Brief Summary

It's too stressful to think about recapping everything I'm behind on, so instead I'll summarize.

The last few days in China were great. I had an evening and one full day in Shanghai. It reminded me a lot of Tokyo - a lot more modern. It is on the coast so the air is a little better than some of the other cities we visited. I spent the entirety of my daytime hours in Shanghai at Tongji University. They have amazing testing facilities and are a veritable experimental factory. I guess the price of labor allows them to turn out a lot of specimens and get a lot of tests done. Almost every major highrise structure in China has had a scale model tested on the shake table of their laboratory. They put the tested models outdoors and it looks like a miniature city. Nobody else does any testing like this - too labor intensive and difficult to get the scaling right.

Building models used for seismic testing on a shake table at Tongji University.

The nightlife in Shanghai was really fun. We went to the Bund and found a great spot overlooking the river and skyline for a drink. The last night we were there we went to a place that could have been anywhere in the world based on the patronage. It was all foreigners - Americans and Europeans. It was really strange - like walking into a different world.

Overlooking the Shanghai skyline from the Bund.

A few days after I got back Nathan arrived!!!! I was so happy to see him. We had a wonderful week together. The first few days we spent in Tokyo. We saw Tsukiji fish market, Asakusa, Harajuku, Yoyogi park, Meiji-jingu shrine and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building. We had dinner with Tomo and my supervisor here. And that was all in the first two days. We then took Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto. They say if you can only go one place in Japan it should be Kyoto. It has such a wealth of shrines, temples, gardens, castles, etc. It is much more untouched than Tokyo and it's truly overwhelming the amount that there is to see. I think we fit it a good amount of sightseeing - we saw some pretty amazing things. We also did a Kaiseki meal on the river which involved being served many artfully prepared Japanese courses by a Kimono-clad server. It was a cool experience. Probably our favorite experience, however, was a lunch we had in the garden of a temple. It was a yudofu (boiled tofu) meal. It was more the setting than anything that made it so special.

Me and Nathan at the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building.

Me and Nathan at the Golden Pavillion in Kyoto.

Yudofu meal overlooking a temple garden.

Since I've been back I've been working and not feeling so well. Not too long before I get home. I'm starting to get excited about it. It is getting close enough that today I wondered if I could just wait until I leave to clean the apartment. I realized that was a bad idea but that is how close it is getting. Also wondered about groceries. But I'm cooking all my meals at home so I go through groceries really fast. Now I'm rambling.


I am toying with the idea of coming back for a short visit next year if funding permits. From a research standpoint, I have a lot to learn still from Tomo and could definitely use more time with him. We'll see...

Doctor's visit

No, this post is not to give you any gory details about my health. I just have to post about this becuase visiting the doctor here was an entirely strange experience. It was not like visiting the doctor in the US - at all. A friend got me to the clinic and the forms were in Japanese. He filled out my name and address then left. In the very busy waiting room, the nurse came out and asked me my symptoms - in front of everyone! I have to hope this was because I couldn't fill it out on the paper. She then took my temperature in the waiting room -with everyone! After about 40 minutes, I heard a man's voice on a PA asking me to come to room 3. I found room 3 and in it was a doctor. Thankfully he spoke english (we determined this ahead of time, that's why I went to this particular clinic). He asked me what my symptoms were. There were no questions about family history. I wasn't weighed, I didn't have my blood pressure taken, I wasn't asked what medications I was on or if I was allergic to anything. He didn't really know what to say about my symptoms but he didn't check into them in any physical way. He just took my description and kind of stared at me blankly. I had some ideas about the problem so I made some suggestions. He seemed to like my ideas and decided a blood test was in order. And that was it! I got the blood test, paid my money, was told to come back in a week and I left. He was nice but it was a pretty useless visit (unless of course the blood test is enlightening). It just felt really unthorough. If I hadn't had any thoughts of my own who knows where I'd be. So that's that.

So much to catch up on...

...but I'm not going to do it now. I still need to talk about the rest of my time in China (in Shanghai, which I loved) and then the week of Nathan's visit. He left on Saturday. I'm not feeling so great today - going to doctor. I'll have to try to write more later.

Suzhou

I'm still playing catchup on my China posts so you'll have to bear with me. After the mountain excursion outside of Nanjing, we took a train to Suzhou. This is a smaller town that is a popular tourist stop. I liked it immediately. I think it was the fact that is was smaller and more quaint and well kept-up. We flew by the seat of our pants as far as the hotel arrangements. Ryan and I picked one on the train from his guidebook and miraculously communicated it to two separate taxi drivers (we were in two taxis from here on because four people plus luggage is too much for one). The separate taxis were a bit of a worry because without cellphones and language and maps we would be in bad shape if one taxi didn't end up where it was supposed to. This time it worked out fine.

Suzhou is an old city known for its beautiful gardens. We arrived in time to check in and rest before heading out for dinner. There's something comforting about seeing so many foreigners in a place. It just seems more familiar. We walked from the hotel along a canal to the main drag where all the stores, restaurants and bars are located. The street was filled with people. The stores were great - a mix of fakes and trendy but non-fake clothes. I wanted to do shopping but it's hard with four people. We decided to eat at a Korean place because Han and Shinae could order for us. The meal was amazing. I've decided that I really like Korean food. I'd had Korean dishes in the past which were really good but I think this was my first all Korean meal. It's pretty spicy but the flavors are great.


After dinner we split up by gender. Shinae tolerated my shopping but I didn't buy anything because I could tell she wasn't really into it. After a while we went back to the hotel. We met the boys there and I convinced Ryan to go back to an Aussie pub with me by luring him with a big screen showing soccer (he's a huge soccer fan - I couldn't care less). We only stayed out a while longer but it was fun.

The next morning we set out to see some gardens. They were really pretty but overrun with tourists (we hit the first place at the same time as a large Italian tour group). Also, there wasn't coffee at the hotel breakfast so I was hurting at first. Fortunately the garden had a coffee shop with real espresso!!! You have to understand that until this point I don't think any of the coffee I had in China was either real brewed coffee or espresso. It was all nescafe (instant), even in the nice hotels. It was such a thrill to have an espresso - I think I went on about it way too long but it was just what I needed. After the garden we did some souvenir shopping and then walked to another garden. The second garden was quieter and really well landscaped. There were a set of pagodas and some interesting structural features. After lunch we headed back to the hotel to collect our things and then set out for Shanghai.

Nanjing

This was an unusual conference because it was split between two cities. I don’t think it was the best idea because it adds unnecessary complications and confusion. The plus side is that I got to experience more than once city in China. Before I get into my time in Nanjing I will say that the last night in Chongqing was good. I mentioned the hotpot dinner we had. There were 6 of us all together four of whom were Japanese, one of which was Tomo. Ryan, my travel buddy, and I rounded it out. None of us speak Chinese but Tomo has some words and phrases at his disposal. It was difficult to order but we got it figured out enough. I’m a fan of food and I love spicy foods but I just didn’t like this type of meal. It involved cooking meat and vegetables in a spicy oil or broth in the middle of the table (see pictures in previous post). You then fished out whatever you could find and put it in a bowl of sesame oil in front of you. Once it was cooled down you ate it. I didn’t like the homogenous nature of all of it. It all tasted like the spicy liquid and the oil. And there’s no rice or other bland food to balance it out. It was a lot of fun and I couldn’t have left Chongqing without experiencing it once.

The next day was reserved for intercity travel. Since there were so many people traveling from one city to the next, we took a bus to the airport and practically dominated the entire flight (actually we dominated all three flights that day between the two cities). On the bus ride from the Nanjing airport to our hotel I could already tell I was going to like it better than Chongqing. It seemed cleaner and a lot prettier and kept-up. There were a lot of trees and landscaping. In reality, there was the same, if not more, pollution as there was in Chongqing. After we checked into the hotel, I was sad that it was overcast – until I realized that it wasn’t actually overcast, it was just hazy with smog. If you looked up into the sky, you could see some blue peeking through.

That night there was a student gathering arranged for all of the graduate student conference participants from all countries. It also included a lot of professors and NSF representatives. It started with a banquet which included some talks (I had to give a few slides on my vision of smart structures technology and ways to incorporate it into education). That drug on a bit long but we had a fun table (including the four of us from UIUC as well as Prof. Foutch). Following the dinner we walked over to a huge KTV (that’s what karaoke is called in China). I don’t do karaoke. But it’s fun to watch others. Although there were a lot of us, the room was still too big for us. Actually it was more than just a room, it was a few rooms and a billiards room and a private bathroom.

The conference in Nanjing was okay. I had a hard time getting into it because my responsibilities were finished and I already felt like I went through a full conference. On top of that, the session rooms and meals were actually in a hotel across the street from the one most of us were staying. And when I say street, I mean busy road in a country where traffic laws are completely disregarded. It was a gamble every time. I never figured out how it worked. There were more than four roads intersecting and nothing was at right angles and the crosswalk lights were broken and I think even if got the theory of the timing figured out, it wouldn’t matter because nobody followed the rules.

The last day of the conference, most of the conference participants went on a tour of a silk factory and then to a Confucius Temple. It was pretty fun. The silk (actually brocade) factory was fascinating. It’s all hand made on these amazing contraptions which are operated by two people. It was really amazing how they coordinated to produce the most intricate brocades. The factory was in a very poor part of town. Our tour buses almost got stuck in the alleys and we drew quite a crowd of locals. I’m truly amazed we got out because we got ourselves wedged in pretty well and with no way to go back the way we came. And there were three buses. But it worked out.

After the conference ended, Ryan, Han, Shinae and I spent the next morning on the mountains above Nanjing. We went to the tomb of Dr. Sun Yat Sen, the father of modern china (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat-sen_Mausoleum). It was really hot and humid and we climbed a million stairs to get to the tomb. But it was really pretty and it felt great to get the blood circulating again after so many days of sitting in conference sessions.



***I'm having trouble posting pictures so I will have to add them later when this starts behaving***