In China, they call Chinese food... "Food."

I'm hoping that I've got this slide show thing figured out... we'll see how this goes!!

So, as promised, a post about China. In the interest of saving myself some time, I'm going to just paste a post I made about my trip on another interent board I frequent. But, I've included a slide show of 27 of the 150 or so pictures I took while I was there. I think they're a good representation of what I saw! So here's the copied text:

Holy whirlwhind of a trip!!

I left on Memorial Day morning to head out to Shanghai, China, with an overnight in Seattle on the way. So, I got to Shanghai on Wednesday afternoon, their time, which is still too hard for me to figure out in relation to my time here! UGH!

Travel went REALLY well on the way out. Somehow I ended up in my own row on the long 12 hour flight, so I got to stretch out a bit between the two seats. Air Canada rocked.... I would totally fly them again! They had TVs in the seat, a plug to be able to charge your laptop, even an USB port right in the seat... it was crazy! They flight attendants were great - they kept the carts moving up and down the aisle (FREE drinks, too!), and kept coming around with water, too, which was key!

We hit the town on Wednesday night, doing anything, really to keep ourselves awake until a "normal" time. Unfortunately, I felt like crap after the trip and couldn't eat any of the awesome food the Captain ordered for us (there's a CG Capt stationed in Beijing who came over for our meetings). I then slept like crap Wed. night because of not eating, feeling sick, and being worried about not waking up on time for our meetings on Thursday!

Thursday, we got up early and headed to the Fisheries Law Enforcement Command base on the East China Sea. We got the chance to tour one of their cutters before heading back towad Shanghai for the rest of our meeting. The meetings were really productive, and a great experience to see cooperation between the two countries. It's amazing to me that China is actually one of the best partners we have for high seas fisheries enforcement - let's just say that the country as a whole, is not normally known for cooperation at sea!

Thursday night, they held a banquet in our honor, which was just a crazy experience! I don't even know how to describe it! We all sat around a HUGE round table, with the biggest "lazy susan" I've ever seen in the middle of it! Unlike our lunches, we each got individuals dishes at the banquet, but the servers would still put it all on the lazy susan in front of us. The food kept coming alllll night! CRAZY! We also toasted to anything and everything - I guess it's rude to drink without a toast when you're at something like that! Lucky for me, they go easy on the women (I was the only one), so I didn't drink nearly as much as the guys did. It was insane!
The other insane thing was the food choices!! YIKES! Lucky for me, it didn't appear to be rude to leave stuff behind, because there was no way I was trying dried jellyfish or duck tongue! Yes, that's right - duck tongue! Among some other strange dishes - chicken feet, beef tendon (which I did try, and don't recommend), some kind of dried squid, sea cucumbers, snake skin, river eels and I don't even know what else! Some of the food was really good... some of it, well, not so much!

Friday morning, we wrapped up our meeting, had lunch, and then headed out to do a little sightseeing.

Oh, first, lunch - much like dinner, we were at round tables, with huge, glass lazy susan's in the middle of the table. The server would just bring the dishes out, and put them on the table, and then we'd just take food from the family style dishes... Apparently, they were serving us pretty fancy food (a whole plate of foie gras!), so I felt bad when I really didn't like some of it, but most of it was good. Or, at least, edible! The lazy susan and the communal dishes (using just your own chopsticks to serve) was a little weird at first, but at least then you don't have to try to pass plates all night!

So, Friday afternoon, we finally got to sightsee... we went to a town called Zhouzhuang, a "water town." It had all kinds of canals and rivers running through it, with bridges to cross it all. (I guess there was something like it in Mission Impossible 3, though I never saw that one.) We did the complete tourist thing there, but it was totally worth it! It was beautiful, and ancient (over 900 years old), and gave us a better taste for China than Shanghai ever could. Our hosts took us out to a relaxed meal after our tour, where we ate "country" Chinese food - the kind of things people actually cook for themselves, rather than what we'd had up to that point. It was all WONDERFUL, and has ruined me for our American version of "Chinese" food. *sigh*
We headed back to "The Bund" in Shanghai on Friday night, getting a chance to see the skyline lit up at night. It was beautiful and weird at the same time - the lights are gorgeous, but it's strange that it's so flashy and non-traditional! It was neat to see, though!

We left for the airport first thing Saturday morning, and then flew for what seemed like forever. I got back here to Kodiak at about 3:30 on Saturday afternoon (after getting a day back during the trip), but my body thought it was almost 24 hours since I'd left Shanghai, and I spent most of the beginning of the week all screwed up now!

It was an amazing trip, and I'm so grateful that my job gave me this opportunity! Who knew that being in the CG, and being stationed in Kodiak would allow me to travel to CHINA, of all places!
Oh, and about the title of my post - thanks to Dave Aldous for that one - that was his pithy advice for me before I left. What a guy! Enjoy the slide show!!
Becca