Fantastic Banquet Machine

Many Chinese people wear t-shirts with badly translated English on them. My favorite said “Fantastic Banquet Machine”. I haven’t a clue what the intended phrase might have been.

I took one day this week and did all the tourist things in Beijing. I went to the Forbidden City (above), the Temple of Heaven, and the Summer Palace. It was a quick whirlwind tour day, but I had fun with some tourmates I met from Germany and Australia.

Although I’ve been here for 16 days now, I’m still overwhelmed by the number of people. It’s easy to logically know that there are several times more people in Beijing than there are in all of Minnesota. However, it is another thing to experience it. There is never a time when the streets are empty or even very quiet. This picture was taken when we were buying some tickets at a rail station.

However, if you get a couple of hours outside of Beijing, it is very different. Earlier this week we took a bus to Huai Ruo again and then a scenic mountain van ride to Dadi, a village where they’ve installed a biomass gasifier for cooking gas. University of Minnesota- Morris, our employer, is currently installing a biomass gasifier to create steam heat for the school. Dadi is a village of about 200 people, so the un-announced arrival of 2 foreigners was probably the most interesting thing to happen there all week. Mr. Yang, a very nice community member, was nice enough to show us how the gas was working in his home. He even made us lunch and arranged for us to see the gasification equipment. Well, maybe arranged isn’t quite the right word. He woke up the guy that loads the biomass into the gasifier. Mr. Yang makes a living by farming and his daughter, who lives with him, is a teacher. They have a very simple home, heated by burning wood, but he had a TV that is bigger than mine.

This will likely be my final post from China as we fly out tomorrow. I feel very lucky that I had a chance to witness the city life of Beijing, the modern pace of Shanghai, as well as the rural lifestyle of Huai Ruo while I’ve been here. It’s really been a wonderful trip. However, I will admit that I’m looking forward to my own home. School starts in 5 days, so I’ll be keeping busy in Minneapolis.