Introductions

I’d fortuitously (or not so much depending on your point of view) managed to time my arrival perfectly so that on the first working day, we would be having a series of meetings. The morning would be the lab meeting for just my professor and his group of about ten students, and the afternoon one is for all the labs in the department. And my, you should have heard the groans when it was announced that the meetings would have to be in English, on account of my presence.

The first student struggled valiantly through his presentation, having mostly correct English, despite his “T6SS” sounding more like “T6XX” and “adjacent” simplified to “adjent”, but still, I very much appreciated the effort. For when he finished his talk, and Prof Ou struggled to even ask one question in English, the entire meeting lapsed into Chinese, from which it was never to recover.

Nevertheless, Prof Ou continued in his duties of providing excellent Chinese hospitality by taking a new student Lu, who has started only a few weeks ago, myself, and of course Yingzhou (since it was now becoming apparent that he was required at nearly all social occasions for translation purposes).



My new labmates Yingzhou and Lu

            We went to a lovely restaurant which they promised served the finest Shanghainese cuisine, and although there was no English menu, I wouldn’t have known what any of these things were, since I’d never seen any of them before. As was customary for Chinese eating etiquette, Pro Ou ordered a range of dishes which we all shared. I didn't quite take a fancy to the first course, which was some vile yellow-skinned chicken served cold and sliced bones and all (a Shanghainese speciality I’m told, which the boys seemed very fond of), but luckily, most of the rest of the dishes were quite palatable and even delicious.

 

There were also these caterpillar-looking things, which made me think that they were about to push my food boundaries a little sooner than I thought, but actually they turned out to be made from pastry, and were filled with a delicious root vegetable filling. Lord only knows how they get that fine concertina effect with the pastry!

There were also these deliciously sweet and cute pumpkin ball fritters, which had genuine pumpkin paste inside:

There was even a savoury dish that reminded me of Christmas pudding, but it was actually a special type of fried pork dumpling:

        And we washed this all down with chrysanthemum tea and watermelon juice! Result!

干杯(Gānbēi ) or “Cheers!”, from Prof Ou

We then went back to the university for the second half of the meetings. This departmental meeting was very busy and it was hard to find a place to sit, which meant that Lu and I ended up sitting on the front row. The meeting started with a whole range of announcements from the lab manager, and some comments from the others, which what I gathered was general housekeeping comments and announcements. However, at some point, everyone seem to look at me, and I was lucky that Lu managed to translate for me that the manager had announced that I was visiting their lab, and that I should stand up to say a few words.

Somewhat taken aback, having nothing prepared and still a little bit disorientated, I didn't really know what to say. Since English seemed to be a struggle for most people, I thought it would only be polite to say something in Chinese, so the first thing I said was “Ni hao”. Either this was really impressive, or they were under the impression that this meant that I could actually speak Chinese, and that they were expecting the rest of my speech to be in Mandarin, because I got a very hearty round of applause just for saying that! It must have been disappointing when I finished the remainder of my speech explaining that I was from the University of Leicester, and that I would be visiting Prof Ou’s lab for three months all in English.

I tried to put a positive spin on things saying that anyone was welcome to come chat to me to practice their English. But so far I have not had any takers on my offer, but the net result of the impromptu speech was that now everyone in the building knows my name, but I know only a handful of theirs! This produced some interesting situations, in which random people would say “Hello Eva!” as I passed, and I would have no idea who they were. Nevertheless, this came in very handy on one occasion when I mislaid my swipe card and couldn't get in. Some members of the department were passing and of course knew who I was and let me in right away. Maybe being the only Western person in the building and sticking out like a sore thumb has its advantages.