day 2: to taiyuan

Today we hopped on a bus at 7:30 am and were told that we'd arrive the conference hotel around 5:30. At our noon rest stop, they told us that the shorter route was too congested, so we'd take the long way 'round, and arrive closer to 2. Indeed, we arrived around 4 (which is really not closer to 2 than noon is). I heard later that the shorter road was not so much congested as collapsed; who knows. It's certainly the case that lunch at 4 followed by dinner at 8:30 aptly set the stage for a week of gastronomic indulgence.

Because we were so late getting in, we missed our chance to meet with the governor of the province, which is a pity because the gubernatorial mansion is a stunning piece of work -- not a new building, in the best sense). But we actually had some spare time, which was, it turned out, nearly all the spare time we had all week. So we all went out and wandered around the hotel compound. You can read about this place here. It is (or was?) a "state guest house" -- I heard, though don't know whether to believe, that it was built in case Chairman Mao ever came to visit the province (which apparently he didn't). Certainly plenty of dignitaries have been though since then. You'll note that water plays a huge role in the landscaping, which is especially interesting given the serious water problems China is having. (Though even this place conserved a bit, as you'll see.)

I think most of us were quite surprised to be staying here: we'd been led to believe at a planning meeting that we'd be staying at a 4-star hotel in the middle of downtown. Wrong! As they were describing this place on the bus, they said, "Please don't go outside, because it's surrounded by farmland and farmers who aren't as educated as you are." This also became a bit of a theme of the trip -- there was a very strong sense that our hosts didn't really want us out of their sight, mostly (I think) out of (overwrought) concern for our safety. As it turned out, there was plenty of room to roam within the hotel compound (I suppose heads of state need to be able to walk without running into uneducated farmers, too), and I never really had time to push those boundaries, though some of my colleagues did.