Hello from Luoyang in Henan province, China! I arrived here this afternoon (actually by now, it was yesterday afternoon – It’s 3am here and I’m jetlagged) along with 12 others from the Chinese Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety (INFS, part of the Chinese CDC).

I got to see a little bit of Beijing on Saturday when I went downtown to meet my Aunt Huiling (my mom's youngest uncle's daughter, who is only 3 years older than me), who has been studying Chinese in Beijing the last few months. For dinner, we had an insane around of food (particularly protein) at an all you can eat Japanese Teppanyaki place... it is funny how within a few hours of arriving in China, I eat the way my research is telling people not to eat!

Beijing has changed dramatically from the last time I was here 9 years ago... from what I have seen so far it is really quite modern, and at many times I felt like I was in Singapore. I was sort of surreal...

Fortunately, Luoyang has a different feel, and reminds me more like Johor Bahru. The traffic is still a little crazy her (vehicles do not stay in their lanes, and drivers really like to honk around here even when there is no real need). There are more bicycles on the roads here compared to Beijing and things are in general, grittier – more like what Beijing was like 10 years ago.

I went for a walk near the hotel with some of the younger INFS folks after dinner, to the Zhou dynasty park (Luoyang was the capital of the Zhou dynasty), where there were various groups gathered throughout either singing Chinese opera or dancing -- there was a big group of about 40-50 women dancing to ramba music. Across the street from that is the Zhou emperor's tomb, that they discovered there a while ago and now is an underground monument/ museum. Apparently he was buried with 6 horses among other things and the actual remains are still there.... it's only 3 RMB (~ 40 cents) to go check it out, so we might do that sometime -- but the museum is only open during the day time.

It will be a busy day ahead, so I’m wondering how long I will last given my lack of sleep, but I’m giving my presentation before lunch, so it’ll be good to get that out of the way and perhaps it’ll make things easier to chat with other folks (there are about 50 survey personnel here from various provinces) if they have questions about some of the work I’ll be presenting. Folks here have generally been very nice to me and seem surprised that I am able to converse pretty well in Mandarin (although admittedly I struggle from time to time to get my point across when I come across some terms I can’t remember!), and thus rather encouraging.

~ Shuwen