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.