappointment!

Cardboard cutout vs. the real deal!

In fact, the whole place was pretty dull, I wouldn't suggest this to any would-be tourists.

Anway, it rained all afternoon so we sheltered in the tea room and then went to a restaurant for dinner. I had arranged to go clubbing as a smart club with Kenny, but all of us were in shorts and sandals and decided it was just too much effort to all go and get changed. Luckily, one of the germans with us knew a club called Pirates! that apparently wouldn't mind sandals, so we re-arranged plans and went there instead.

Well, Pirates! had absolutly no-one inside, so we went to the bar just down the road from it, Logo. The entrance was a dark door but inside was great, lots of old sofas and a small bar area at the back. 20 RMB entrance and drinks at 30 RMB, it was very relaxed and not trying to be anything like so many of the clubs here. It had a very European feel to it, the only problem was thatit was slightly smokey (it even had European toilets, although they were unisex and weren't in that great a condition)

Later on, a local band came in and played, they were really good! One of our friends Valencia (american, but has a thing for long-haired asian men) fell in love with the lead singer and we spent a lot of the evening trying to get her an autograph.

Floopy haired local bad-boy (love interest??!)

When we got bored here, we heard rumours about another after hours bar in the vicinity and spent about two hours trying to find it and also find something to eat nearby (we wanted dumplings but all wecould find was hotpot, which wasn't going to do in our condition). We didn't find it but did see some funny early morning scenes (lots of fights between locals, mostly).

Suzhou

2007-08-10T17:24:00.000-07:00

I've been back from Suzhou for a few days and its about time I wrote about it!

I was very impressed with myself for buying train tickets there and back in Chinese, they cost about £4 between them for about an hours journey each, Network Rail could learn something about pricing policy here.

Suzhou is renowned throughout China for its beautiful gardens and its beautiful women. On my arrival, I was 'befriended' by a motorcycle taxi guy, and since it was baking hot I thought I might as well let him take me into town. He didn't speak a word of English, so the conversation was interesting. In the absense of clear instructions, he apparently used his inititave and decided which of Suzhou's delights I would be more interested in seeing. We turned up outside a very dodgy looking "KTV" that he wanted to take me into. I walked off but he followed me, and this time I said "park" in Chinese very clearly! I'd already paid him for the trip here so he said he'd take me to a park instead, and we went to a very nice lesser-known park called Dong Yuan (East Garden) that was only 10 RMB entry.

Chinese gardens, unlike western ones, do not try to improve upon nature, but instead create an atmosphere conducive to relaxation and thoughtfulness, according to my guidebook.

Apparently this is well achieved via Communist pandas.

In addition, Dong Yuan also had a zoo! It was so hot that most of the creatures (and zoo keepers!) were asleep in their enclosures. They had a lion that wasn't very ferocious, but they did have a really powerful looking tiger! (In China, the tiger is the king of the animals, because the marks on his head look like the chinese character for king, Wang)

Look closely and you'll notice that these fish have very funny bulgey eyes. I was very excited by them, but every Chinese person I've shown them to has been unimpressed - apparently they're fairly common here.

After looking around the garden, I decided it was time to find a hotel. My guidebook had listed a few, but they were all at the upper end of my spending plan. The motorcycle taxi guy still wouldn't go away which was becoming annoying, but he didn't ask for more money either (although I did pay for his Dong Yuan ticket). I decided he could make himself useful and take me to a hotel - I told him I was looking to spend 400-500 RMB, and to be fair to him he found me a nice one a little way outside the city centre that was only 300. I headed to my room and he still wouldn't go away, which was now a little worrying. We chatted for a little bit before I told hism I wanted to sleep and he should go. I'd earlier told him I was meeting friends later to try an encourage him to leave, and he wanted to come and meet us later. Then he decided he wanted to borrow my digital camera (which I'd told him cost me about £50, or 700 RMB, although actually it was a fair bit more) to take pictures of his girlfriend, and return it to me that night. Well, obviously, this was it, so I told him to be gone, and he moaned and said I owed him 4 RMB for the transport (24p), which I gladly gave him, locked the door, and went to have a shower. He hung around for a bit knocking but finally got the message and left.

I didn't realise until the next day, but he'd taken the recipt for my 100 RMB deposit on the room, so I wasn't able to get it back which was a bugger, but I'm told that if 100 RMB is all I've lost in China due to scams, I'm not doing too badly. I pinched a couple of towels from the hotel to make sure that he wasn't able to go and get the deposit himself!

I have a few Shanghai friends who work in Suzhou, and I aranged to meet them that evening to look around. Unfortunatly Mark (see earlier post, "The Plot Thickens...") had a short notice commitment so couldn't make it, but my other guide YaoYao showed me some of the sights, a massive artificial lake with a big island in the middle (they put the island in afterwards by draining the lake, pretty impressive stuff, but the photos came out badly). Suzhou really isn't Shanghai though - we were looking for a restaurant at about 10.30pm (an easy feat in Shanghai), but despite finding many nice-looking ones, they were all about to close, and we finally had to settle for McDonalds. (although I secretly wasn't upset - chips and tomato ketchup! A chunk of meat in bread!)

Me looking very smug with my Western food

Not the recommended way to mentain that figure...

The next day, I had breakfast in the hotel Chinese style. I'm not certain but SOMETHING seriously disturbed my system for a long time from about 16 hours later and I suspect the rice porridge might not have been made using boiled water (it was certainly tap water from the taste, but that shouldn't be a problem if it's been boiled), and I drank lots of it! Incidentally, I and Chris have both noticed how Chinese drink much less with their meals than westerners, and it tends to be warm or hot drinks as opposed to cold ones. We've both become coke drinkers because its about the only drink regularly chilled!

On Yaoyao's suggestion, I checked out "The Humble Administrator's Garden", the most famous garden in Suzhou. The entrence fee is 70 RMB (!!) but the garden is large and fairly spectacular so it wasn't so bad.

Photograph slave that I have become, I was distraught when my camera ran out of battery in the middle of the garden. You aren't seeing the bansai tree garden, the bamboo meditation chamber, or lots of other lovely spots.

The garden gets its name from a certain Imperial beaurocrat whoretired and returned to suzhou and made this garden. He is supposed to have said, in the noblest vein, that "To stay at home tending his garden and selling his vegetable crop, is the policy of a humble man". However, his garden covers over 50,000 square metres, with buildings, boulders, lakes and landscaped hills. I can't help thinking it took considerably more than one humble man to build. Some things never change.

After leaving the garden, I fancied a trip on a boat around the canals of Suzhou (Marco Polo called it 'the Venice of the East'). Another local who spoke no English said he'd take me to one for 5 RMB on his pedlo. We set off and it was great fun, then I noticed that we were crossing the river instead of going to boats - and ended up outside another KTV with pictures of pouting movie star girls on the outside. He kept saying something about how cheap it was (I'm now sure that they're on some commission) and a horde of girls appeared saying it was happy hour (I was incredibly happy when one bumped her head on the bike when trying to get into the seat to talk to me). When he realised that he wasn't getting his commission for the day, the cycle driver turned nasty and complained about the wet sweat patch I'd left on his bike seat. But he was 5 foot 4 and as skinny as a beanpole, and by now thoroughly fed up with locals I practiced some of the bad language I've learned to date on him.

It was by this stage a bit late for a boat ride since my train was leaving fairly early, so instead I decided to walk back to the station with my spare hour, which was very nice and pleasently local free.

On balance, the gardens of Suzhou are everything they're said to be and definatly worth a visit. Taxis are incredibly cheap here as well. However more than one day here could rapidly become too much, both Mark and YaoYao look forwards to the weekends when they can get back to SH. It's just a little bit too slow, despite being a reasonably sized city. Not a scratch on Shanghai!

Disaster

2007-08-08T18:45:00.001-07:00

Some of you may have noticed the lack of physics-reated posts over the last week or so. I was going to wait until I had photos but since I'm going away for a few days now seems an appropriate juncture. We had an accident in the lab on sunday, it was basically flooded by a tap left on all nigh, so there have been no expriments this week and I've instead been focusing on my Chinese.

Was talking to an American chap last night who's here researching lukemia (shanghai has a fairly high incidence of a certain type of it, apparently) and it was very interesting chatting about the difference in research cultures here and in the West.

Anyhow, the lack of research made me feel that it was a good tim to take a holiday, and today I'm off to Suzhou, China's garden city, for a few days.

Jin Mao

2007-08-06T20:30:00.000-07:00

My friend Chris from the UK is in town - we took Chinese classes together last year so shared our teacher's amusing quest to grasp all things British. Also, my new debit card was here, so we decided to paint the town red (well...).

We took the tourist tunnel under the river to Pudong, which is a bizarre tram-like vechile that moves through a strange tunnel of lights that might be trying to simulate LSD. Unfortunatly I didn't disable the flash on my camera and none of the photos came out very well.

Chris had told me about this nice buffet meal served in a certain Grand Hyatt hotel, but we didn't quite know where it was, so we asked directions, and were pointed to...

Yup, that's right, I ate up there. (recycled photo I know - it didn't come out so well at night)

It was rather divine, we partook gladly and plentifully.

Clockwise from top: smoked salmon, POTATOES* with onion and bacon, prawns in garlic, pork cutlet, ROAST BEEF**, antipasto, fish, BEEF CARPACCIO (WITH SHAVED PARMESIAN*!!!), some shellfish. * - much needed

They had also committed the cardinal sin for any buffet meal, and included sorbet in the dessert. Chris displayed a typical northern lack of restraint on the dessert

While I, with my superior southern breeding, was much more civilised:

(I couldn't find the big plates)

We had a window seat and were able to enjoy the Shanghai skyline much more nicely from the 56th floor (about 2/3 of the way up). It's only when you're there that you realise how much taller than everything else Jin Mao really is. We eventually managed to disable my camera's flash and get some skyline pictures of mediocre quality

Citigroup always was a second rate excuse for a bank

Price tag for the evening: 450RMB each - less than I paid for my Lacrosse annual dinner back home.

After dinner, we wondered Pudong breifly and happened upon a breif note from our sponsors - Chris and I were both given £400 by a certain fund back in the UK, and we were sure they'd approve of our recent investment in the Shanghai property/eatery market

We like these people. The Chinese couple we ambushed to take the photo perhaps didn't quite understand...

Fun-packed weekend!

2007-08-05T05:44:00.000-07:00

My debit card has just arrived but I can't collect it until Monday, so this weekend has seen the spending of my last 600 RMB! The last few days have seen me doing lotsof chinese lessons from my books, so I was dead keen to get some prctice in.

Shanghai is so hot and humid these days, and I'd heard that some of the malls featured certain countermeasures. So, Saturday morning saw me...

I went with Toshiba to Super Brand Mall (the best mall in Shanghai, very spacious, very tacky-classy art deco, lots of marble etc., but with a great overall feel) to their Ice Rink on floor 8! Great fun, although amazing 5 year olds put us boh to shame! My attempts at action photos didn't come out so well.

Wondered Pudong (the Eastern section of Shanghai across the river, it's a lot like Canary Wharf, the new business area in Shanghai) and saw Jin Mao tower (but both baulked at the 70 RMB price tag to actually go up it!)

It's twice as tall as Canary Wharf tower. The one they're building behind it is going to be even taller (tho not as nice, and still not as tall as one in Taiwan, but they don't like to talk about that here!)

Now as it happens, August 1st was my Professor's daughter's birthday, but because it was midweek she didn't celebrate, and her dad had left the day before to go home for a few weeks. She sounded pretty down so I suggested we organise a party for the weekend, which she really liked the sound of. So, at 5 I headed back, met up with a few students, and headed over to Partyworld, Shanghai's best KTV, for some choiral action!

Sung and ate (buffet!) clear through to 8 for 77 RMB (£5!!) a head. Then, headed to another part of Shanghai that I hadn't yet seen, Xin Tan Di - one of the biggest tourist spots, with daughter and one of her friends to explore. They have a giant chess set there! We tried to play but there was a steel willed Chinese kid there who kept replacing anything we moved!

A black knight! Also an evil child watching from stage right!

Two queens! No pink shirt jokes here tho please, I've heard them all before.

Today I went to dragonboats again, then went back to Super Brand Mall to investigate their cinema - and see Transformers! Very cheesy, not really my favourite but generally popular.

Formal Chinese?

2007-08-03T03:30:00.000-07:00

Chinese, like French, has two ways of saying you: an informal (ni) and a polite, formal version (nin). Combined with some stories I'd heard about how heirarchicl things would be over here I was pretty concerned and very careful to begin with.

But it turns out it's mostly not true. Students call their teachers ni all the time and noone's thought I'm overlydisrespectful just yet! In fact, I have the British disease - about 5 people have told me I say thank you too much, apparently friends don't need to thank each other for little things like telling the other one the time in mostof the world! Also waiters here are deemed below a thank you, and also a tip (no tips culture here, truely wonderful!)

More Wednesday night activity

2007-08-02T00:15:00.000-07:00

Again last night I went to the expat mixer event followed by Zapatas, thoroughly entertaining! Remembered my camera this week so have some photographic evidence.

Every wednesday Shanghai Expat website runs an event on the top floor of Malones american bar in central Shanghai for expats to meet each other. No-one really knows anyone so it's cool to just get chatting to anyone who's about, which is nice. Also, they do free finger food!

Kenny, Toshiba and I visited breifly, before heading to...

Zapata's!! Wednesday is ladies night, free cocktails for girls until midnight (sadly we turned up *just* too late for Toshiba to take advantage. Interestingly, they have a similar event on mondays for guys between 10 and 11-free flowing carlsberg! You just know in the UK that wouldn't be a profitable business strategy...), lots of music, and a ladder up to the bar for dancing on it! A closer look at the photo will reveal that clearly not everyone in Shanghai has heard of my blog and the golden rule is still a well kept secret... :(. The sunglasses in a nightclub look is also strictly optional

A Busy Weekend!

2007-07-30T23:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for a few days: it's been a very busy weekend and I needed until now to catch up on the sleep!

On thursday I had dinner with a few people in Shanghai, which transformed into a rather late excursion to the before-mentioned Bonbons and a fairly late (early) return home. Friday was my last day at the company, so it was fortunatly rather light on the work front - trying to get some last bits of data and looking around the place a final time.

In the afternoon Prof. Ma returned me to Puxi via his daughters work, they invited me to dinner on Sunday chez Ma, whch is very close to the university - with the promise of Baijiu, the chinese national spirit.

Saturday was the real beginning: went into town to meet a friend for breakfast, and had my first experience of People's Square as a lone foreigner - totally different! I'd heard about this scam where a group of young female students 'befriend' you saying they want to practice their english, then take you to some teahouse where you end up getting charged a massivly inflated bill for a few cups of tea - as well as reading it on the internet, my friend Neil warned me about it: he'd been scammed for 400 RMB on the first day (they tried to take 1000!).

It hadn't happened to me yet but I wasn't surprised, I obviously don't look like the kind of guy that would fall for a scam. Or perhaps I do. Within 20 minutes of arriving (got in half an hour early due to mistiming busses!) it'd been tried on me twice. It really is very cleaver, but of course forwarned is forarmed and I got rid of them. When I came back hours later one pair were still there - apparently they'd 'got lost' and asked me for some directions!

That afternoon (to my eternal shame I forgot my camera for the whole weekend so have no photos of any of this) I met up with more friends - James and Ziyang from my course in Cambridge and a few of their friends, and went to KTV! KTV is karioke, but its massivly popular here, occupying about the same cultural space as going out for drinks. You get a room with the karioke stuff, order foor and drinks, and sing away to each other for several hour, and its as much fun as it sounds, although the only english songs they have are dodgy britney covers and the omnipresent Backstreet Boys (the supermarket near where I lived in Pudong played the BB greatest hits album on loop - but frustratingly didn't have a dance floor!).

Afterwards we went to a Guangzhou restaurent (Guangzhou (formerly Canton) is in the south of China near Hong Kong, and its people are famous for eating almot anything. There was a recent field mouse epidemic in central china where 2,000,000,000 field mice chomped through thousands of acres of cropland, but the farmers were able to make up their losses by exporting live mice to Guangzhou instead). We ate donkey and rabbit among other things and it was all rather tasty!

Afterwards I nipped briefly home to change and shower and make a rapid turnaround, before heading back into town to visit Attica, one of Shanghai's most famous scenes. It's on the roof of one of the buildings of the Bund (by this stage the loss of a camera was really getting to me!) and priced accordingly. It had two really nice rooms and a lovely outdoor bar area, and the clientelle were slightly more resectable than those in bonbons. We knew a few people there (someone in the Taiwanese mafia allegedly?!) and chatted and danced until about 4am. Clubbing here seems much less down-all-you-can-and-act-stupid oriented, although that may be because the people who I go out with don't drink that much, but it's actually much more fun and much less expensive. We also met lots more people, my Shanghai circle is growing!

Since we left at 4.30am and dragonboating starts at 8, I'd made the prior decision not to return home, and brought a bag with me to the club. The one weakness of Attica is that the cloakroom ONLY takes coats - we argued this one for a bit, and despite my bag containing nothing valuble the assisstant wouldn't give in, luckily it wasn't a bulky sports bag or anything and despite looking slightly metro, it wasn't so bad.

Crossed the city early in the morning and saw some interesting sights (camera loss now chaffing). McDonalds is open 24/7 near the bund, but the only people actually eating were a few groups of foreign lads clearly just out of a club too. However, most of the tables were occupied by sleeping locals - literally just head down on the tables like those funny mushroom people in Voyage of the Dawn Treader! Another open square was covered in homeless - so many here.

The subway is shut from 10.30pm - 6am which really makes me appreciate London's 1.00am-ish, although I wish more cities would follow NY's 24h example! Got to the DB pickup at about 6.45 and dozed by a wall for a bit until 8, then dozed a bit more on the coach. We had about 40 people this week: enough for two boats and races!

It was by far the hottest day so far and with no cloud cover. I borrowed some sun cream but it wasn't as good as my factor 40 stuff and rapidly washed off in the spashing. Despite the races being great fun, I knew it was just a matter of time until the strawberry look arrived!

I was meeting up with some more friends afterwards to explore Shanghai further and we popped down to a temple called Yu Yuan Temple, a former temple of Taoism and now a shopping mall and tourist area (the buildings are preserved and it's very pretty), with a little bit of temple left and some god statues that you can go and bow to if you're into that stuff (I and my guides of course were) and we were there for a while as the morning's sun turned into a heavy downpour outside.

We wondered the backstreets of Shanghai towards the bund and stopped for tea in a teashop (a very reasonable 2 RMB / cup, although my guides, who don't speak the loca Shanghai dialect, could only point and gesture, a great equalising experience!), and came to the far end of the bund. Got a ferry across (another 2 RMB!) and wandered Pudong breifly before I had to head back to my apartment for that night's dinner!

Evening came and I was picked up by the professor and headed to his. We had lots and lots of dishes (off the top of my head; peanut chicken, steamed fish, braised beef, a kind of local shellfish, several vegetables, fruit, left VERY full!) all of which were most tasty, and the promised maotai - the best brand of baijiu. It is about 56% alcohol, but much tastier than vodka, and between us I and the professor had the better part of a (small!) bottle. At this stage I was slightly concerned about how I would get home, but fortunatly Mrs. Ma (also a teacher at Shanghai Daxue) said she'd take me home!

Haven't been up to much besides work since, except to say that:

++=

Real* Tea! I was like a heroin addict drinking this. And yes, despite being packaged in the UK, all the ingredients are individually chinese!

Another rule

2007-07-26T18:25:00.000-07:00

another rule to add to the clothing post from last week:

9. Unless you have at least 5 years chopstick experience, do NOT wear good clothes to restaurents focusing on noodles, hot pot, or any soup-based dishes

Not worth the paper?

2007-07-24T17:45:00.000-07:00

We've all heard the story about the dollar bill: how the treasury would love to change to coins but the population are just too attached to the old greenback. Coins can last for 30 years, while most notes circulate for about 18 months before needing to be reissued, leading to millions a year in reprinting costs. In the UK the smallest note is £5, worth about ten times as much, and the euro goes further with EU 10 as its smallest note denomination.

Yet again, the Chinese weren't to be beaten. Into my possession yesterday came a 1 Jiao note. There are 10 Jiao in one RMB, and 15 RMB is about £1, so three of these notes are worth about 2p.

To be fair, I don't think they circulate very rapidly anymore... (this one is from 1980!)

And the designers of movie boxes over here perhaps still have something to learn about choosing their reviewers...

A Linguistic Stu

2007-07-24T00:54:00.001-07:00

OK this resolution of a long-running problem is totally worth its own blog entry.

Ever since I've been here (and in fact, before), I've been sure I've heard Chinese people say a word or words in conversation that sounds very like a particularly familiar greeting used amoung certain ethnic minorities in the UK.

Every time I asked a Chinese speaker, they stared at me blankly (even the bilingual ones), and my attempts to get students over here to stop mid-sentence when I heard it were equally unsuccessful.

I gave up, thinking I must be paranoid. However, the first question Seigo and Jono asked on their recent visit was, sure enough, what does *that word* mean here?!

Well today after a particularly heavy meeting session hearing it many times, I finally took my problem to the internet (and this took guts!). Surprisingly enough, the very first entry resolved my problem - apparently we weren't the first to notice it.

http://eastweststation.com/blog/2007/04/30/nigger-niggernei-ge-nei-ge/

Two nights in Shanghai

2007-07-23T18:22:00.000-07:00

This weekend was fairly busy, and I'm finally getting round to writing an update about it. On thursday and friday night Seigo and Jono were in Shanghai on their massive world tour from Moscow to Thailand. Thursday, being a work night, we went out for a respectable meal at a restaurent in town and tried to order food from the confused waitress in rubbish phrasebook Chinese (she didn't seem to understand any of the CHinese I'd learn over the past three weeks - or perhaps didn't want to tell me where she lived!). The meal was very interesting, a little boiling pot of broth which you put bits of meatinto to cook. No rice, no veg, no fuss, and some really nice sauces.

Friday night we'd heard about a club called bonbons that we were keen to check out. Entrance was RMB 120 (about £8), but once inside it was an open bar. This drew our attention pretty sharply, and after another pointy meal at a nearby joint we headed straight over.

The setup in the club was amazing. Once inside you swapped your ticket for a drink, then when you want another you swap your empty bottle or glass for the new one, saving them hassle with table cleaners! We got chatting to a Chinese guy who had had the forsight to make a reservation (for which you need a group of 10) and who had a table reserved in a quiet area. We joined them and played a few hours of entertaining drinking games, had a dance and chatted to some other people. Jono took lots of photos so in a few weeks I'm sure they'll be in my possession.

We left at about 4 and struggled to a nearby bar, but that was a bit quiet as well. We had to fight our way through crouds of child beggars and prostitutes (and also those cyncal flower sellers who approach couples and emotionally blackmail the man to buy a flower) to escape to the nearest taxis and get away.

Saturday day was mostly sleeping - I pity Jono and Sog who had to get a 12 o'clock ferry to head off to Japan. However, I'd arranged to go out with one of the expat lads from last week (Bonbons again), and another guy he'd befriended at the pub, plus a couple of girls we'd met later at a salsa bar. I invited the guy we'd met on Friday and all of the sudden we had a party! It started to rain as soon as I got off the underground, but Chinese are the true capitalists, within moments there were entrepreneurs selling umbrellas for 20 kwai. Again it was really good, the DJ had lots of competitions (trying to find the most beautiful woman in the club or something...) and we danced until very early in the morning.

After two all night bonanzas, Sunday was very relaxed. Me and a housemate had dinner at the local restaurent. It had about space for three tables and was basically in the middle of a maze field, but the food was very satisfying and inexpensive.

Shanghai Solar!

2007-07-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

This one is going to be a little technical, my parents have asked for an update on my activities here inside work, so if you're not interested in physics, solar panels, or the physics of solar panels, you might as well skip it.

Last week started off mostly organisational, and I spent the first few days touring the factory working out how everything works and what gets done. The production line is manned about 16 hours a day (there are three work teams that rotate), but there are also teams of engineers, who are there to fix problems, manage, and I think also deal with clients and expriment and things.

So after a few days, I wanted to do something.There is a control room in the factory where all the cells get tested before being assembled onto the panels, and the room also has a few other testing devices. One of them tests reflectivity of a sample, and since it was available, I thought I'd use it. At each stage of the production there are a few breakages, so I used some of these from different stages to check how reflective they were. Most interestingly, one of the stages involves aving the cells sprayed with titanium dioxide to form an anti-reflective layer. If light hits bare silicon, a significant portion of the energy is reflected away because light travels so much more slowly inside it than it does in the air (this is roughly why you can see a faint reflection of yourself in glass windows, since not all of the light that bounces off your face passes straight through the window, a small amount bounces back. If you look at a window that doesn't have much light coming from the other side, eg. look outside at night, it's much easier to see this effect). It turns out that if you choose an intermediate layer perfectly and have the right (very thin) thickness, you can stop all light of a certain wavelength from being reflected, and significantly reduce reflection at other wavelengths. Glasses and camera lenses use this effect, camera lenses look a bit purpley because they block green reflectionmore-or-less totally, but only reduce the red and blue reflection (which are on either side of green). Red + blue = purple.

In the factory, this layer is currently applied by people with spray guns and they judge the thckness by the colour of the sample (because it changes the reflective properties, the colour also changes as the spray is applied. Some factories use a more advanced piece of kit - they're gettig one fitted here in december - that is more accurate and improves power output of the finished cells by about 10%). I wanted to see what the measured reflectivity was with a bit less spray than usual and a bit more than usual (and of course the normal amount as a control and no spray as another control). The other student engineers were keen to help - they seem not to have much to do in the factory and hadn't really thought about doing their own experiments.

I got some data last friday from one set of samples, and was planning to get lots more early this week. Unfortunatly, however, the machine has broken and I haven't been able to get more data. (It wasn't actually due to me! I think they were quite interested in my idea, last Thursday my professor told one of the students looking after me that he should do a similar experiment, 20 samples from each stage and measure the reflectivity, but being much more careful about getting samples from the same batch, etc, as a longer term experiment. So the machine was getting a lot of use and at somepoint seems to have given up! There's another component coming next week to fix it).

So this week I've been putting together a model of the reflective properties using excel (and a lot of notebook space! Both my pens ran out on the same day and it was surprisingly tough to obtain a new one!). It's a fairly simple model but without access to my notes from the last few years it's taken abit of time to get my brain back into gear, although quite fun to have a go. I've been able to find silicon's refractive index data on the internet (refractive index is hw fast light travels inside it compared to a vacuum, and has a lot of effect on its reflective/refractive properties. A pencil in a glass of water looks bent because water has a higher refractive index than air, so the light bends on entry). I've been trying to fit the model to the dat I got last week, although to be honest one set of samples is far too few to be considered scientific, so I'm going to collect more data as soon as the machine starts to work again.

The model with the anti-reflective layer is a bit more complicated because of various different reflections inside the layer itself that depend on the thickness in quite a complicated way and all interfere with one another. However, the model is quite good and I've now adjusted it to take account of silicon's low wavelength behaviour as well.

Yesterday I was also looking at the absorption of sunlight by solar cells. A good 95% or so of all solar panels are the basic silicon ones like the ones they make here. There is lots of innovation around the world about other types, but most are constrained by cost or still very young technology. Unfortunatly, the maximum possible efficiency (the proportion of incident solar radiation that gets turned into electricity) in a normal silicon cell is about 32%, and most real cells are lower - the ones they make here are about 16% efficient. This limit is due partly to the solar spectrum, much of which falls at wavelengths that are too long to excite the electrons inside the silicon, and also due to the way that electrons that are excited behave - a lot of their energy is converted into heat inside the cell. There are lots of ideas about how to improve this (such as using mirrors to concentrate the light, altering the spectrum using clever materials, or using thing other than silicon) and I've been studying a review paper on the topic, but at the moment these are all some way from being practical.

Next week I'll get more data and then see where to go from there, and then after that I'll be back in the lab as Shanghai University which will have finished its refurbishment and able to try out some new experiments!

ps. Whats happening with Russia? Getting snippets on the news but noone here knows how to translate it. I *would* check the news websites, but it seems anything with 'news' in the website is blocked here...

A Night Out...

2007-07-18T18:20:00.000-07:00

Last night I had my first night out in Shanghai, with an American chap called Kenny and a few girls who, all of whom met on one of the Shanghai expat websites (I prmised myself I wasn't going to go out of my way to meet foreigners, and the promise lasted over two weeks, so I tried! Unfortunatly the students here just don't have the inclination or spending power to go into town at night, so I really had no choice).

We went to a pub that has an expat mixer event every Wednesday on the top floor and followed it with a salsa bar/club in the French Concession.

Lots of interesting things happened but I'm still digesting the experience, Seigo and Jono are in town for a few days from later today and then Kenny and I and a few others are going out again on Saturday, so expect a longer entry about in near future!

Weekend passed...

2007-07-16T19:56:00.001-07:00

I'd been told that the Shanghai Museum of Science and Technology has a brilliant display of dinosaur bones ('Dragon Bones'!!), and it is at the end of our nearby bus route, and entry is free. So, last saturday we got up really early (10am) to go and explore.

Unfortunatly, some other people had had the same idea.

And some more...

And some more...

And some more.

So, we decided instead to go in to central Shanghai and visit The Shanghai Museum, full of Chinese historical relics and other goodies.

The Chinese have been minting coins for thousands of years, although some of the early ones aren't quite the shape you might expect...

For hundreds of years they were at the forfront of civisation, technologically and culturally, and possibly made the first circumnavigation of the globe years before Magellan. They certainly got as far as the UK - we found this model of my sister presumably defending the coast against them:

After we finished in the museum, we went for a wanderaround the city. My Chinese friend didn't quite understand my amusement at some of the road signs

We stopped for an afternoon coffee in this indiginous Chinese coffee shop chain not basing its branding on a well known American label:

And treated ourselves to an afternoon tea

(The English reads: "Taking afternoon tea is a unique custom which is said to have started in the early 19th Century". The Chinese calls it Afternoon red tea (they call Western tea red tea), but this was stuffed full of sugar, tasted of apricot, and meant to be drunk cold!)

Dressing in China

2007-07-15T17:57:00.000-07:00

One of the most interesting things about Shanghai has been the weather. It's incredibly hot and humid, but very cloudy all the time and often rains. Consquently, many of the clothes I brought across have proved somewhere between unwieldy (jumpers) and totally unwearable (long jacket).

However, after two weeks here, I'm beginning to work out how to dress her, and present: Jack's Rules to Dressing in China:

1) THE GOLDEN RULE: Always wear a vest or t-shirt under your top layer. Chinese people CANNOT understand this and will tell you that you're wearing too much. They don't seem to appreciate quite how unattractive those sweatty patches make them look. (Daughter tells me baby powder works as a substitute, I haven't got round to experimenting yet)

2) It's incredibly hot here, so shower lots and drink LOTS. However, be aware that after either of these you will sweat lots for about 30 mins, so if possible time showers at least this long before you leave the house, and drink steadily - not in bursts. Also, drink water and not all the sugery 'ice tea' they have here, but buy local water - I accidentally bought an evian the other day, it costs 'usual' Eropean price - about 20* as much as local water!

3) (nice) shorts are acceptable, short sleeve shirts are not! It seems impossible to get long sleeve shirts here (although ironically the first thing I do is roll the sleeves up!), there are so many nice shirts at bargain prices even in the really nice shops, but they're all short sleeves! Such a shame.

4) According to my guide book, the best clothes to buy are the ones that say 'Made in China' on them. No self respecting Chinese would ever buy such an item, so all the fakes say 'Made in Italy' or 'Made in USA' on them, leaving the good quality factory extras in the bargain bin

5) Invest in shoes. (And know wither your European or US size - British sizes mea nothing here!) 'Sneakers' (trainers) are the popular choice for walking around the city in here, don't join the trend! Get some nice shoes or sandals. There are LOTS of choices and some very nice ones at every shop I've been in.

6) Foreigners have it easy. The locals automatically think what you're wear is fashionable - just stear clear of t-shirts and don't be afraid to smarten it up a notch for formalities (suit + tie goes down a treat)

7) Learn how to use washing machines and how to wash clothes by hand before you leave home. Ours has a wash functon, then we rinse by hand, then it spins, then we dry. I and a friend have both lost clothes that were blown of the drying line, so invest in pegs and be careful!

8) Remember the golden rule. Also carry an umbrella and don't trust the weather forcast! (This really goes for everywhere - does weather forcast ever have any point except filling up time on the news and giving us things to talk about?)

Lfe update: Dragonboating yesterday was great fun, my technique is improving and I ache a lot less today than last week. Spent saturday wondering the city centre, love it! Going clubbing with some expats on Wednesday, can't wait. New experiment to start in the lab today, should be fun.

Solar Panels

2007-07-11T17:21:00.000-07:00

Today was my third day at the company and I’m beginning to find my way around the place. I’ve got a desk on the second floor, which is where the factory is located – they get little silicon slices in and put them through a load of processes to make them into solar cells. Then they all go downstairs to the assembly bay where they get stuck together in 6*12 arrays and have some protective layers put around them to turn them into solar panels. So far I’ve mostly been getting set up/familiarising myself and fiddling a bit, but I have a nice little experiment lined up for tomorrow which should be interesting.

My new apartment is shared between me and two other lads at the company, it’s not as nice as my ‘hotel’ at the university but it’s fun to have some roommates! Despite fears to the contrary, we have a western style toilet (a definite must) and a washing machine, and also a kitchen! Haven’t cooked anything yet but I may do soon… Work is 8.30 – 5.30, although lunch and dinner are free so it’s not so bad.

The downside is that it’s a little far away from everything – even the nearest metro station is a good bus journey away, and the supermarket is about 30 minutes walk. Not too bad during the week, but it’ll be a hassle this weekend when I want to look around – apparently there are various museums and other things worth looking at. Well, maybe...

My apartment is in a little ‘housing estate’, but its more of a satellite village, with its own stream, vegetable sellers, motorbike repairmen (motorbikes are about £99 and VERY popular here, all the lads carry their girlfriends around on the back) and several vegetable fields. We’re out early and back late so we haven’t got to meet the neighbours yet.

Here is a photo of me with some of the high up people in the company:

In other news, it turns out that Ghandi is very much alive and playing football for Malaysia in the current Asian cup. Unfortunately his leadership couldn’t save them from a 4-1 drubbing by the Chinese in the first game last night (which we, of course, watched at the flat). Possibly the cleanest, and least inspirational game I’ve ever seen.

Dragonboats!

2007-07-08T06:19:00.000-07:00

Today I went Dragonboating! Woke up at 5.45 am to jump on a bus, then a metro, then another, then walk 2 miles, to get to the pickup place. My guardian, not wanting me to lose anything else, came along too to help me get there, and we arrived on the dot of 8 as the shuttle bus was about to leave.

Dragonboating is an ancient Chinese traditional sport with over two thousand years of history, but from the Shanghai team you wouldn't know it. Numbers weren't high (lots of people were put off by yesterday's weather), we had 14 people in all, two germans, an austrian, a hungarian, myself, three guys from the Phillipeans, a japanese man, and the remaining five actally natives. The team trains at the National Watersports Centre, where the Olympic rowing, sculling etc. teams train.For anyone keen to come along, its 50 RMB for a session (about 2 hours on the water, plus the bus ride there and back) and the bus leaves from 20 Shui Cheng Lu at 8am on a sunday, just outside the starbucks with the lawsons next door PAST THE CARREFOUR (there are in fact, unbelieveably, two starbucks within about 60 of each other, AND BOTH HAVE A LAWSONS NEXT DOOR!! This fact NEARLY spoiled my boating hopes!). Combine boating trips with olive oil and roquefort missions for extra points.

I confess that this picture is a fraud - it's from their practice a few weeks ago and I'm not in it. No-one had a camera today, I'll replace it as soon as I get one with me in it!

Initial impressions: they go slower than rowing boats, but you can't get your legs involved (your strongest muscles by some distance) so thats not too surprising. It's very tiring on the back becauseyou have to lean forward to row. TAKE SOMETHING TO SIT ON (ie. a towel), my bum is aching very much at the moment! Otherwise it was great fun, paddling about, we had a swim, and the people were awesome, very keen to do some more and they have a race in early September that I should be able to get involved with if I'm about.

I got back to campus at gone 2pm (after my first solo-trip on a Chinese bus: very gripping!) thoroughly satisfied with my morning and raring to go, so I decided to get a trip to the swimming pool together. Got a few other people organised and then went to collect my trunks which I'd left on my balcony to dry. Couldn't find them - at first I suspected a very odd underwear theif. Then I peaked over the balcony...

...

Seven floors down, on the roof of the reception, were my trunks and pool hat. cursed my bad luck and yesterdays storm. We had to cancel the swimming outing :(

Note to readers: Tomorrow I'm going to work with a company on the other side of the river here in Pudong district that manufactures Solar Cells. I'm in a dorm with three other workers thre and probably won't have regular internet access, so I'm afraid updates may be slightly fewer-and-farther-between for the next fortnight. Don't go away tho, I promise to save up all the stories that I'm not able to post for my triumphal return!

Thank God for Carrefour

2007-07-07T23:57:00.000-07:00

Be beholden unto the golden glory of it:

Totally unobtainable in China until the genius of French engineering brings us Carrefour, a glorious bastion of cheese, fine wine and unsteamed bread. First TGV and now this - I've been humming La Marseillaise all the way home.

I love Carrefour! J'adore la France!

Later note: Being fair to China, it isn't all bad. Despite tasting slightly acidic, this 0.35kg bag of lychees set me back 2 RMB (12p)!

A Storm in Shanghai

2007-07-07T00:06:00.000-07:00

My plan today was to go and buy some washing powder and get all my clothes freshly laundered, and also shop around for a few bits and pieces. The weather here had other plans.

We had a lovely lunch at 11.30 (people here do everything about 2 hours earlier than in the UK it seems) and returned for a rest before a town trip. However, shortly afterwards, the clouds started to bunch together and look pretty ominous:

Sure enough, before too long the skies opened, and its been tipping down ever since. Theres been a good deal of lightning - I just saw the most amazing forks of it, one after another (I guess it must be a lie about it never striking the same place twice) and the rain's looking pretty foul still.

My shopping trip is postponed.

The plot thickens...

2007-07-06T02:11:00.000-07:00

As it turns out, my professor has a daughter. I worked out as much when I was in his car on the first day and noticed a few dolls in the back seat. It wasn't until a few days ago I found out she happens to be 22.

An early phone chat and a little preliminary research (rumours in the dept.!) turned up that she also happens to be beautiful, charming, speaks a handful of languages and has a wonderful oriental accent (perhaps less than surprisingly). Needless to say, she sounded way out of my league.

So, when my professor called me up on tuesday and asked if I'd like to go with her to the leaving party of a French student she knew from her exchange there, I jumped at the chance! My French is highly spurious (A grade... at GCSE!) but the promise of european food (cheese, beer, wine!), a beautiful daughter and some international students was too good to miss!

The party was at an apartment near to people's square, a very plush affair with plasma tv, great view, and several rooms - very Canary Wharf. The international students were two very charming French couples (one below, our host is in the middle), a lovely Japanese girl, four very squeeky Koreans (also below), and the class chinese teacher (they all took chinese lessons together, and were omore or less at my standard, so we chatted bemusedly in our pigeon while the teacher and the daughter corrected our grammer!).

My first beer in China was, ironically, budweiser, but it still tasted good. Had lots of food and chatted to a long time to one of the French guys who's working in a nearby Chinese city for another month and a alf, who has invited daughter and myself to go and stay one weekend if we're free, which sounds awesome.

Afterwards the two of us headed over to see the Bund by night, were mobbed by beggers and kite salespeople, drank coconut juice and took blurry photos. Even by night the C19th British arcitecture looks drab, but the East side of the river is amazing in all the light. She has let on to me that her father plans to invite me to dinner one night - I've promised to act surprised - for a Chinese feast and some real Baijiu (Chinese spirit. Apparently her father is quite a drinker!). Can't wait!

Back row: Korean, Me, Daughter, Korean Korean
Front row: Host, Korean, Host's boyfriend (who has invited us to stay)

Beautiful people!

Bliss

2007-07-05T03:07:00.000-07:00

Today has been blissful. Following the savage defeat I inflicted on the mosquito hordes at The Battle of the Quick Clap last night, I have actually woken up with NO NEW BITES!

Mosquitos here are much more savage than those in England, and its a lie that they only go for people with B-type blood, I'm O+ and I've been bitten about 25 times since I got here. I've erected a great mosquito wall of China around my dorm to keep more out

Some photos

2007-07-04T03:26:00.001-07:00

Some photos from the last few days that entertained me...

Shanghai has always been the backbone of the Chinese economy and it's not hard to see why. Wondering the streets you'll see countless examples of Shanghainese ingenuity, like ths clip above - this enterprising Chinese has struck upon the idea of a book and grocery shop - now THATS synergy!

More diversification here - but don't I recognise this popular Chinese shirt and suit brandname from somewhere else...?

After travelling half way round the World I was more than surprised when I wondered into the canteen to discover that it was in fact Trinity College halls. A later, more through investigation revealed my early mistake.

(This one came out a bit dark alas)

Now swimming is a big hobby of mine (in fact any water sports really), so I was naturally overjoyed when I found out that my campus has a swimming pool on it, 8 RMB (50p!) an hour after a 'health check' ("Are you healthy?" "Yes" "Here's your health card, that's 5 RMB"), so I brought my swimming shorts from home specially.

Perhaps I'm a slightly conservative dresser in the water, but I hadn't forseen this being a problem. However, the old Chinese lady at the desk had different ideas. She laughed her head off when she saw them - "tai da le! tai da le!" - apparently the chinese are much less repressed in the water, and they wouldn't let me in until I bought a pair of trunks 'chinese style' (for another 30 RMB!), and although it thankfully hasn't come out too well in the photo they leave NOTHING to the imagination...

Early day faux-pas

2007-07-03T02:05:00.001-07:00

I was told that there was almost nothing I could do that would upset the Shanghaiese. True to form, here are the first few faux-pas I've racked up in three days:

Don't get into a taxi on the left hand side. Remember, like the rest of the world, Shanghai people drive on the right so you might get hit. (In fact they seem to drive on every side) And your driver will get irate
When having a meal with others with lots of dishes, don't pick any of the dishes up
Don't hang your umbrella on the seat infront of you on a bus
Don't growl friendly-ly at a little kid who points at you in the street
On Nanjing Road, there are people who collect empty plastic bottles from bins since they can sell them to recycling companies (big thumbs up, by the way) for a bitof money. If you have an empty bottle, don't give it to them directly and DON'T look at them. Instead put it nearby where they can get it themselves or they might think you're gloating (does anyone else thing this is so the wrong way round?!)
On a similar vein, don't give fen (very small denomination, 15 fen is about a penny) to beggers. Wish I got a photo of the begger moaning at me! I didn't realise quite how worthless they were, my minder had to gve him a yuan to get him to go away!
NEVER NEVER NEVER suggest to a visiting expert from the US who is chairman of one of the councils over here during a presentation that a 2 million tonne cut in carbon emissions (equivalent to the CO2 emissions of Scotland) from a single 1-kW solar panal might be unfesable (you could've trned the air conditioning off and we'd still have been cool for days...)

Shanghai

2007-07-02T07:45:00.001-07:00

finance vs. fashion, finance vs. fashion... oh dear!

So I've been a bit lame about updating this blog. I'm putting it down to not being able to view it (hanks PRC) although at least I can get the BBC, contrary to my expectations!

I arrived a couple of days ago, on the 30th. Have so much to write about. settling in, red stamps, money counters, hot weather, maglevs etc.

Most exciting (!!) tho was today. The last couple of days have been mostly settling in and desperatly trying to relearn the year of chinese lessons that have drifted over exam term. Love the almost total immersion (have been helped out greatly by a grad student here, Tang, who is also using the chance to polish his english, admittedly much much MUCH better than my chinese at the moment!).

Today, we went to pay my tuition fees, and i lost my wallet on the bus! this has never happened to me before, could it happen at less convenient time?! Luckily, Eurotrip buff that I am, I had all my not insignificant stash of renminbi in a pouch around my neck under my shirt. however, it had my HSBC card AND my barclaycard inside (yes, it sounds silly in retrospect to me to), as well as a few other bits and bobs and $5 USD that i was going to use to buy a beer in moscow airport on the way home (damn barbarians don't even accept euros yet, let alone the queen's silver).

Well, there's nothing like deseratly needing money from a uk account that you dont have the debit card to any longer to catalyse a rapid study in international money transfer methods, and calling the uk from abroad. HSBC china weren't very helpful (at the risk of being condescending, i don't think they've got the conceptof free banking over here just yet. as soon as they heard that i didn't have the account plus - "VIP account" as they called it - they didn't really want to know). Luckily mother has just had a rather large tax rebate so was able not only to cancel the cards for me from the uk, but also send an emergency £300 across via western union until the replacement debit card arrives. They have my maximum regard - money arrived in about 5 minutes, which was longer than it took for the queue in China Agricultural Bank to clear, and they are also great incidentally, great transfer rate, wish I'd done my cash there the other day, would've got about RMB 150 more!

Anyway, since we were in town anyway, we went formy first tour. We saw lots of tall buildings in funny shapes, big rivers, and drab C19 british bomb shelters. Went to browse a few malls, can't wait to go back with a bit more ready cash, tho the prices certainly weren't bad and the shop assistants very friendly! they had suits for GBP 30ish, and some very nice polo shirts for about a tenner. Only thing that held me back from the suit was I heard you can get some very good tailored ones for not much more.

Of course the morning's excitment had left me with a critical decision to make. I could either risk becoming a victim of financial crime again or else do the unthinkable and commit the worst crime of fashion... (see above i think - does anyone know how to put them at the bottom?)

Mio

2007-06-07T17:59:00.000-07:00

So a friend of mine (the one I went to school with, for those of you who know me) has become a professional blogger, at http://www.miodestino.co.uk/blog/author/murph100min/. He is MIOMAN, telling us what we already knew about doner kebabs in order to encourage us to buy lingerie for our girlfriends. Such a sales technique.

Although I think Gardies are the most likely benefactors...

Itinerary

2007-06-07T03:19:00.000-07:00

Exams are over and more prep is called for. Mother still wonderfully helpful regarding insurence (reading this mother of mine? Your hard work is appreciated)

Itinerary

（1）Basic research for photovoltaic physics and nano-semiconductor physics

（2）Fabrication and characterization of opto-electronic thin film materials and devices

（3）Practical and applied advanced PV materials to solar cells and modules

（4）Visiting other related laboratories and centers such as state-key laboratories and institutes of Chinese academy of sciences.

They're meeting me at the airport, so I may not be able to take the maglev into town - of course the long-time dream of any physics graduate...

Hilarity

2007-05-27T17:42:00.001-07:00

This blog amuses me greatly. I think the author and I are on a level

http://ispyshanghai.com/wdpress/index.php

He has yet to respond to my email, but as always I live in hope. Mostly of electric mosquito bashers.

Shanghai Solar

2007-05-27T16:10:00.000-07:00

This blog it the travel journal of a UK student on a summer research programme into solar panels in Shanghai.

Preparations:

Visa - 120 days single entry. Trip to London, three hours queueing, by which time the 'same day' service had shut - meaning another annoying trip down to smog central four days later! Humourous Italian gent ahead of me and a good book for company
Tickets: £440 on Expedia. Not bad - but via Russia! Must remember my Geiger counter...
Typhoid jab (free). Other jabs all current except rabies and hepatitis B, both cost ~£90. Upshots are, I need to avoid wild animals, and also all of the following (courtesy of BBC - a luxury I may not have this summer!):

Sharing contaminated needles for drug use - think I'm in the clear here
Acupuncture - sounded unpleasant anyway
Unprotected sexual intercourse - should be in the clear again
Sharing razors - do people share razors??
Blood transfusion or medical treatment - ie. make sure you can afford a flight to Hong Kong!

Currency: get there, apparently. £1 ~ RMB 15 right now, so it seems like the perfect time to be travelling! My college has also given me a good chunk of funding, which makes things easier.
Insurance: worrying mother has sorted things on that front. Wonderful!
Westerner abroad: suncream (lots), wide brimmed hat, mosquito cream, oral rehydration tablets, water purification tablets, aspirin, paracetamol, poncho, sunglasses, several guide books, digital camera, regular camera, etc. Just kidding, I'm not organised to manage any of these so far (except the suncream - in sunny climbs I rapidly develop the complexion of a strawberry)

New laptop perhaps? Also am curious about mobile phones. I certainly don't want to be paying roaming rates all of the time, should I get a contract once I arrive there? Even though I'd only be for three months? A problem for another day.

So as things stand, I finish exams on the 4th June, have a few weeks of celebration and apprehension, receive results around the 21st, graduate on the 28th, and fly to Shanghai on the 29th! Allons-y! See you soon sunny Shanghai, this sceptered isle will have to do without me this summer.