The Adventures of the Griffis Family in China: November 10-18, 2010

Day 3, Thursday. Our sleep, particularly Owen’s, is about what you might expect with an eight-hour time difference. I awake in the morning with an upset stomach of weirdly ill-defined symptoms: am I feeling nausea? Indigestion? Sore abdominal muscles from stair-climbing? Maybe a little of each. So Eric goes to breakfast alone and I nibble gingerly at Nutri-Grain bars in the room.

Eric leaves for the lab, and Jun’s wife Minh arrives to keep me and Owen entertained for the morning. In the interest of time, Eric has suggested using the hotel’s valet laundry service to finish up the washing (or more importantly, the drying). Given the earlier towel episode, I ask Minh to handle the call to housekeeping for me. What unfolds next reminds me of the scene in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where Arthur Dent jams up the spaceship’s entire computer system with his request for tea. After an oddly long phone conversation, Minh reports: the laundry service, though listed in our guest services book, is really intended for people staying in the main wing of the hotel (which caters to short-term guests, remember we are staying in the section that usually houses long-term visitors); the desk clerk of our section is going to call the other wing and then phone us back. The phone rings again in five minutes, and another surprisingly long conversation takes place. Minh’s report: They are still not sure if they can do it, will call again. At this point, I am fairly sure that we have paralyzed the entire hotel staff with our outrageous, impossible laundry request. Another five minutes later, another phone call: Perhaps we can wash the clothes in our machine, then hand them over for drying? Will call back. Another five minutes, and the fourth, final phone call comes in: Sorry, the machines are broken. (And if you believe that, I have some land to sell you in Florida…)

So we leave wet clothes lying on every available flat surface (Minh is no more able to work out how to operate the radiators than I am, which is somehow a comfort), get Owen dressed and go for a walk, toddler-style: slow, meandering, with lots of time to climb rocks and pick up leaves in a little park about a block from the hotel. After no more than an hour, Owen announces that he is ready to go home for a nap, so we do. Minh leaves for a bit, returns with a bento box-style lunch for us, and bids us farewell.

Eric comes home at 2:30 with two of Jun’s students, who introduce themselves as Ryan and Ivy, in tow. They have been charged with taking us sightseeing for the afternoon. We get in a cab and head for Tianjin’s “Old Culture Street.” The traffic is alarming, and half the intersections don’t even seem to have lights. Looking around at the sights, I am most amused by the public buses, whose English slogan reads “Service for New Tianjin Feel Delighted on Public Transport” (After this trip, I am quite jaded about silly-translation websites like Engrish Funny. Big deal - EVERYTHING in China seems to be translated into English, and 90% or more of it is done very badly.) There is also a restaurant called “Mr. Rong” and a chain with the intriguing name “Breadcake.”

Old Culture Street reminds me of Grant Street in San Francisco, only cleaner and much less tacky. Big traditional gates frame the entry points, and the shops all sell traditional Chinese crafts: calligraphy, brush paintings, jade sculpture, Tibetan jewelry, Peking opera masks, fans, silk pajamas, and so on. I resist the urge to buy absolutely everything that catches my eye, thinking we will probably have lots of chances to shop for this kind of stuff later in the trip (which turns out to be a mistake; we don’t actually see any place like this in Beijing. Oh well.) There are just a few toy shops full of plastic crap – guess what draws Owen’s attention the most? A huge fuss is made over Owen the whole afternoon. Shopkeepers beckon us in and pet his hands and hair; other shoppers stop dead in the street just to watch him. A dour middle-aged man in one shop surprises me by not only asking us to take his picture with Owen on his iPhone, but then presenting him with a pair of kid-size chopsticks. We coax him to say “ni hao” as much as possible, which sends the Chinese women into fits of cooing and giggles.

As the sun sets, it becomes bitterly cold. We stop at a candy store for something Ryan translates as “tea.” I’m sure it’s because I already had Douglas Adams on the brain this morning, but when I taste it the phrase “almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea” pops into my head immediately. “Pudding” would have been much closer, only this stuff is hot and not cream-based. Owen’s is chocolate. Ours is just sort of blandly sweet, but it does warm us up nicely. Soon after that we head back towards the university, stopping at a restaurant across the street from campus. There is, no kidding, a T.G.I. Friday’s on the opposite corner. (Really, America? Really??) I still don’t have much appetite, but I manage a little bit of everything: tofu, bamboo, pepper beef, noodle soup, and some white vegetables that we don’t recognize and Ryan and Ivy don’t know how to translate. Everything goes well until Owen needs a diaper change. Eric takes him away. Several minutes later I see him beckoning to me from the doorway of the dining room. I am confused. Then Owen appears, with no trousers on, just a diaper. Uh-oh. I will spare you the appalling details of the Worst Diaper Fail Ever; suffice it to say that Ryan immediately departs with Eric and Owen in a cab back to the hotel, leaving Ivy and me to finish dinner somewhat awkwardly. Ivy has ordered some bread as a final dish. It turns out to be something very close to glazed donuts, so I take the leftovers home to Owen, who is delighted to be thus rewarded for his refusal to eat more than two bites of Chinese food all day.