Shanghai Express

It's been a while but tomorrow I may actually be able to write about some physics. For now you will have to put up with a minor rant plus the descriptions of a wedding, Shanghai style.

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If it wasn't for the fact that I currently look like Donald Duck (due to a rather amorous mosquito last night), it would be clear that I'm fuming, well, about as much as I ever actually fume.

Having spent considerable time, effort and cost trying to get my computer fixed back in England, things were finally looking up. It was returned from the manufacturers with a new motherboard and hardrive and some of my old data was replaced on it from the old, faulty hardrive. My parents then packaged it up and parcelforced it off to me so that I didn't have to spend too long swinging from system to system to get any work done.

Sunday it arrived and I rushed to open it. At first sight all seemed fine, the 'Received in damaged condition' stickers only seeming like an aesthetic edition, until, on closer inspection it turned out to have been dropped at some point in its journey. The chassis is warped, the DVD writer snapped and the keyboard wonkey. It works, to an extent, I can actually do some, though not a great deal of work on it, though of course transferring all my files onto it which are currently on rewritable DVDs (unreadable by the computers around here) holding all my data isn't possible.

Anyway, the insurance division at Parcelforce says that this may take 60 days to clear up which is not impressive so tomorrow I have to go and fork out for an external DVD drive just to be able to function in the mean time. Fume.

OK, fuming over, I had a lovely if rushed weekend down in Shanghai. This time, unlike Wuhan I did at least spend more time there than travelling and got to experience my first Chinese wedding. This is an interesting insight into some of the differences between Chinese and Western culture which made for a fascinating, sometimes bemusing, but always enjoyable day.

There is an official legal ceremony though this is a completely private affair where the bride and groom go to an office on their own to sign a document. This is usually done on a date far removed from the actual wedding and is rather casual from what I understand. As one of my colleagues said, they just go in, sign the documents and then cycle home again.

The day itself however is a big do and is all about family, friends, food and drink.

I arrived an hour before things kicked off at my friend's (the bride's) house where I was immediately given a feast to replenish me after the flight. With everyone walking around organising, every time they walked past me they would urge me on with 'chi, chi' (eat, eat) and so I did, until I could eat no more, having made my way through less than half what had been provided.

So, the first part of the day begins with the groom turning up at the bride's family's house, coming into the house and knocking on the bedroom door where the bride is residing. This act has been explained to me in retrospect and it seems that the girl then asks for money, at which point the groom puts an envelope under the door. If she is satisfied with this she opens the door and goes in where they whisper sweet nothings to each other.

Incidentally at every single moment of the day a photographer and cameraman are capturing every possible angle of the events.

Having been accepted by the bride, the bride and groom then give cups of tea to the parents and, sitting down, the groom feeds the bride with a sweet bean soup.

Not only is all of this accompanied by cameramen but at short intervals firecrackers and bangers are let off in the street to tell everyone that there's a wedding in progress (possibly, as is the case at New Year, also to dispell the evil spirits).


We then leave the bride's house and head to the new flat where the married couple will soon move to. A rather nice apartment with a room for mum and dad. At this point the groom's parents also turn up and the photographs and tea giving are reperformed with them.

An entire album worth of photos are taken in the flat, including in the bedroom, where everyone but the camercrew seemed to be steering clear of so I don't know quite what was going on in there.

Onto the park where there's an artificial beach with Shanghaiers playing and catching some of the very powerful sun which was roasting the groom in his rather fine suit. We spent an hour or so here, finding shady locations and romantic spots to get just the right angle for more photos. The Chinese really go in for well planned, framed and setup photos and there's a lot more deliberate posing (not in a derogatory sense) than one would normally see in the West.


From the beach and park we headed to the hotel where the evening's entertainments were planned in perfect, military coordination. At this point we had a couple of hours to rest up, so I went and found a cafe serving a decent coffee to perk myself up after just a few hours sleep the previous night.

One of the main differences between a Western and Chinese wedding is the sanctity of the bedroom. Most of the time spent resting, people mingled and played around in the marriage suite where the groom got some rest on the bed while the bride had her makeup retouched by the makeup artist who followed us around throughout the day.

One thing that I was rather disappointed by was a strange ritual which I was told about some time in the middle of the afternoon by one of the groom's friends. It seems that often at the end of a Chinese wedding when most of the guests have left, the couple and a rabble of drunk friends all go up to the bedroom where they dare the couple to perform acts in front of them. It was never quite explained to me exactly what this entailed but it was always mentioned with a slightly sheepish giggle which left me wandering. Sadly at the end of the night there were not enough people either willing or standing to make this worthwhile so I never did find out what this was all about. Before it was discovered that this particular event wouldn't be happening, I heard people making phonecalls to organise the most evil dares possible. I'm left intrigued, if a little disturbed.

So, anyway, the reception started and people arrived for the main event, everyone being photographed with the bride and groom under the floral arch. Though it looks like I'm exceedingly underdressed for a wedding, I'd been told to go casual and indeed most of the other guests were similarly atired. Only the bride and groom and their maid and best man were seriously dressed-up.

It seems from speaking to others that one of the purposes of the bride's maid (of which there's only one) is to help the bride with the drinking, as she goes round every table toasting each one in turn, if she begins to falter the maid takes over. The bride and groom getting drunk at a Chinese wedding, it seems, is all par for the course.

Before, during and after the meal were speeches and ceremonies of varying intricacy, involving, at various points, knives, fire, rings, alcohol, swords, bubbles and confetti. Nothing, as far as I could tell was lacking.

This is a flaming sword entwined with roses that was used to light a candle on each table.

The dinner itself was marvelous with an array of delicacies from lobster to pidgeon to tripe. All good stuff in my books. Finally, with everyone sated there were some final photos before the farewells.

Though it was a long day in all, the whole thing was officially over by a little past eight and by eight thirty just about everyone had left, so I did the same, heading back to my hotel nearby to ponder this strang but delightful day.

Everyone was extremely hospitable to me, as I've always found when it comes to friends in china, though there were some things that I'm still left bemused by in terms of the day's activities. Perhaps if I'm lucky enough to go to another Chinese wedding some of these things will become a little clearer but as it was it was a thoroughly enjoyable day.

Joys of Jet-Lag

The sound track to today's slightly disjointed post is a mix of Kit Clayton and Bonnie Prince Billy, which have been keeping me sane as I jump from computer to computer, a string of files being lost and created as I go. All being well (as if!) my computer will arrive here from England some time the beginning of next week and I can do all the things for which deadlines are now looming: resubmit the paper I should have finished long ago, start the painful postdoc application cycle again and get on with the baryon work I was whizzing along with before.

So, Bonnie Prince Billy I've spoken about previously. Gentle, powerful American folk music, poetic and painful with the soul of Leonard Cohen and the softness of Nick Drake, only a little more so. Kit Clayton on the other hand is semi-abstract electronica which is getting me bouncing along the streets to and from the office. Not as deranged as Aphex Twins' Melodies from Mars though with a few of the same miss-matched beats, for those who are into more ambient autechre and plaid, Kit Clayton is well worth tracking down. Meshing together Billy and Kit are admixtures of The Big Bopper and Sarah Vaughan. Never, ever let me choose the music for a party, guests will leave in a horrific superposition of moods!

Due to a fair amount of travelling and many sleepless nights due to jet-lag, I've had a chance to read a lot of good books over the last couple of weeks, so before they disappear into the quagmire of quark-gluon plasma I'm slowly becoming submerged in I thought I'd scribble some musings on them.

A little disappointingly 'Birthday Stories', an anthology compiled by Haruki Murakami, didn't quite hit the mark for me as his own writing usually does. The stories, all based around birthdays are by a mix of writers of varying fame and although a few of them felt like they could have packed a punch if extended, I find short storied which base their impact on a surprising event happening to a character rarely have much power unless the writer can build up the dimensions of the people involved very quickly. Mostly underwhelming with a few gems hidden in between the mediocre.

Very much like Murakami's own writing but much more enjoyable than the anthology, 'Oryx and Crake' was my first Margaret Atwood novel and is a literally fantastic, imaginative story about a future dictated by genetic engineering and a populous fed on extreme images of abuse, sex and murder. One of the interesting points about this future is that it's not clear whether this is a utopia or a dystopia and this lack of knowledge (original sin) is one of the subthemes. Chronologically entangled, the book deals with a character in a post apocalyptic world and slowly builds up the story of how he, and the rest of the world got there. The book deals with a whole
load of interesting issues from cloning and love to desensitisation and what it is to be human. A great deal of the appeal of the book comes from the fact that the picture of what's going on is only built up very slowly and the punchline is left till late enough to keep the momentum going to the end. Any more recommendations of Atwood are appreciated.

Still on Science Fiction, I was given a copy of an old science fiction classic, 'Flowers for Algernon' which is again related to genetic engineering, this time about altering the brain of a man with very low IQ to make him into a genius. A little cliched, but the book's interest is in studying what happens to his emotional intelligence as his IQ soars. Algernon is a lab mouse who is the first case where this process is apparently performed successfully. Of course we soon find out that the success is short lived and the human patient is left in a situation where questions of 'is it better to have known great intellect before returning to his original state, or was he better off untouched?' are addressed. It's a good sci-fi book and a classic though what's frustrating is thinking what possibilities there are for a novel where a patient suddenly becomes super-humanly intelligent. Perhaps thankfully the protagonist doesn't go for the most obvious choice in his situation giving the parting chapters a good edge to them.

Away from sci-fi was Hemingway's book of short-stories 'The snows of Kilimanjaro'. Unlike 'Birthday Stories' the power and shock from these tales are not from what happens to the characters in often dire situations but how they deal with them. This semi-autobiographical book deals with many of the aspects, both emotional and geographical, of the writer's life and goes from one atmosphere to its polar opposite with striking contrasts.Complementing the main story of 'The snows of Kilimanjaro' is Camus' 'The fall'. The reason they are complementary is because in the Hemingway, the main protagonist spends the last days of his life talking about
the loss of his talents and beliefs in much the same way as in 'The Fall'. Camus' book is a deep one and I will ponder over this some more before making any comments.

I'm currently getting on very well with David Mitchell's first book 'Ghost Written' which is another book of short stories (though all quite sizable) interlinking in cunning and unexpected ways which Mitchell seems so adept at. Having read his 2004 novel Cloud Atlas before this one, I wasn't aware that this was an old trick for him, weaving themes through a book, stitching together the seemingly unrelated texts to give a whole which is much more than the sum of its parts. In fact, it's only hinted at subtly but this book and Cloud Atlas are also subtly woven together using very small plot additions. This book takes each story in a different country,
written in a different style and about completely unrelated matters but none seems out of place. Starting with a sympathetic look at one of the brainwashed attackers of the Tokyo subway, it goes through Japan to Hong Kong and then to rural Szechuan with a stunning story about a woman who owns a tea shop on the sides of a holy mountain. Taking in a good swathe of the darker parts of 20th century Chinese history, the ending is a beautiful, poignant one which would stand on its own as a powerful tale. Through Mongolia with a bodyless spirit, we go to Russia and London and on in a series of twisting tales which I've no doubt will turn full circle to
created an impressive whole.

OK, there are a few other books to mention but I'm a bit reviewed out right now. I also have to try and concatenate the 17 files on 8 different computers which should be forming a paper when I get my act together.

Wuhan Adventures

It turns out that there is an occasion on which it's a luxury to get up at 5.30 in the morning. That is when you've miscalculated and thought that you had to get up at 4.30 in the morning...and so, with a reasonable amount of sleep I started a rather long but interesting day, heading to the airport before a two hour flight to Wuhan, in Hubei province. Wuhan is known for a few things but one of them I was told with a grin, as soon as I landed, is the heat. Wuhan is one of the 'three furnaces' of central China, the others being Chongqing and Nanjing. Early morning it was 32 and just got hotter and hotter through the day, getting to around 36 or so by mid afternoon. It seems that Wuhan does have a fascinating 3500 year history but this time I didn't get to see any of this. The university itself (HuaZhong Normal university) is set on a hillside and its 100+ year old grounds are filled with woodland, making it a rather pleasant place to walk around (or at least it would if the air temperature were significantly less than body temperature).

I was in Wuhan to give a talk at a workshop on quark/gluon plasmas, not something that I've worked on but a subject I'd like to learn more about. In fact this is a topic which some of the grad students in the ITP here in Beijing are working on and I have meeting schedule for this afternoon to chat about this topic. Unfortunately, because of various pressing matters in Beijing at the moment I wasn't able to attend any of the other talks at the workshop. As it had been arranged just a few days before I was due to talk, they slotted me in first for a two hour seminar which was a pedagogical introduction to my research. An hour and a quarter or so introducing the AdS/CFT correspondence and the rest of the time talking about meson spectroscopy and future directions. There's currently some interesting work concerning high density/temperature physics from AdS/CFT which would have been right up their street but as yet I'm in no position to talk about this.

So, I gave the seminar for a couple of hours and got a lot of good questions from enthusiastic people who really want to learn about this stuff so that they can start doing research in it. Nice to have a really receptive audience. After a glug of tea I rushed back to the airport to catch the flight to Beijing. At the time the sky was darkening, though I couldn't work out what direction the ominous clouds were coming from. As soon as we got in the air this became pretty obvious. As we got above the main cloud-line, a perfectly flat sea as far as the horizon, we were reduced to a tiny speck in a chaotic sky. Though the main cloud line was flat, on top of this ocean were dozens and dozens of anvil shaped cumulonimbus, the biggy when it comes to clouds, and I've never seen any looking so stereotypically shaped. The plane seemed tiny as, with the setting sun, the anvils lit up like smoked out greenhouses full of firecrackers. Each one a fizzling, crackling storm cloud with constant activity. It's difficult to get any sense of perspective so I don't know how close we were but there were enough of these amazing beasts around to make it all rather exciting.

Though we swayed and avoided each of the storm clouds it was clear that there were major updraughts causing some serious turbulence and the next hour was a rather treacherous one with airhostesses looking ever so slightly worried. This turbulence kept us firmly glued in our seatbelts and meant that I didn't have time to get the camera out.

Yesterday the air hostess were doing a wonderful job and I've no idea how they keep their cool in the situations they encounter. I'm not talking about the active weather patterns I've been flying through recently but the passengers themselves. The flight out to Wuhan was delayed and several angry, sweaty businessmen were not happy with the situation and spent the time we were delayed on the ground either shouting at the air hostesses or grumbling to the rest of the passengers. The hostesses kept level headed and didn't seem phased by this at all, simply ignoring what they couldn't answer politely. On the way back , despite the usual announcements, a man got up as the rear wheels of the plane touched down, got his bag and started making a call on the phone. Perhaps I'm a little over sensitive but I always think that a plane is one place that obeying the rules is a pretty good idea. Another ten passengers standing up as the engines were still thrusting in reverse got the hostesses walking briskly but never raised their voices to the shout that I'd probably let out in their situation. Anyway, everyone arrived safely and relatively unabused.

I need to get on with some work again. I've got my first ever student to supervise who is proving receptive and (no surprise here in China) very hard working. We've got a fun project started now on AdS/QCD which I will talk about when it's appropriate.

Photo blog roundup take 2

Due to my inability to understand the commands in the Chinese version of blogger I can't move the blog post which I saved a few days ago and only just published. For some photos of my round Britain tour, see the post two or three down the page entitled Photo blog roundup.

Interesting Developments

Big news: Blogspot seems to be viewable in China at the moment! I haven't seen any official notices about this but it's an interesting development. I'd also like to know whether it's only the computers that I'm using or this is a nation-wide unblocking. Any info would be gratefully received. Other sites such as BBC news and wikipedia are still blocked.

Working on this Chinese computer all the commands are in Chinese. I hadn't thought about it before but the Chinese version of blogger (which has always been available) has no spell-check function - I apologise for any confusement corzed.

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The talk yesterday seemed to go pretty well with several interesting questions from the professors and students. 15 minutes introducing the AdS/CFT correspondence plus my current research is not an easy task but people seemed to nod along and not off which seems a positive response.

Next week I have to fly down to Wuhan in Hubei province (about two hours flight) to give two hours on the AdS/CFT correspondence as an introduction to a group who are interesting in quark-gluon plasmas. Should be fun.

For now, as I haven't got my own computer and I'm temporarilly usurped from my office I have some time, in between filling out claims forms and starting to supervise students, to sit in the library and catch up on some reading. Photo blog to come soon I hope but that will have to wait for a day or so.

Ups and Downs

I have to admit that last week was one of the most stressful of the last few years. Several things which I've mentioned in passing and several which I won't be talking about on the blog all added up to a constant nagging feeling and a knotted stomach to such an extent that I could barely eat the last few days. For one who eats anything and everything all the time, this is a little disconcerting.

Anyway, I figured that I would be able to hide myself for a little while in a newly purchased i-pod. I pre-birthday present from my parents before I left England once more. Having uploaded as many songs as I could mange before heading off I was content to sit in my own little world away from all the worries which have been getting to me. As I ran for the train at Munich station having missed the last bus, time slowed down as my i-pod flew from my jacket pocket and sailed balletically to the floor. Time slowed down sufficiently for me to think "It can't possibly be heading for the train tracks" as it glided off the platform and onto the train tracks. I stood aghast, not knowing whether to laugh or cry so instead I stood and swore a great deal for some considerable time. The thought of being taken off by the Munich police (watching the exact spot on CCTV) and my own sensible streak stopped me from getting on to the tracks to retrieve it so I searched frantically for someone official looking to help me out. Ten minutes later back in the airport I finally found someone who was uniformed enough to be of some assistance. I gushed my stupidity to them and they took pity, getting another official to come and help me out on what was turning out to be a pretty rubbish day (I'd already been ignored by the bus driver who would have taken me straight to the hotel and shouted at by a taxi driver who accused me of playing a joke on him when I quoted a price to the city which I'd been told by another taxi driver). Worried that somebody with less scruples had already picked up my i-pod we quickly went back to the spot where it was still standing. The official said that he wasn't going to get down there, and before I could offer, a short plump German man was on the tracks retrieving my key to sanity. It seems to work and thankfully landed on its backside leaving a large dent there, rather than on the screen. Having missed the train, I caught the next one and finally arrived at my hotel around one in the morning.

This gave me a day in Munich to go to the Deutsche Museum which is well worth a visit and I may talk more about when I'm less jet-lagged.

Anyway, I've arrived safely in Beijing and when the talk is over tomorrow that will at least be one thing off my mind. Due to a dead computer I've had to write the talk today having had an hour of sleep on the flight over last night. Though I was crammed into a window seat on a technologically backward Lufthasa flight it turned out to be one of the most spectacular flights I've been on.

The cloud depth was vast and we spent the first two or three hours skipping atop the highest layers as they played on the turbulence. I've taken a couple of videos as the strata swept over the wing and made amazing colours passing in front of the sun. If I can upload them I'll try and put anything worth seeing on the blog. An hour or two later as it got dark I spotted a flash outside and for half an hour we passed over a series of thunderstorms lighting up the sky beneath us. A strange combination of my slight obsession with the weather and my mild fear of flying made this an altogether exhilaration experience. It didn't stop there though as not only did I get a small show of shooting stars but the backdrop for this was a sheet of nacreous clouds sitting much higher than most. Anyway, all in all a pretty stunning flight and definitely worth the pain of the window seat.

Right, I'm beginning to lose it and really must make sure the talk for tomorrow isn't complete gobbledygook.

Photo blog roundup

As promised, or possibly threatened...

While spending time in Leicestershire with my godparents I got a few snaps of the local flora and fauna. Having not played around much with close-ups on the camera (not an SLR) I was impressed with some of the detail


An unsuspecting wasp had been caught out by the carnivorous sarracenia.






On the trip to London a fine Saturday afternoon was spent messing about on Wimbledon common.




The kitchen view in T+A's flat isn't the most scenic but it does have a certain northern industrial charm about it, especially when taking in black and white.

The next day in Wimbledon there was a Hindu festival in progress. Though I asked a few friendly people, everyone was pretty vague about the meaning of it all. They simply said that it was a festival which was held once a year and the meaning didn't seem terribly important. If anyone has more info (it was around the last weekend of July) please do tell.






Back in Oxford I　spent a day walking around being a tourist in my own town.

Christchurch college was swimming with tourists as usual but is still a great place to go for a stroll.

The Ashmolean, the oldest museum in the world with currently one my least favourite pieces of sculpture (the brown metal mess at the front) destroying the view. I was pleased to find out that this is soon going to be disappearing for good, much to the delight of most of the staff.

A large family reunion including an impromptu circus skills workshop


OK, that'll do for now, if I can get the photos from the flight uploaded I'll do so soon.

Playing Catch-Up

At the time of writing the following post I was content to have finally, after two weeks, received my computer back with a shiny new hard drive and most of my photos. This morning as it threw another wobbly I took it to the computer guy who showed me the correct way to fix this perennial problem of ACER laptops. Unfortunately half way through this demonstration the computer decided to fry the hard disk completely, leaving me with no computer at all. Come tomorrow, ACER will pick it up, spend two weeks mucking about with it, send it back to my parent's house who will then send it on to me in Beijing. All in all this means a good few weeks with no computer which is rather detrimental to most of my work. So, this is where I stand now, typing on my folk's computer as I try and work out what I have and haven't managed to salvage from the wreckage.

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It's been a very busy couple of weeks though in general extremely enjoyable. Now, drawing to the end of my stay back home I have a lot of odds and ends to get finished before flying back. Insurance to buy tomorrow which will cost me a couple of months wages so it's pretty vital that I work out just how important this is.

All told I'm actually feeling pretty stressed about the number of things that I have to do when I get back, but the majority of them should at least be useful experiences. The day after arriving back I'll be giving a 20 minute talk to 150 PhD students and postdocs about my research and, as far as I know, most of them will not have come across the AdS/CFT correspondence. Another useful challenge however and another thing to add to the CV.

Even away from the computer I've had a chance to chat physics with a good variety of people. Down in Southampton, along with seeing friends and going back to the local haunts I had my graduation ceremony and spoke with Nick, my former supervisor about some sensible directions to take things. Graduation was infernal, with temperatures well above 30 degrees, heavy gowns over suits and then being packed into the theatre with less space than airplane seats made me rather worried about fainting onto the chancellor. Blood stayed in the right places and I took my part in the strange ceremony.

Back in Oxford I chatted to Steven Clarke, a good friend who studied in Bristol with me and who's doing some great work simulating optical lattices. This work goes back to a paper of Feynman who noticed that one could use a quantum computer to simulate another quantum system (as opposed to solving mathematical problems of factorisation and data retrieval). At the moment a one dimensional optical lattice can be set up with a simple Hamiltonian using lasers, and phase transitions of various statistical mechanical systems can be studied in detail without actually having to muck around with liquid helium etc. Steven's job is to work out, on a computer, exactly what the experimenters should see when they study these lattices. There's a great deal to be learned from such systems and it looks like the experimenters and theorists are working well together on this particular topic. If I can persuade him I'll ask Steven to write something both more accurate and eloquent about his current research.

From Oxford back to Leicestershire to see my godparents to spend a fine day in the countryside and relaxing in their garden, surrounded by butterflies and carnivorous plants. Good food, good walks and good chat were provided in spades and we all left gastronomically and mentally satisfied.

Via Oxford I headed London way to meet up with some of my best friends who've just bought a house in Wimbledon. I'd been promised a trip to an interesting restaurant and was not disappointed. One of the foods which I miss most in Beijing is a good steak and so heading to the Gaucho Grill, off Piccadilly Circus, couldn't have been better. The greatest steak I've ever had, straight from Argentina, cooked to perfection with a porcini and truffle sauce, served with classic Argentinean side dishes and washed down with a fine Malbec. Anyone who likes their steak and is in the area should definitely check this place out.

I have many photos of antics on Wimbledon common and the goings on in Leicestershire but these will have to wait for now.

A fun night out at some clubs in Soho which provided me with the first pangs of culture shock. Coming from the Korean and Chinese clubs in Beijing straight into the London clubs where the suits are stumbling after the ladies who themselves are tottering around in their high heels is a very strange and somewhat unsavoury sight. Somehow in Beijing people seem to be out to have a good time on the dance floor with no ulterior motive. I can't quite put my finger on it now, several days after the event, but it was a rather bemusing sight for me.

After a big night out we took it very easy the next day, playing frisbee in the park and heading back for a home cooked meal. Later on James from TASI came along and, though we were both pretty tired, it was great to catch up after a year. James has a whole slew of interesting projects on and has suggested that some of my ideas may be worth putting to those at Queen Mary, where he's finishing his PhD.

London to Cambridge to see another good friend and spend another couple of relaxed days sitting in cafes and watching movies before heading back to London to go to a some galleries.

Unfortunately due to various pressures and tiredness beginning to get to me, the Kandinsky didn't have quite as much impact on me as I would have liked. There are a couple of very powerful pieces, including The Deluge (or perhaps another, the name escapes me now) which is strikingly similar in tone to Guernica. The Howard Hodgkin at the Tate Britain was excellent however and, if you haven't seen his work before I would highly recommend seeing one of Britain's greatest living painters. Unfortunately onscreen and in books the paintings lose a great deal, so if it appeals at all it's worth a look.

Image removed but can be found at this site.

Next door is an atmospheric Chris Ofili work.

Unfortunately one of my favourite pieces of sculpture, Eve by Thomas Brock, is currently on loan to the V&A so wasn't in it's usual striking position. When lit properly, this late nineteenth century piece can be absolutely astounding and the first time I saw it I was mesmerised by the warmth and light given off by the skin

From the Tate Modern via my Grandmother in North London and then home to finally rest up for a couple of days before heading back to Beijing (via Munich).

So, it's been fun but pretty tiring and I'm not particularly looking forward to this rather ambiguously aimed talk I will be giving almost as soon as I touch down. Anyway, another full day tomorrow in England to pack up and head back. It looks like this will be the only time I can came home in the two years out in China so I have around another 15 months back in Beijing. Let's see what delights are in store for the next year and a bit...

With Rulfo from Rodier

It appears that though things are logistically complex I may just be able to get my photos back. This makes me very happy.

Many years ago in a hostel in deepest darkest Montmartre I got chatting with a group of Mexicans out to discover the delights of Paris. Asking them what Mexican literature they could recommend I was greeted with a chorus of 'Juan Rulfo' (amongst others who I shall continue to track down - Octavio Paz was another who's poetry I bought and loved). Yesterday, having found the book in a second hand shop, I sat down in a cafe with an ice coffee and a fine piece of cheese cake to read half the canon of one of the most renowned Spanish language writers.

A strange tale, Juan Rulfo wrote only two pieces of fiction, Pedro Paramo, which I read in the cafe, and The Burning Plane. With these two short works, his name in Spanish language literature is often lauded alongside the likes of Borges and is said to have influenced many including Marquez. It may be through more vicarious means but I can see parts of his writing in some of the mid 20th century American authors too, whose style is often simplistic and powerful.

This book is a strange weave of past and present, living and dead, that the Mexicans seem to write about so well. Starting off with the journey of a man to find his father, the story blends several timeframes into an almost continuous narrative which at times is confusing but always infused with the same dry, desolation, revealing the dead town's past and downfall.

The book has apparently been filmed several times, and twice the script was written by Marquez. Sounds like a fantastic combination which I'll be on the lookout for. It definitely reads like something Gilliam should be involved with.

I'd be interested to hear anyone who has read the Spanish and English versions of this to tell me how much I'm missing. The answer may be a lot but the language itself is actually very simple in the translation, I believe this is deliberate.

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Now, coming up to Friday evening, it's a lovely chance to spend it with my family again after so long away. I don't count myself as very religious at all but I do value the particular aspects of family and community that Judaism brings with it.

Not how it's supposed to be!

Yesterday I spent a little time writing a terribly witty post about my return to England, my reacquaintance with much loved food (thick granary with jam), the fine weather, plus a few things that I'd wanted to mention about China (erudite remarks on language and overweight people)...and then it all went horribly wrong. My laptop crashed. It's been doing that a little recently so I was planning a full backup any day now. I lost the blog post and we're all a little worse off for that, but then it just wouldn't start again, at all. I could regale you with the tales of the eight hours I spent yesterday trying to salvage any data I could from the corrupt hard drive but it would be pretty tedious. The only positive thing is that I did manage to get the paper that I've been writing recently along with all the mathematica files off before the whole thing completely stopped working.

I've lost nine months worth of photos from China. This makes me very sad.

Clearly I should have backed it all up, OK, that was pretty short-sighted, and indeed I did backup some things regularly. I don't care about losing the 6000 songs I'd religiously copied from my CDs onto my computer (which took a long, long time). I don't care about losing all the carefully tuned programs that have taken me such a long time to balance just right. I do care about losing the 1000 or so photos which have chronicled my time in China. This makes me very sad.

I have a warranty which means that ACER will, I hope, replace all damaged components of the computer though they will almost certainly not try and recover my data. Going to a data recovery company would cost me several thousand pounds and almost certainly invalidate my warranty.

Anyway, I shall go and weep a little over my backup DVDs which don't seem to respond when put in any other computer. Suddenly the fact that I have many photos (in minimised format) on this blog is significantly more valuable.

Anyway, I shall repeat my post which started this whole thing off at some time when I'm a little less stressed.

End of Part One

I realise more and more how in need I am of this trip back home. Almost nine months out here and the combination of heat, numbers of human beings and a couple of non-stop months means that going home is definitely what I require. A slew of things are already lined up for my return, including going back to my old department to chat with people there. Seeing friends and family is of course high on the list of priorities and I'm not sure how much time I'm actually going to have to sit back at home and relax.

So, I'm packed-ish though I'll spend the next day and a bit realising that I really need another two suitcases to take two weeks worth of things back. Yesterday I spent souvenir hunting through the bustling street markets around Qianmen and picked up a couple of bargains. On route I had lunch in my first ever North Korean restaurant where I was faced with quite a shock and a strange insight into my own reactions. I'm well aware that if I ever eat dog that one of my friends will never speak to me again. I thought that this was the only reason that I wouldn't eat it, however yesterday I was taught a surprising lesson. As I was tucking into my bowl of noodles I picked up a piece of meet and asked what it was as it looked a little different from regular beef. Looking a little sheepish my friend replied that it was dog. Immediately my heart sped up, my stomach tightened and images of both my friend and golden retrievers etc. rushed through my mind. I think that my regular meals consisting of stomach, foot, lung etc. of donkey, frog, snail etc. precludes me from the squeamish category so I was rather surprised by my reaction. Dolefully I asked if it was really dog, really really dog to which the answer was yes, until it became apparent that I was genuinely upset by this at which point the bovine truth was revealed, with much laughter from all but myself. I didn't finish the noodles and I shan't be trying dog any time soon.

So, Andrew, my friend from Southampton, somehow made it all around China through the backwaters with just two words of Chinese to his name and seemed to have a pretty good time. I've mentioned this before but it's always interesting to hear the perspectives of China through the eyes of a newcomer who spots things that I've either forgotten or always been oblivious to. Andrew has also been to India and mentioned that the tastiness of the street food in China couldn't compare to that in India which I have to agree with. Though the Chinese cuisine is truly one of the world's greatest, the street fare doesn't tend to be that spectacular. This may be because the difference between the Chinese food here and back home is far greater than the difference between Indian food in India and back home so many of the tastes are a little strange to us. The semi-sitting down food (that eaten sitting in outside food gardens) is a lot better, with a huge range of flavours and combinations which can see you through an evening very enjoyably. The food actually served by the side of the road however often seems less imaginative.

Andrew made a bit of a habit of being ripped off, though this isn't his fault. With his permission I can reveal one of the truly greatest scams I've heard about while I've been here. While walking around one of the towns he visited he was accosted by a couple of 'English students' out to practice the spoken word. This is an oft practiced ploy and has got me off the beaten path a couple of times. You feel kind of mean telling them you don't want to until you realise that most of the time they eventually want to get you into their gallery or tea shop, as follows. Andrew was told that he really should try some Chinese tea and see the ceremony, true enough. He was taken to a tea house where the menu was flashed in front of him showing some high (38 kuai, two point fifty) but not unreasonable prices. He was then given a few samples of different teas, each time the tea being prepared in the same ornate fashion with much pouring, swashing and deliberate spilling followed by an elaborate method of smelling and tasting the product through all stages of brewing. After these tasters Andrew was advised to buy a particular tea. Thinking this was what the 38 kuai went towards he agreed, having tasted some fine brews. Seeing as you can get a cup of tea in a restaurant for 5 kuai with free refills, the bill arriving on his lap for a little over 2000 kuai came as a bit of a shock. In fact the 38 kuai was per taste of each tea and he'd gone full throttle trying every one. 2000 kuai is a over 100 quid and, being far more than was in his wallet, was not up for the taking. With some fine British reserve he declared the whole thing a scam and gave them everything that was in his wallet (around 200 kuai). After a while they seemed to agree that perhaps this was more reasonable so let him go, all limbs intact. Be warned!

Tatsuya and I have finished working together here and have accomplished a great deal in the last two weeks. By spending all day calculating, conjecturing and bouncing ideas off each other, we've done half the work for a joint paper which we will put together with a friend in Poland in the coming weeks. It wasn't all work however as, when Andrew returned from his travels we went to a local club which it turned out was Tatsuya's first. He seemed to rather enjoy the slightly strange experience, being surrounded by a truly international selection of drunkards in deepest, darkest Beijing.

Now, with one day left in the office I have a few things to finish off before lugging all my stuff back home to see if culture shock (no pun intended) will greet me on the other side of the journey.

...and relax

I should mention that in this post is an image which may be unpleasant to vegetarians.
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I'd assured myself that football would not enter this blog again though today is going to be a minor exception. Last night was spent in one of the local French hang-outs watching the final and, getting back at around 5.30 this morning I remained convinced that I'm never going to get very excited about the game. The situation (give or take the country of allegiance) should have made a perfect atmosphere and indeed as the rain created rivers in the streets outside, the thunder rattled once more and the bar was packed close to bursting, there was much cheering from both the Italians and French in the room who seemed to be taking the rivalry in very friendly fashion. As 2 fast approached, we watched on the big screen as the room filled with several times more people than the regulations allowed. Just before 2 the police showed up, the TV was turned off and hackles were raised in what looked like a messy end to some fine upstanding police officers. Realising that they were outnumbered by about 200 to 1, they tactfully let the party go ahead and so, as I stood up for the next three hours watching the game, the room became filled with cheer and song, Italians swearing in French and vice versa.

I shan't mention the score, that would be going too far. A fun night but today I'm a little weary. Indeed had it just been one late night I may be feeling fine but the night before finished at 6 in the morning and was an absolutely perfect, if brief respite from the non-stop work which has been taking up all resources for the last two months.

The night before was Beijing's summer jam, though it was perhaps more coulis than compote as, at two in the morning the heavens opened once more and we became a soggy, if joyful bunch of dancers and frolickers.

Set an hour outside Beijing city in a countryside resort, usually set aside for such peaceful pursuits as tennis and fishing a la Centre Parcs, for one night only it was taken over by two music stages, several thousand revellers and a pool for those drunk enough not to mind the cold which has been with us for the last few days.

Well, there were some sights and some sounds, some peacockery and some casualties, many of which I shall spare your innocent eyes. However, I got a few pictures through the night to give a rough idea of what was a fantastic time of dancing, drinking and chatting with friends.

We arrived around 3 in the afternoon to a the sounds of smells of a humid forest setting and for the first time in far too long I sat and did nothing for a couple of hours. My friend Xavier sitting contemplating.

This guy was clearly a fan of Kundera and I had to take a photo of his tattoo. The translation is 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being'

This was either a fine example of Chinglish or a very clever existential joke:

Food at this event was provided straight from the vine:

The hiphop stage and the pool:

Clearly an event like this is not complete without an old plane for partygoers to clamber around:


It's with mixed feelings that I admit that at one stage in the night I won an umbrella which, when the rains came, though my feet trudged through the streams, the rest of me remained relatively dry. Mother would be proud of her son, walking around being relatively sensible. The dichotomy lies in the fact that said umbrella was won in a beer drinking contest (speed not quantity I may add) and so perhaps any browny points I may have won through having an umbrella are instantly cancelled. This wasn't a planned event on my part, we happened to be walking past a tent advertising hair products, wondered in because we could see that there was something going on and a minute later we were surrounded by a group of onlookers watching us act like imbeciles. Fun nonetheless.

Here are some random snaps of partying people:




Anyway, five or so hours of dancing did much to refresh my mind and get the blood pumping again. Arriving home at six in the morning, saturated clothes were peeled and sleep descended quickly. At midday a knock at the door signaled that any chance of rest was over and so we headed to the local karaoke bar where I again managed to remove any merit a fair number of fine tunes may have possessed. Tatsuya, who's currently here working with me faired much better and gave many a fine rendition of some of the Japanese songs on the database.

Walking back we stopped off at a great Szechuan outdoor eatery where the Szechuan equivalent of kebabs were gobbled down by the hungry singers.

As we walked back we passed these kids playing around the local lanes (soon to be filled with tower blocks). Clearly to have your personal rickshaw driver is the height of luxury here.

and so we come full circle, after a couple of hours rest we headed off to the football and so the story begins, and ends.

Now, back at work I have an English lesson to plan and want to start writing up the work that we've been doing the last week. It's been one of the most intense but productive weeks for a long time and we've got some lovely results to study in more detail. More later...

Ongoing Goings On

Measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale it seems that little damage was done to anyone or anything during the recent tremor. Apparently a woman in hospital 'felt a bit dizzy'. I'm thinking this isn't a great control test in terms of the affects of small earthquakes on the body.

Young and old practice their circus skills in the campus grounds:


Though my eyes are almost failing to stay open at the moment I'm doing the most enjoyable work that I've done for a long time. My particular style of working means that I'm surrounded by scraps of paper dotted with scribbled diagrams and equations and a large computer program on the screen in front of me. Half the time is currently being spent chatting through each stage with my collaborator, drawing possible interpretations of what's going on on the board in my office (from which I'm soon to be evicted). If I were a more sensible and efficient worker I would have a neat notepad in which the careful flows of thought were immaculately inscribed. However, my mind jumps from one thing to another and any notepad I've started has ended up being left behind.

If things work out, which they never do in my brief experience, this work may go some considerable way towards a rather interesting paper.

Unfortunately the last month's packed timetable has left no time for Chinese lessons. I'm hoping that the ten hour flight back to the UK may be a suitable gap in normal affairs in which to go through all the Chinese characters I've learnt and subsequently buried in the quagmire.

Rambling Rumblings

What I presumed to be a professor rattling his blackboard making it sound remarkably like an earthquake turned out to be an earthquake sounding just like a professor rattling his board. It was only when we arrived downstairs to see an excitable looking group of admin staff that I realised that today wasn't a particularly bad day for professors to find mistakes in their factors of two but really was one of Beijing's occasional earthquakes. My Japanese friend thought that the earthquake was an earthquake and carried on to lunch. Lunch was OK, the fish balls were a little shaken.

Itinerant Musings

Book shopping back in England is one of my favourite weekend pursuits, second only to sitting in the cafe in the bookshop and perusing my latest purchases. Shopping for books in China is a somewhat different animal. It's a long term pursuit and it seems that people spend a serious amount of time deciding which books to buy. This can often mean reading a large percentage of the books to hand and can take several hours. Most of my friends here claim that they don't read very much and don't enjoy books but if you press them they've usually read a large tract of Eastern and Western literature (in translation). Many books are downloaded from the internet so spending money on them needs a serious decision. Here's a snap of some weekend readers deciding what to spend their hard earned kuai on. This particular bookshop is five stories high and each level is perhaps 30 by 50 meters.

I currently have some temporary company in the flat. My first and last two couch surfers (not their fault that they are my last) are currently here in Beijing, one month into their five month journey around the world. The idea of couch surfing is a simple one. People who have a spare couch, like meeting new people and like to travel, sign their name up to a website. If you are then travelling to, for instance, Beijing, you look to see if there are any couch surfers in Beijing with a spare bit of floor/couch/bed and get in contact through the website. It simply means that given a large enough network of like-minded people you can stay anywhere in the world for free. So, I now have two American Peace-Corps volunteers staying here while they see Beijing before heading over to Germany to see that final of the world cup.

The reason that these are my last two surfers is because the computers hosting the website crashed a couple of weeks ago and everything was lost. Unfortunately this was at a critical moment between backups and it's really lost lost. This is pretty heartbreaking for the person who's spent the last three years of the their life setting this up and getting many tens of thousands of people on board. I'm sure that someone else will do it again as, for travellers, this is an amazing opportunity.

Apart from itinerant Americans I am spending time with my Japanese collaborator and attempting to follow up some fun ideas we've had with regards to the AdS/CFT correspondence. They are some potentially exciting projects but, as always it's difficult to tell whether they'll come to anything in the end. Fingers crossed.