China trip 3 - Sunday

Today is the first day of conferences – I had a meeting in the morning, and then a welcome reception in the evening.

The hotel uses the standard lightly padded stackable conference chair (which is almost always too short for me to sit in comfortably at these all-day events, but I digress). The interesting thing is that they have put fabric covers over all of the chairs in an attempt to dress the chair up. Some have these white stretchy fabric covers that go over the entire chair like a sock and attach over the legs, and others have a cotton pleated one that is more like a slipcover that just hangs down over the chair. Seems like a waste of effort and resources, because you can’t stack the chairs with the covers in place, meaning that you have to add/remove the cover during setup/teardown, and I assume that they get washed between uses. When I was muttering about it to a colleague, he pointed out that this, and a lot of the epic amounts of bureaucracy that exists here is China’s answer to a scale problem – they need to find jobs for 1B+ people, so throwing massive amounts of headcount at a problem to solve it is usually preferable to finding the most efficient way to do it. I’ve seen this in places like New Jersey with the toll system and full-service gas pumps, so there’s probably a lot of truth to that idea.

Lunch was hotel food (we ordered from the lounge), and it wasn't even Chinese food, or Chinese-inspired food, it was a turkey sandwich. That’s one of the last times I’m going to do that. While the food at this hotel isn’t bad, it’s not worth the money that they’re charging for it. Good thing someone else paid; I’m still smarting from the $60 dinner buffet the first night!

There is an email list that is set up to email all attendees of the conference that I’m here for, and it is often populated with emails about the area, things to do, places to eat, warnings, questions, etc. Today, there were a lot of emails about two subjects – the suitability of using the tap water, and shiesty cabdrivers. I was amused, because a number of folks are warning not to drink the tap water, brush your teeth with it, or even eat fresh fruit that's been washed in it, because of the potential to incur “Charman Mao’s Revenge.” Either I have a sterner constitution than most, or people are overreacting, because I have done all of the above with no ill effects. I would expect this to be an issue in some of the more rural and undeveloped areas of China, but not in a major city that just got done hosting the Olympics. I guess it's a safe precaution if you're sensitive to such things, and I know that counting floor tiles in a bathroom 7000 miles from home is no fun, but it mainly makes you look like a wuss in a place like this. I also have not had any problems with taxis not using the meter or trying to otherwise cheat me. Perhaps I’ve been lucky in that regard.  

I made a brief appearance at the welcome reception, but it was brief because while the food was ok, it was mainly standard issue canapés and other appetizers, and a cash bar in a hotel ballroom. I was sort of disappointed by this, because I had figured that since the Chinese had been so keen on having an IETF in mainland China (they've been trying to work this out with the IETF for 2-3 years), that it would be similar to some of the recent IETFs (Stockholm, Hiroshima) where they really go all out at the welcome reception. Usually this means drinks at the welcome reception are included, and one or more local specialties were featured. Hiroshima featured lots of local food, a welcome toast of Sake, and Stockholm had a reception at City Hall (the same place where the Nobel Prize awards banquet is held) with a greeting from the Mayor, so the bar is admittedly set pretty high. I don’t mind paying for drinks, but drinks at this particular 5-star hotel came with 5-star prices, and well, Yan Jing and Tsingtao aren’t that good. We bugged out early for dinner instead.

Dinner was far more interesting. We went to a place called Dadong, which is an upscale restaurant that specializes in Peking Duck. It’s not one of the oldest restaurants for Peking duck in Beijing (several of them have been around for literally hundreds of years, with the oldest starting in 1416(!), but it was still quite good. If you’ve never had Peking duck before, it is a whole duck, glazed with sugar and roasted in a hot oven until the skin is crispy. It is served a lovely dark golden-brown (I’ve seen it in the States where it’s almost red due to the color of the glaze), expertly carved tableside, and they serve the skin separately. You dip the skin in coarse sugar, making what one of my fellow diners dubbed “fat candy” and then you take the duck meat itself and dip it in hoisin sauce and then wrap it in a steamed pancake with spring onion to make a little duck crepe. It was pretty interesting to watch the waitress demonstrate this using chopsticks to roll the pancake – I couldn’t even make it look that pretty using my hands! This restaurant also served little buns that you could put duck meat, garlic, and radish into as another way to enjoy it. The meat is moist, the skin melts in your mouth, and it’s absolutely something that you should try if you have the opportunity. I should note that according to Wikipedia, the ducks are force-fed for a period of time to fatten them up before slaughter (a la foie gras) so let me just say that I understand if you object to this on the grounds of it being mistreatment of animals; you are entitled to that opinion, but please don’t browbeat me for enjoying my meal immensely.