We went to church that morning in Beijing, and found that they were watching Conference from the week before, so that was a little redundant for us. (The English branch meets in the morning, and clears all out by 1pm so that the Chinese branch can meet at 2pm, since we aren't supposed to meet together. I had to sign something to get my visa that said I would not participate in religious activities with Chinese Nationals, and the church is respectful of that).
The restroom in the lobby of hotel had sinks that made it look like you were pouring water on the counter! It took a second for me to realize it was ok.
We went quickly from church to the hotel to get our luggage and over to ride the high-speed train for about 5 hours (at 200 miles/hour) to get the 700 miles to Changzhou.
The view out the window was kind of disappointing because the haze continued for some time.
Finally, though, the sun broke through the haze, and then we arrived in sunny, pleasant Changzhou.
The leaders of the company we were meeting with were there to greet us and were so nice to us! They had wanted to throw us a big welcome dinner but Steve had asked them to let us rest for the evening. But they still gave us rides to the hotel and gave us a bunch of bananas and Asian pears to welcome us.
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Here is the view from my room (on the 43rd floor).
It was much more clear than Beijing, so the view was spectacular.
The room came with an offering of fruit as well, including a huge peach that was white in the middle. (Peaches were originally invented in China).
At breakfast I also tried "dragon fruit," which is white with black seeds and reminds me of kiwi.
The lobby had a water feature (which was labeled as "water feature") that was an inviting place to hang out.
Here's a picture of our hotel building, towering over the nearby landscape.
Here the CEO shows us one of the Jiapu, the Chinese family records, which starts with a particular "honored ancestor" and has many generations of descendants.
We were introduced to the members of the company, and then they all stood up and clapped to welcome us, which was kind of new but a cute way to do it.
Here is a family tree showing how the great families of China are thought to be related.
And there is some interesting research showing relationships between Egyptian hieroglyphics and early Chinese characters.
We went to lunch and found that the table had a "lazy Susan" that was used for passing all the dishes around.
I of course immediately thought of the redwood table my dad had just built from old pieces of redwood decking (planed into beautiful wood for the table). He had included lazy Susan on his, too.
The lunch was a delight. I had to ask what virtually everything was, and I pretty much tried it all. I kept being surprised at how good each thing was, too.
One of my favorite things was this spicy dish with vegetables and tofu and stuff in it.
And one of my surprise favorites was "ice grass," which I had never heard of or seen before. It was crispy and juicy like crispy lettuce, and had little ice-like granules on it. It was sweet and tasted good in the sweet salty sauce.
The restaurant had an excellent feel to it, too, with a big tree inside and lanterns everywhere.
Here we are in front of the restaurant.
We also stopped to take a picture a block up the road from the company where there's a bridge with what looks like a big "golden gate".
That night I was in awe as I looked up at our building from below.
Here's the view of my work area Tuesday morning. We all tended to wake up between 4 and 6 am every morning due to the jet lag. (I belive Merlin awoke at 2:30 am the first morning, and added an hour each day from there for a while).
The visibility improved as the sun burned off some of the haze.
These two buildings look like two robots shaking hands.
The employee who picked us up brought us some delicious thick, sweet bread.
She said it was the best bread in the world and I don't know that I can dispute that. By far my favorite part, though, was that the bag it came in said "Daddy Sweety Toast." I just can't come up with that kind of stuff like they can.
Along with all the sights and food, a lot of intense work went on that week.
...But enough about work, let's get back to the food!
For lunch on Wednesday there were hunks of meat on the bone. They provided plastic gloves to wear while you man-handle the meat. The one part I couldn't deal with is when people started sucking the marrow out of the bones with a straw.
Do you think these are limes?
Well, they're not! They're tangerines! They're green on the outside, and orange in the inside.
And here's yet another interesting building.
That night, the company took us to an amazing dinner. Again, there were very few dishes I could recognize without asking. There was a sort of tofu flan, a special kind of white fish you can only get in the lake near Changzhou (very good), and all kinds of other things. People kept pushing food on Merlin, who tends to finish eating before everyone else (even in America).
I tried doing some laundry that morning, but due to the humidity, my socks weren't even close to drying out by that night, so I ironed them to evaporate most of the water out of them. That seemed to get them dry enough that they were ok by the next day.
It was a little rainy the next day. There are a whole lot of scooters there, and people have to drive them in the rain, so many people have little "snuggies" that keep them warm and dry while they ride. This person even rigged an umbrella!
I carved the Chinese word for "banana" into this banana.
That afternoon we were also served persimmons. I had those on my mission in Korea, too, but have never really seen them in America. They're really juicy, sweet and soft.
Ok, next challenge: What do you think this is?
Well, it looks like nothing if not a Mario mustache. But, in fact, it is a water chestnut!
If you break it open, the "meat" is inside.
And here's a whole bag of them. Every one looks like a perfect mustache.
They also had these little twisty crunchy snacks that tasted like graham crackers.
Here's another example of a Jiapu. Books in China are traditionally written top to bottom, right to left, back to front. This whole stack is a set of related people in one big book collection. Some of the pages have sketches of the ancestors.
For dinner Wednesday night we had Peking duck. We were welcomed by this bronze dude with an abacus.
We hadn't really tried Peking Duck in Beijing (Peking is the old name for Beijing), but we tried it here, and it was great.
This dinner felt like a celebration for having gotten so much work done in the preceding days. We made the comment several times that we would not have been able to accomplish what we did over Skype. We really needed to be there to get the kind of turnaround and to have chalk board discussions and such.
Again, there were a lot of strange and tasty items. The scariest for me was Chairman Mao's favorite dish, which was a soup with big scary chunks of pork fat. I ate one, and while it tasted fine, it still made me nervous to try it.
There was a set of famous Chinese family names on the roof in the entryway of the restaurant.
FaceTime worked really well from China most of the time, and it was great to see the fam each morning and evening. Linette joked that we talked more often when I was in China than we did when I was home.
In the next episode, our hosts take us to see "Oriental Salt Lake City" aka "TaoistLand".
Next episode: Oriental Salt Lake City
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