Just landed at Heathrow
We’re all feeling pretty exhausted now and pleased to be home. Sarah’s got a cold and we all had an early start. I stayed up till 3:30 to see if I could shift my day a little back to UK time and to ensure I can sleep on the flight. I ended up so deeply asleep that I slept through my alarm and woke up 10 mins before I was due to meet Sarah and Vikki. I’m not sure how I finally managed to waken up.
The flight was only 50% full so lots of space and a quiet flight. There was a huge array of films and programmes to watch but we all slept quite well and I only managed to watch “My name is Dave” which was fun for a flight. Lunch was served at 10:45 and I woke up just as it was being served. Had a bit of trouble with wine for ‘breakfast’ but forced it down anyway! It was Vikki’s turn to receive the attention today, when one of the crew knelt by her feet and chatted with her for 5 mins. (Lucky thing 
)
City University, Hong Kong
Left Xiamen at 8,30 this morning to fly back to Hong Kong to visit the City University. Chunxiao, Sarah and Vikki left about the same time to drive to Fuzhou by car (which I gather was a bit of a nightmare). The taxi driver took me along the waterfront in Xiamen, which was lovely. Ended up back at the Golden Mile Holiday Inn in Hong Kong, with a similar rather grim view as last week (but no room upgrade).
Skipped lunch, which was no trauma, and worked on, heading out to the City University for a 4 pm start.
The university was buzzing with a graduation / congregation. Met Michael Yang from the Analyst Editorial Board and other faculty. I gave the full presentation to the staff and students and had some good questions, then Michael took me out for some Kilkenny in a local Irish pub, in a smart shopping mall. He left me there to contemplate the shopping, but price matching on apple macs confirmed my thoughts that Hong Kong (even with it’s tax free position) is as expensive as the UK.
Took the subway back to East Tsim Sha Tsui, close to the hotel, and had a wander around Nathan Road and dinner in a fun Jyo Sushi (sic) at the Miramar Shopping Centre. Had some great seaweed which was very delicate and frilly, like a sundew necklace, and some good soft-shelled crab maki rolls. A good meal to eat on my own. Back to to the room and cleared some e-mail and had a chat with Jan back in the UK.
Vikki and Sarah arrived back about 11pm, after a pretty hard day of travelling and talking to an audience of 170. They thought they might be back at 9, and flights and immigration delayed them by a couple of hours. We’re leaving at 5.30 am tomorrow for home and I might try and get back onto UK time tonight and sleep on the flight.
Xiamen University
A day without photos – it was a strange day too! Had an extra hour in bed because our first appointment was at 10.30 at Xiamen University,to speak with the students. In the taxi on the way there we realised that, with our main presentation at 3pm, we didn’t all need to spend the day at the University, so Sarah and I headed back to the hotel to do some work, whilst Vikki and Chunxiao gave a presentation to the students.
At 3pm, we all met up together and spent three hours in discussion/presentations with the faculty before they took us out for dinner to the university restaurant. We had a great meal in very relaxed and fun company: had my first jellyfish of the trip, and a lovely green soup made of some sort of chestnut with seafood.
In the evening Chunxiao led us around a night market and was good enough to haggle for me to buy a quite ugly, but memorable, mug based on a lotus root. It will remind me of the lotus root kebabs that Vikki and I ate in Chengdu.
We ended the evening in the golf bar, with a little astro-turf putting range, writing out trip report in front of a noisy ferny cliff, with water cascading down it. We were the only customers.
Chengdu Institute of Organic Chemistry
Spent the morning at Chengdu Institute of Organic Chemistry, which is a Chinese Academy of Sciences and also a Limited Company. We had a good turn out for the presentation and also took the opportunity to have a quick visit to the Chengdu Institute of Biology close by, where we had made a good contact. Both are impressive institutes.
We were invited to a spicy and fishy Sichuan lunch, which started with corn juice (that smelt like custard and was yummy) and with some super-spicy fish. I impressed the locals by eating some very spicy noodles that they couldn’t (although I suspect my noodles might have had less of the spice because they weren’t that hot!).
After lunch we were taken to the airport, following a purpose-built highway, which was very efficient. Chengdu is a ‘small town’ in China of only 10 million people, and the airport is very nice! Had a good flight to Xiamen: managing to stay awake by looking at the photographs. Sarah had a very nice chat with the man next to her who wanted to take her out for a drink that night (business card was proffered) and I sat next to a gay couple that apparently kept eyeing me up (but I was sadly oblivious until Vikki pointed it out!).
Checked into the Millenium Hotelin Xiamen after a strobe-lit taxi ride from the airport (the motorway lighting over the bridges was intense). The room manager made a big play of upgrading us to VIP rooms (three hotels out of four have done this now) and so I sadly suspect that this is a bit of a con. The room is ok.In the evening we took a taxi out to the Jiali Seafood Restaurant on the beachfront in Xiamen. The restaurant has an amazing foyer, full of tanks with a maybe 80 types of seafood, almost all live. Turtles, eels, 6 or 7 types of crab, lie prawns, crayfish, lobsters. It was quite a sight. We took a good 30 mins to choose our dishes: Some massive cockles, some prawns, a hairy crab each and some other shellfish that Chunxiao recommended. We had a splendid meal. The hairy crabs took ages to prepare, and then about 20 minutes for the waitress to prepare them one by one for us at the table. We had plastic gloves and plastic needles to gouge out the bright orange roe and flesh. It was lovely, and quite unlike a salt water crab.
We finished off the evening in the VIP lounge, writing our report form our visits earlier today.
Sichuan University
The four of us took a taxi from the hotel to the Chemistry Department of Sichuan University, where we were met by Prof Hu. We had a good number of people to our presentation, we had a part of the presentation to give each, and then a good discussion with the faculty.
We were invited to a banquet-style lunch in the University Restaurant, which was very good, and tried some Great Wall Cabernet Sauvignon which was also pretty good wine. There were about 12 of us for lunch in total, which made for a nice crowd and I sat next to Dan Hou from JAAS Ediorial Board.
After lunch we went on to the Department on Pharmacy where we were hosted by Professor Qin. We had the same structure of meeting, and lots of lively chat afterwards. This resulted in me making a quick dash to the library to sort out an electronic access problem which should resolve an ongoing problem.
Prof Qin took us for an evening meal in a smart restaurant close to the university, and we had a great goose and sichuan fish, including some spicy that make your tongue numb (really numb!).
Sarah, Vikki and I met to write our notes in the evening and then I went off for a sauna in the hotel Lido (open 24 hours I discovered), It was very smart and I effectively had an attendant to myself to hang up my clothes for me and pour me glasses of water. He brought me a little chilled flannel in the sauna. I spent the rest of the evening packing my bags. Tomorrow we have a morning meeting, then fly to Xiamen.
Arrived in 成都 (Vikki can translate!)
Spent the morning clearing e-mails and writing notes. It’s amazing how long these things can take. Vikki and I met at 1 to pay the bill (ouch) and to go to the airport. Guangzhou airport is very modern and filled with the brightly lit, high-end shops that we couldn’t afford to shop in. China is a lot more expensive than it was in 2005. We had lunch in a fast-food place downstairs and picked out what we wanted from a buffet to have in a stainless steel tray, like a school dinner tray. We also had a couple of Pearl Teas (珍珠奶茶): hot milk drinks with fragrant tapioca jelly lumps in the bottom that Vikki has been keen to try for months! It was essentially a hot milk shake with black chewy bits.
The flight was two and a half hours and was ok. We got served lunch, which smelt very nice and I was quite looking forward to the foil wrapped bun. But when it arrived it was a completely empty hot bun! The man next to me showed me that I had to fill the bun with the chicken spam that was on the tray. Both Vikki and I nodded off during the flight: apparently I didn’t look very dignified 
Chengdu was hazy when we landed and is much cooler than the coast. We had to use Vikki’s PDA to get the phone number of the Sheraton Lido, as the taxi driver had no idea what we were talking about. After a few minutes on the internet we grabbed the number and the driver spoke to the hotel: “Ah, Sh-ee-raton“. The hotel is very quiet compared with the Garden Hotel in Guangzhou and not nearly as smart. I’m missing my multi-room suite already. One consolation is te thoughful Emergency Kit that I can buy for 88 RMB (£8) that has evrything that I might need for a wild night in Chengdu (including condoms; a King Refreshing Drink; sanitary wet wipes and one-time use M&F underpants).
We met up for dinner at 7 and spent some time trying to work out an itinerary for tomorrow so that we can do some sightseeing that’s not £100 a head. We’ve hatched up a plan that also does not involve an English speaking guide or a two and a half hour bus or car journey. The concierge recommended a local famous restaurant that we could walk too that specialised in tofu. Thanks to Vikki’s fast learning of Chinese, we found the right street and restaurant (陳麻婆豆腐) almost intuituvely. We ordered the suggested tofu dish, and some cucumber, black fungus and some double-cooked sizzling BBQ pork (cooked at the table), with some lovely jasmine tea. The meal was very salty and oily: the pork was good but the tofu was really bad! Lots of oil and strong flavours and heaps of salt. Even the cucumber was heaped with salt (and raw garlic oil). The other dishes were good though.
From: http://www.ironwulf.net/2008/07/18/china-chens-mapo-tofu/
Chen’s Mapo Tofu Restaurant goes way back in 1862 during the Qing Dyansty (1644-1911). First found at Wanfu Bridge, north suburb of Chengdu, the restaurant was called Chen Xingshng Eating House. Mrs Chen was the main chef then. She cooked a tofu dish in bright red color, crispy beef cubes and spicy hot tofu diced in beautiful shapes.
On the way back to the hotel we stopped in a small shop to buy some water for the room, and ended up buying a few sweets and biscuit things to nibble: all very cheap and intriguing.
Guangzhou after rain
It rained quite a bit last night while we were having dinner and it’s a lovely clear morning now in Guangzhou – I wonder how long that will last? I can see the haze has increased already outside my hotel in the past hour since I took the photos below.
We’re heading off to Chengdu at lunch time today. Guangzhou has been really good. I think it’s a more pleasant city than Beijing.
South China University of Technology
We were kindly picked up from the hotel at 8am by Profs Jiang and Cao and driven to South China University of Technology. It’s a big university (20,000 students on one of the newer campuses). Chemistry also has a nice new building completed a year ago.
We lectured to about 80 people here and were given an excellent overview of the department’s research. We went out for a lunch banquet at the university hotel, in a smart private dining room. We tried some local Pearl River beer which we could have had either chilled or at (the warm) room temperature. There were some great items on the menu: Guangzhou roast goose (similar to Beijing duck), wide thin rice noodles that are a local dish, a Pearl River fish that I wished I’d taken a photo of, with a comic gaping mouth and googly eyes (it looked liked an illustration from the Simpsons). Half a baked pumpkin stuffed with lotus seeds, a very hot spicy dish of lotus shoots and beans and other things. We had a durian pastry to finish which was good and quite rich. It was a fabulous lunch with quite a bit of toasting.
One of the professors drove us back to the hotel, and we had an afternoon at leisure as our afternoon appointment at Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversionwas cancelled yesterday. We spent the afternoon polishing off our notes and clearing e-mails, trying to fight the jet lag (that’s still kicking in mid afternoon).
At 7 we headed out into the city on foot in the opposite direction from last night. We ended up dodging a rain shower an d going into a seafood restaurant with no English menus. After much pointing and smiling we ordered a rice porridge hot-pot, in which the waitresses cooked strips of some freshwater dogfish (I think) that tastes very swampy indeed. It looked like a small shark, or catfish with knobbly sides. The fish was beautifully fresh (out the pond in the restaurant) and lightly cooked. With a bit of wasabi oil in soya sauce the swampiness was hidden. We also had some sizzling beef and onion (eventually caramelised) and another fish dish, with green beans in black bean sauce. The waitresses all had a go at serving us for a laugh, and Vikki had me smile at one woman who was staring at us in disbelief (I wonder what for!). We had more swampy tea (Puh Er) to go with this. It was great fun, but rather heavy after lunch.
On the way home we found a tea shop to buy some tea and couldn’t resist. We tried some lovely green jasmine grean tea in balls (I bought some), some flavourful oolong (Vikki) and also a couple of little cups for brewing it in, following the example of the woman who brewed the tea for us. We sat in her little shop, and she made the various teas for us to try including a large-leaf Puh Er that we didn’t like. Tea is pricey in China and we bought the high quality stuff. Let’s leave it at that! The shopkeeper seemed happy with her evenings work.
Guangzhou
Had an outrageously expensive buffet breakfast (in the region of £20 a head) so I’ll be having the complimentary fruit in my room for breakfast tomorrow! Vikki and I started our day at Sun Yat Sen University, which had a large campus. We gave our ‘olympic-themed’ lecture which went down well and had a very good discussion meeting and positive feedback. The Dean was in the middle of preparing for hosting a conference next week, so we didn’t get invited to stay longer. Had a pleasant walk to the South Gate of the campus on our way out to get a taxi back to our hotel.
Came back to the Garden Hotel for lunch, and ate in the second floor chinese restaurant: Dried sausage clay pot, with some Dim Sum. We had about eight staff serving our table over 60 mins, which would have been fine for eight people but there was only the two of us and it was rather overwhelming. The quality was good and the claypot rice was very flavourful, with fruity sausage and dried pork.
The concierge couldn’t help us direct the taxi driver to our afternoon lecture spot at the Guangzhou Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Our first driver refused to take us to that address and the third driver agreed, after a concierge had a chat with him, but then was on the radio straight away for directions. The institute was rather isolated and seemed to be situated in a lush jungle, away from other built up areas. When the driver finally arrived at the address he whooped with joy: so he must have had no idea where he was really going (and we gave him a round of applause). A barrier (with a steel bucket counter-weight) was raised and lowered by hand to allow us into the car park of the chemistry building.
We lectured to sixty people here and had a few communication problems, particularly during the round-table discussion afterwards. The Institute also runs a chemical manufacturing business that we heard about. We were back at the hotel at 5 and fairly tired. We met up for dinner at 7 and headed out into the city on foot to see what we could find. We eventually navigated the busy streets and ended up in a place called Uncles, sharing a table with a local woman and having squid ball noodles (Graham) and prawn won-ton noodles (Vikki) with some tea made of pure swamp water and a dish of roast pork. It was great fun (and only cost £7). We noticed too late that there was rice fukin on the menu, alongside some other to0be-guessed at delicacies. After dinner we had a wander around the area and popped into a very smart department store witha food hall to look at the food: lots of excellent looking food, drinks and biscuits, all at Harrods prices! Close by we found a lovely bar, up a little hill and lit by red lanterns hung from the trees. We had a drink there, in the middle of the bustling city: a really good lychee martini (really!) and a lychee mojito! I can see the bar across the road from my hotel room (and I’ve marked the bar on the photo).
