Mao And Qinghua

Today, we visited Mao's Mausoleum.  The crowd was enormous, but for China, very orderly.  We were ushered, nay, hustled through a barricade and into a long snaking line that lead up to the front of the tomb.  From there, the line was split into 2, and each line entered a guard station with 5 queues to scan viewers.  Each queue was manned by one at the front of the queue to handle the little bowls like an airport and the end of the queue was manned by a guard with a security wand. Once through the queues, the line reformed into one line that curled around to the long staircase into the front hall of the mausoleum.  Along the route, there were flower vendors, which for 3 yuan you could purchase a cellophane sleeve with carnations to place at the foot of the Mao statue in the front hall.  There were a ginormous number of bouquets there already, with white carnations in each.  No doubt these get recycled to the next day to pay homage to the great leader.

Once the flowers were placed people were ushered back into the line.  The huge throng shuffled along silently to view Mao.

Mao was not looking too good.  Waxy does not even begin to describe it.  More like melting pink plastic that is slowly giving g gravity's incessant pull.

The air quality is awful today, I purchased a mask which is difficult to fit on my face.  It is supposed to fit snugly without any gaps, but I know that there were gaps near my nose because my glasses kept fogging up

This should give you an idea of the air quality.  The building in the haze is about 100 yards away

The crowd in the foreground is the line waiting to enter Mao's tomb.  This is just prior to the line splitting into 2 to go into the guard stations.

This mask was not so great.  It did not really fit my face, could be because I am Western, or because I can't read character and purchased a child's version.  They came 3 in a pack for 18 yuan.  About $3.  

After Mao, we visited Servet up at Qinghua University which is in the NW part of Beijing.  He was busy until about 2:30 so we sat in an arena watching a student body team building olympics.  Qinghua is an engineering school, one of the best in all of China.  So this was sort of like nerds day at sports.  Not too many scholar athletes, if you get what I mean.  It was charming nonetheless.  

We joined Servet and he gave us a tour of the Schwarzman College, which is where he is attending as a Schwarzman Scholar for the year. The physical plan was quite striking.  The building was designed to look "old" even though it was completed this year.  

The accommodations are quite luxurious:  all single rooms, with private bath, completely wired super fast wifi that is able to load Google and other forbidden products.  There is a pub in the basement!!!  These students will never get any work done.  The other Qinghua students refer to this group as the "Precious Pandas".  Given their surroundings, I can see why.

We went for dinner with Servet at crawfish bar.  We had an amazing waitress who helped us order even though she spoke no English and Servet speaks only a few words of Chinese.  The coolest part of this place was the live fish in a tank below the glass of our table.   We ordered some durian eggs, garlic crawfish, and a shrimp and chicken hot pot.  All f these were really good.  The stand out was the condiments for the hot pot.  A garlic paste and a chili soy.

This is the "fish tank" table

These are the durian eggs

This is the shrimp, chicken, and veggies hot pot on the burner.  The dish to the left of the burner is a rice porridge, congee, which you add to the broth after eating the meat.

Here are the three of us after the meal, courtesy of the waitress, who just loved us.  She wrote in character for Servet, that we were old, fat, and funny.