Adventures in China I

Ni Hao! So for those that hadn't heard or seen on Facebook, I spent last week in China. I got to attend the International Workshop on Interdecadal Variability of the Global Monsoons in Nanjing. Nanjing is a former capital of China that is located about 190 miles northwest of Shanghai (don't worry, I had to look up where it was when I found out I was going)!

I got lucky on the long flight from Newark to Shanghai (~14 hours) as there was no one sitting next to me. This meant I had that little bit of extra room to curl up in a ball and get a few hours of rest which made all the difference when I arrived. I did manage to wake up in time for the midnight snack of ice cream on the plane though :-)

On arrival there was someone waiting for me at the airport. I had thought they were going to put me on the subway across Shanghai to the train station but as someone else was arriving ~1 hour after me they had a car and driver to take us across the city. This meant that my first hour in China was spent sitting in a Honda in an underground car park with a driver that didn't speak English. Quite bizarre! Anyway, we drove about an hour across Shanghai, which was completely terrifying with all the bobbing and weaving and huge trucks and horn honking. But we made it in one piece. The person who picked us up then took our money and bought train tickets to Nanjing for us and showed us where to get on the train.

The train to Nanjing was really nice. Clean, fast (although we were on a train that stopped a lot it only took 2 hours) and comfortable. I think I dozed off a little and by the time we arrived it was dark. A couple of students were waiting for us at the train station to put us in a taxi. The train station had a great view of downtown while we waited.

Nanjing downtown by night

It was raining when we arrived, so the "queue" for the taxi was enormous. I used quotations as it wasn't so much a queue as an area full of people pushing and shoving to get to the opening where you get in taxis. We were squashed in there for almost an hour but eventually got in a taxi and to the hotel.

I was staying in a very westernised hotel called the "Nanjing Suning Venice Hotel" and it was very nice. The rooms were big and very nice, although the one bizarre thing was the window between the main living/sleeping room and the bathroom. Why is there a giant window into the bathroom?! I eventually found the electric blind that covered the window but it was quite strange at first. At least there was a western toilet. I never want to use a squat toilet again!

My hotel room. Bathroom window and all.

The hotel was part of a large area called Venice City that had hundreds of apartments. Everybody in China seems to live in high rise flats/apartments and they were building new ones everywhere. I don't think I'm able to convey the scale that these cities are expanding.

View from my hotel room. This was the weather practically the whole time. Cloud and pollution and haze.

View from my hotel room in the other direction. It's just like Venice!

The workshop itself was excellent but I won't go into any detail about work things as most of you wouldn't find it very interesting. I have included a picture of the very nice conference hall we spent our time in. It made a change to be at a conference that had comfortable chairs!

Inside the conference

I'll write some other posts letting you all know what else in Nanjing I saw later. Xie Xie!