Nanchang

After trying to set things up with the district government in Yingtan, I quickly discovered that they were not the right people to talk to set things up. In one of the articles that I brought, I noticed on the front page that the author had thanked the "Jiangxi Academy of Social Sciences" for research support. It was like a light went on in my brain - these are the people that I need to talk to.

So I set off to Nanchang. At the train station, I had the fortune/misfortune to run into Rainman again. I'm sorry Rainman! He had been following me around on the first day in Yingtan, and I had said I would call him to have dinner together if I had time. However, that was the night that I had the crazy runin with the statistics people in Yingtan, and ended up doing karaoke and eating until late that night and I had forgotten to call him. I should have called him the next day and apologized, but I figured he was probably gone back to Shangrao by then. I was wrong - and when I saw him the first thing he said was "why didn't you call me?".......I felt pretty lame. Still at the same time, it is hard to feel like these people who are trying to practise English with me are really wanting to be my "friend", even though that is what they want. For me, it usually takes a long time to become friends, and the relationship where I am the English speaker and they are the leech is an inherently unequal one, and it feels more like I am being taken advantage of. Still, I had said I would try to call Rainman (I love the English names these people choose), and I didn't come through. I suppose seeing him again (very awkwardly this time) was a reminder that I need to be nice to people - especially someone like Rainman who seemed very depressed with his life.

Anyways, this was a short train trip of about two hours. Because I bought my ticket the day of, and Yingtan isn't the trains first stop, I got wuzuo (no seat) tickets. This doesn't mean that you don't really have a seat, but at busy times it does (the craziest trip I ever did was from Jinan to Benxi on an wuzuo ticket on a train that was packed! That's another story though). Because this was Monday, and there are no holidays going on, I wasn't too worried about it. Usually at stations that are in between, they sell wuzuo tickets because they don't really organize when people get on and off the train - so people get off that station, and you (hopefully) get to take their seat. So I found a seat without any difficulty. I kind of like being in the hard seat cars, because you really get to know "the people". The people taking hard seat tickets tend to be migrants and farmers and tend to be much poorer than those who buy the sleeper tickets that have a berth. Anyways, I sat next to a migrant who was going to Beijing to keep working after returning home to Ganzhou (southern Jiangxi Province) for a couple weeks to visit his family, and a lady who had a 4 1/2 month baby and was going to Tianjin. Because of Rixa's blog, I was wondering whether she was going to breastfeed right there - but instead when her kid got hungry, she fed him these cracker things that are probably nutritionally devoid. As she was feeding him these cracker things, I was thinking "Is 4 1/2 months old enough to be eating solid food?" and also about the "big head disease" that had hit China after an infant formula manufacturer had sold formula that had zero nutritional value (several children died). So I don't know if she was even breastfeeding. I should have asked her so I could put an interesting comment on Rixa's blog.

Anyways, it was an easy trip to Nanchang. Feeling a bit like a spendthrift, I decided to get a nicer hotel (not really THAT much more - it was still only 100yuan a night). The nicest thing in this hotel is that it has a sit-down toilet. It's pretty sweet. The only thing is - and this is pretty ridiculous - the nearby "massage" shops have marked down the hotel phone numbers, and will spend the day calling through the hotel rooms. It is really pathetic. I can know when they are going to call because the room next to me has the phone go off (I guess the walls aren't that thick.....), and then I know my room is going to ring. After they have called me, the phone in the room to the other side goes off. They just dial through the entire building soliciting business. Pretty lame. When I first got there, I got one phone call and got really upset and told the main desk that I was about to leave their hotel because I thought they had told the "massage" shop that I had come to the hotel (you know - target the "rich" foreigner kind of thing), and they told me they had no control over it because the companies directly call the hotel rooms (I have my own phone number - it doesn't go through the service desk first). So I decided to stay - but the phone calls keep coming. Lame.

My first sense of Nanchang was "this is a big city". And it is. It has about 2 million people, and the traffic here is crazy! Yingtan is a sleepy city of only 200,000 people - no wonder it was so weird when I was there. Anyways, foreigners seem to fit in in Nanchang - I still haven't seen a single white person since I left Shanghai, but the people here don't seem to stare as much. So far, I like it better. Plus, I feel like I have a bit more of an idea what I'm doing now - I feel much more comfortable with the language (it takes about a week to get back in the mode), and I feel more "used" to China - when I was in Yingtan, I just felt lost. It takes awhile to get in the mode. In that sense, I think that my time in Yingtan wasn't that much of a loss - it gave me a buffer time to get Sinified.

Anyways, today I met with the Jiangxi Academy of Social Sciences people. They are a semi-independent research institute, and one thing that they do is to help set up foreigners to do research on social science subjects in Jiangxi. Really, I should have been in contact with these folks before I came to Jiangxi - I think that this is the first time that someone like me has sort of just showed up and asked for research assistance/approval. Still they were generally friendly, and I think things will work out and I'll get out to the countryside soon. It might take two or three days to get everything set up - I think that if everything goes well, I should be on my way by early next week.