Alas no. But I did lose a significant part of last night's post due to the vagaries of my email app. If I failed to mention it, Blogger is blocked in China so I have been reduced to posting by email, a feature of Blogger I had almost forgotten existed. Good thing it does.
Anyways....I was trying to tell the story of our last feast in Xi'an and the remarkable fact that we were joined for this one by a member of the CCP. When I was at NENU, I met the vice dean of the school of economics. The dean proper is actually a CCP member and has little active role in the operation of the department but has the gig in case someone's academic freedom needs tweaking. None of the students I spoke to had actually seen the guy.
But here was the CCP rep for the medical school at which C had given her talks. Sitting next to me. Of course, I was wholly fascinated by the guy. He had the easy familiarity of a politician or fraternity brother. And he spoke not a line of English.
At most of these dinners there is red wine and "white wine." You quickly learn that the white is actually mou tai, a 90 proof spirit. Nixon got hammered on the stuff during his visit.
We toast with the stuff at these banquets. And I was several shots in when I saw the party official was going to each person at the banquet and toasting with them individually. That's like eight more shots.
This guy is exactly like a fraternity brother. And this is his career skill.
Feeling the faint stirring of patriotism in my loins, I started making a few toasts myself; their contents were the usual platitudes but in my heart I was toasting rule of law, Facebook, and American football!
Needless to say, I got rocked. And yesterday morning was no picnic. A travel day no less. But we are in Beijing now and had Peking duck in the place it got its name. Not too shabby.
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