Hangzhou 杭州

There are many beautiful canal towns ending in "zhou" (州), in Zhejiang, the province next to Shanghai, of which I have visited two (the post about Yangzhou is here).
      I almost didn't get to see Hangzhou because I nearly ran out of time. I avoided it earlier in my trip, because as the capital city of the Zhejiang province, and attracts a lot of tourists to its large West Lake, so it can get quite crowded. But I figured, by late November time, it must be quieter, but the weather was still sunny, so I hopped on a bullet train with Jing, my labmate, early one morning to take a look at what all the fuss was about. 
      We mainly spent most of our time around the famous West Lake (西湖), which was very pretty and definitely seemed deserving of its UNESCO World Heritage Site title. What surprised me is that it was much bigger than I expected. It takes between one to two hours to drive from one end to another! I naively assumed that we could just get off at the metro station (for Hangzhou is important enough for an extensive metro network to be planned, of which one line is already complete, and conveniently takes people from the futuristic-looking Hangzhou East railway station to very near the West Lake), and walk around to the silk museum which I was interested in visiting. I think that would have taken all day! We did start off with a stroll though, and saw some beautiful sights. I have to say a proviso here, the photos in this post are of much better quality than my usual standard on account of having borrowed YZ's Nikon dSLR for the day. It was so great and I was able to take the photos I always wanted!
There was a fountain show starting just as we got to the lake:

Fantastic fountain show at the east end of the West Lake

This fountain show went on for about 15 minutes and came back every now and then later. We spent some time watching it and got lucky in catching this rainbow in it.

Jing (静) walking along the West Lake (西湖)

Jing and I had a great stroll along the side before deciding to go to Hefang Street for lunch, which had its usual busy shops selling nick-nacks.

Hefang Street

and we also saw a brilliant sugar artist who had many crowded around him, admiring his handiwork:

Pouring a sugar dragon

This is quite a common sight to see around markets in China, where different animals from the Chinese Zodiac calendar are poured free hand and when its finished, mounted onto a stick to make a beautiful candy lolly. I'm supposed to have the ox (牛), from the year I was born, but I think that dragons are much more beautiful!
After a taxi ride towards the silk museum, we had a short walk near the lake again, where we saw some lovely sites.

We made it to the Silk Factory, which had a beautiful sculpture in the front entrance.

Entrance to the Hangzhou Silk Museum

Even though part of the museum was closed for refurbishments, it was still a very educational and informative museum. I was mainly interested from a biological point of view, and I got the answers to all my questions such as where does the silk come out from? (apparently it's the caterpillar's mouths) and how do they unravel the silk strands from the cocoons? (it's slightly unsavory - they dip the cocoons into boiling water to kill the chrysalis and then stir the mixture with bamboo sticks until the end of the strand comes loose!). The rest of the museum allowed you to see all the stages of silk production, going through the process of transforming the raw silk strands into fabric by weaving, including an impressive array of old looms.

Old silk loom at Hangzhou Silk Museum

This was followed by different dyeing or decoration techniques, including charting the historical progress of natural dyes and traditional embroidery.

Silk sheets dyed with natural dyes hanging from the ceiling of the museum

There were a range of different buildings housing different aspects of silk production and decoration. There is also a building housing the live moths and caterpillars that create the beautiful fabric, but unfortunately it's only open to the public during May, when the mulberry leaves are in season and the caterpillars can be fed. They did have a few pretty bonsai trees in the garden though

Bonsai trees in the garden of the Hangzhou silk museum

Afterwards, we went to Zhejiang University (浙江大学), which is one of the most famous universities in China, and is known as the "Cambridge of the East". We went to the Yuquan campus, which houses the famous statue of Mao, who looks over the campus park.

Mao statue looking over park at Zhejiang University, Yuquan campus

Mao statue at Zhejiang University, Yuquan campus

 It is also very leafy and makes for a pleasant stroll.

The leafy streets of Zhejiang University at Yuquan campus

Some of the most beautiful buildings are at the Zhijiang campus, but unfortunately, it was a two hour bus ride away, south-west of the lake, so we just simply didn't have the time to get there!
But alas it was soon time to go, so we just took one more stroll around the West Lake and caught the sunset there before heading home.

Taking in the view at the West Lake (西湖)

Sunset on West Lake (西湖)

Sunset on West Lake (西湖)

Futuristic-looking Hangzhou East railway station

Generally Hangzhou was very pretty, and I underestimated the size. Whenever I mentioned that I was going or had been, people asked me if I spent one or two days there, and I naively assumed that one would be enough, but probably people are right, it would be better to spend two days there. Simply because of the size, we spent a lot of time travelling around to different places. Having said that, the taxis were reasonable and the buses were extremely cheap (only 1 or 1.5 RMB per journey). I had wanted to visit the ancient temple of Fei Lai Feng, where statues of Buddha were carved into the rock and cave walls there, however we were put off by the distance, as it is a fair way from the West Lake, and at 150 RMB entrance fee, it was a bit steep. However, the Baochu pagoda would also have been nice to see if we had had more time, which is an old tower that is said to have great views of Hangzhou.
Overall, it was a nice trip out, and I didn't get bothered too much by people who'd never seen a wàiguó rén (外国人) before, but Jing told me that I got many comments about my height, as the average height of people in Hangzhou seemed to be significantly shorter than in Shanghai! 
Have you been to Hangzhou? What did you think of it?

Being a Western Scientist in China

I mainly started this blog as a way to keep my friends and family updated with how I am doing in China, but I've recently had more questions about my work, so this is going to be a technical post. As most of you already know, the original reason why I went to Shanghai is that I'm a microbiologist PhD student, and I was going on exchange to a lab there to work on a collaborative research project. But I have been making the use of this opportunity to visit some old friends and new places. I've had some of you asking me pointedly asking “how’s the work going?” and others just being more forthright and coming out with “are you actually doing any work there, or is it just all fun?”. Yes, I am doing some work! Of course, I've mainly been posting about the fun things that I got up to at the weekend, rather than my daily work, but to balance things out, I will describe how the work has been in Shanghai compared to my old lab. Although things were a bit slow to get started, I'm pretty much used to everything now, so it’s going as fast as research normally does (ie. not very fast at all). I have also now given three presentations, including one I was asked to do in Huashan hospital when I went to visit old lab friend Dr Jiang:

Giving a presentation for Dr Jiang, who’s English has improved impressively since he left Leicester

   People normally ask about the “culture shock” when you arrive in China, but since I already have a lot of experience with Chinese culture, this was not much of an issue for me. My younger sister has her undergraduate degree in Chinese and already spent a year in Kunming. In addition, I've made many Asian friends over the years in Nottingham and Leicester, who have taught me many different things about Chinese culture, and helped me prepare for my move. So I think my biggest shock came from how different things were in the lab. Yes, I expected some big differences, since every lab does things differently, and this is after all, a country that’s only just reaching comparable research standards to the West. But as with everything here in China, my lab experience was full of contradictions.

   In actual fact, this lab has significantly more money than my lab back home in Leicester. One of the reasons for this is that unlike in the West, China has not cut funding to science in response to global financial issues. On the contrary, they've actually invested even larger amounts of money into research. This has been in a focused effort to raise the profile of Chinese research and to attain a level of standard that is comparable to that of the West. While China’s universities still rarely make it into the top groups of the international university league tables, they have been steadily rising, and their research has been garnering more respect and they increasingly have equal footing in the community, and as China is approaching an era where for the first time its number of publications will outstrip that of the US, the effort definitely seems to be reaping its rewards.

R & D spending relative to GDP by top six countries ("China's Absorptive State" Bound, et al. 2010)

   So this means that they have plenty of high standard equipment for starters:

Several refrigerated proper eppendorf centrifuges line the lab

These two brand new incubators arrived while I was in the lab

Also, since the building doesn't have gas piping throughout to support Bunsens, all sterile work has to be done in cabinets. And there are lots of great cabinets, new and old. Our lab has two new ones, which they boasted were made in Germany:

YZ working in one of the brand new cabinets (and sporting an unnecessary but apparently compulsory face mask!)

But as you can imagine, there aren't enough cabinets for everyone, so sometimes you have to wait, which I find very frustrating, as I'm used to a Bunsen each, meaning that everyone can do lab work at the same time. Also it’s annoying because I don’t understand when people have verbally “booked” a time slot for the cabinet, so that causes some confusion, but I'm getting by. Another thing which frustrates me is that there are only two gel tanks - one medium, one small - to share between two labs worth of people, so work is often slowed because I'm waiting for a tank to free up.

One of the best things about working in this lab is that the turnaround time for primer and sequencing services are really quick, operating seven days a week, and pick-ups and deliveries start very early and can go on until 7 or 8 pm. If you order before 12 pm, you’ll get your primers tomorrow morning. Having these services every day certainly helps to speed up the pace of the work. And I’ve done sequencing twice here now, and it’s the only time I've ever had over 1 Kb result, with NO Ns! None!
So the downsides: Most lab meetings are all in Chinese. As I mentioned in one of my first posts, the students are required to write up their PowerPoint files in English, but since many of them and their supervisors sometimes struggle with English, they give the presentation in Chinese. It was cute when Dr Jiang translated my presentation for others, slide by slide, but it does get to be a bit of a drag when I sit for two hours in the weekly lab meeting, without a clue what is going on. Occasionally, they will spend about 20 minutes discussing the minutiae of one slide which takes me less than a minute to read. This is pretty much the time when I catch up on the news from home on my phone, lol. Thankfully, they don't ask me to go to the departmental meetings, since most of those presentations are irrelevant for me anyway because the rest of the department all works on Streptomyces, and the thought of others who don't really know me being forced to speak English just for my benefit would just be too much to bear (for them, and for me!).

 On my arrival in the lab, a new lab coat was ordered just for me, but it was far too big. It quickly became apparent that this was probably because I'm the tallest person they've ever seen. They ordered me a size XXXXL (yes, that’s right, four Xs!), and I don't think they realised that large sizes were for overweight people rather than tall ones, so I billow around the lab in my tent like so:

Fun in my tent. No howie-style labcoats here. Nor labcoats with any style at all, really

However, despite the riches, there is some random stuff that they do to save money, that doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever, given the resources at their disposal. For example, using old newspapers or free tourist maps to cover flasks and tying it up with string instead of just buying aluminium foil!

Random, but cost effective way of covering flasks

You can see from this picture that bottles alcohol and other flammables are just stored randomly around the lab, in fact, there is no flammables cabinet as far as I can see. Chloroform is freely used in the open air, although I can’t stomach the smell so much, and I'm regarded as a bit of a wuss for only being able to open the bottle in the cabinet.
Also, there is no blue roll - none! They simply use toilet roll for everything that we would normally use blue roll for. Infuriating when the stuff disintegrates in your hands and leaves tiny clumps everywhere.

 They are also missing some other, really obvious, and vital items in the lab too. For example, there are no P10 pipettes! Not even one to share between all the members of the lab! So we have to make do with our P20s, even for really small amounts like pipetting 0.5 μl on an enzyme! (For anyone that doesn't know, this is really, really bad for the pipette – you should not really go below 2 μl on a P20, as it can distort the spring, and it will get decalibrated and eventually break!). Even Lu seems confused about this, and she says they had plenty of P10s in her previous lab in Yangzhou University for her masters, so this must just be this lab.
**************************UPDATE*******************************
Since I have whined and laughed about the situation, there has now been a new P2 purchased to share between the members of the lab. I do hope it's not because they've been reading my blog and hearing me complain about it! But anyway, even if it is, it will benefit everyone in the lab, so hooray!
*****************************************************************
Also, there are no regular autoclave runs or media kitchen staff. We have to do all our own autoclaving, as and when enough stuff comes together to fill an autoclave.This plays havoc with my OCD/probably mild Asperger's, since I normally plan my experiments around our regular twice-daily autoclave routine at home. However, the plus sides of this system is that there are plenty of people needing to autoclave runs so probably most days will have a run three times, including one in the evening, which wouldn't be possible at home. But due to the haphazard system, it means that people never really know when to go back and get their stuff, so autoclaved things are just piled up on the floor, creating a total mess. Honestly, a few months in China would easily cure anybody of their OCD.

 They also don’t buy kits for most things, including gDNA extraction. The in-house plasmid extraction system is pretty good and working well according to the standards required. But the gDNA extraction is not so good, to the point where the people in the lab have to use colony PCR for every kind of chromosomal PCR, otherwise they get no product. When they asked me what we use, I just gave them the name of the supplier for our gDNA kit. YZ was so surprised to hear that the max yield of our kit was 24 μg gDNA from 500 μl, and that I regularly got 15 – 20 μg. But he told me that nobody else in the department buys kits, so it would look really bad for them to order one, and cause problems in their relationship. This is due to some kind of unspoken Chinese social rule called “guānxì” (关系) and to do anything to disrupt this would mean causing a lot of problems and “losing face” and so basically in China it would be social suicide. When I suggested that other groups in the department are probably also having the same problem and are dying for someone to order a kit so that they can order one too, this point was acknowledged, but then I got the shoulder shrug which means “This is China”. This doesn't make any sense to me, since it seems so obviously to be in everyone’s benefit for all the supervisors to just get together and agree to change the procedure in the department, but I could see that this was never going to happen! However, I know that guānxì is very important in China, so I didn't want to rock the boat too much by pushing the issue and risk offending anyone.

  In addition, there is no real system for waste disposal to speak of. This was pretty much to be expected I guess, but I was still a bit surprised to find that there is no waste autoclave system set up, there’s just a general pour-everything-down-the-sink kind of attitude. There isn't even really a receptacle for waste liquids, you just pour it into the tip box, and then wait for evaporation to take its course! Tip boxes are emptied into general bins (not autoclaved), and even for dangerous organisms, tips are just put into a jar with floor cleaner in, and then this is poured down the sink too! So generally, there are many things happening that would have a certain technician from home in fits! But hey, when in Rome, do as the Romans, but I just know from this that I'm going to have to do a lot of explaining to and keeping an eye on YZ when he first arrives in our lab in the UK, as our system will be so very different.

   The contradictory part of all of this is that despite all the negligence, YZ has to wear a facemask and other protective equipment when working with Klebsiella, because it’s regarded as a highly dangerous organism! How can it be that so many health and safety rules are ignored here, but they adhere to a completely unnecessary one so rigorously?! Needless to say, I refuse to partake in such nonsense. YZ has also started to use the mask less since I've been here, and nobody has died yet.

   However, what the lacks in sense, it makes up for in friendliness. For certainly, the atmosphere in this lab is much more relaxed and friendly. Between the hours of 8 am and 10 pm, you’re pretty much guaranteed to see a friendly face there. Yes, this seems like long hours, and yes, they do get up and start working earlier than we do in the Western world, but it's not a crazy amount, it's not like they sleep in the lab (well actually sometimes they do, especially in the summer, because then they can get free air con through the night!). In fact, there is a lab rule that you should not work at night (athough this is mainly a request from the departmental technician to save money on electricity!). Obviously, sometimes people break this rule (myself included!) depending on what deadlines they have coming up. Also, the pressures are much greater here, because every masters student must publish at least one first author paper, and every PhD student must publish two first author papers, totalling to a required amount of IF of the journal they publish in. This isn't a requirement at all Chinese universities, but it seems to be more common in China than the UK, from what I understand. In addition, if a Chinese student publishes in a high impact factor, they can be rewarded for their troubles by the government in the form of increased scholarship! A recent example is a friend from a neighbouring lab who published in Nucleic Acids Research, and may be entitled to up to £3000 extra scholarship next year! Update - the first thing he did was go out and buy an iPhone 6 plus *facepalm*

My general impression of Chinese research is that they do try to step things up a gear and be more hard working. The whole lab is geared towards getting everything done much quicker, whether this means having primer and sequencing services on every day, or only incubating transformations for half an hour instead of the usual one, right down to using fast digest enzymes and blitzing gels through at 130 V to be done in half an hour. But opposite to what I expected, this actually doesn't feel like working much harder, and the results come much quicker, so it was much easier to stay motivated on the project - you don't have to work late against your will to get some samples ready in time for sequencing pick up days or getting primer orders in before the weekend, because you know they would come every day anyway. So overall, I thought it was a great working environment, and I felt much more productive than I normally did in Leicester.
But with regards to friendliness, everyone is approachable and helpful, and there is much more of a lab camaraderie.  The lab shares the ups and downs of research and life, as well as meals together twice a day, helping each other out - the lab is essentially the hub of the community. This is a great recipe for collaborative problem solving and great science in my opinion. Not to mention that it’s emotionally healthy. I have to say this has been one of the highlights of my trip, and the guys in the lab have really made my time here that much more enjoyable and comfortable. I will miss this when I'm back in Leicester, that’s for sure.

Yangzhou 扬州

           Shanghai is surrounded by many pretty formerly canal towns that mined the region that became Shanghai for its raw materials and became rich with it's trade. The most important of these towns all end in "zhou" (州) so this is the first part of my tour of two local 州 cities.

The first one I visited because I had the fortune of being invited by labmate Lu, who calls Yangzhou home, after completing her master at the university there. It was once a very rich city, and it is reported that even Marco Polo was an important governor here at one point during his travels. I got there by taking a bullet train to Zheijiang where Lu and her husband Hang picked me up, and they were my brilliant guides for the weekend. This meant that my weekend was very well organised by them and I got to see lots of pretty sights. Many of the photos here were taken by Hang on his Canon dSLR, since are much better quality and give a better impression of this quaint little city.
        These first photos are taken from the major tourist point, the Slender West Lake (瘦西湖):

My hosts for the weekend, Lu and Hang

They were having a chrysanthemum festival, so the whole place was covered in pots of chrysanthemums in all sizes, shapes and colours

I'm the same height as Lu when I sit down!

A hedge turned into a dragon!

Dongguan Street was our next stop for a light lunch which turned into a heavy one, on account of Hang being very keen for me to try as many of the wide variety of food stall available there. I only just managed to escape having to try freshly fried squid on a stick, which him and Lu munched away happily, while I tucked into extra chou doufu (臭豆腐). I know for some of you, squid may also have been delicious, it's just that seafood is a pet hate of mine. It was fried fresh in front of us though, so that's the best and safest way to have seafood, so if you like eating such creatures, this type of snack may be right up your street.

Then we headed over to Dongguan Street for lunch

Squid on a stick. Yum

One of the many funny statues at Dongguan Street

Many unusual shaped doorways in traditional Chinese architecture

I never get tired of Chinese doorways

After a spot of souvenir shopping, we went on to the He gardens, which mainly had beautiful old buildings from a Qing dynasty salt merchant. Apparently he lost his house during the cultural revolution and the triumph of communism, and basically got handed over to the government and is run by what I guess must be China's equivalent of the National Trust.

Lake at He Gardens

My hosts also took me to a very nice restaurant serving traditional Yangzhou food, and I have to say, it was one of the most delicious and pleasant experiences I've had in a traditional Chinese restaurant (one with the turntable in the middle). We ordered Yangzhou fried rice (扬州炒饭), which has a reputation for being just boring fried rice, but it was actually bursting with flavour from all the different vegetables and spices and ingredients and so I really quite liked it. We also had the ostentatious "lion's head" dish which is kind of like a large pimped up meatball with interesting filling inside. It is called the lion's head because the shaggy appearance of the meat is supposed to resemble a lion's hair (although I personally think that's stretching it a bit). We also had some delicious shredded tofu soup and some steamed fish, amongst other dishes. My friends had previously proudly boasted about the quality of Yangzhou food, and after my experience, I was tempted to agree that it lived up to its name.

Overall, I'd say Yangzhou is a great day out, but then, I partly had such a good time because I had experienced hosts who knew the place so well and were very organised in taking me round all the best places. Great to go to if Hangzhou is too mainstream for you (I hope to cover Hangzhou in an upcoming post soon!).

Seoul-cialite (Part II - Modern day Seoul)

This is part two of my trip to Seoul, because I had such an amazing experience, I had to split it into two parts. In fact, I should have split it into three. If you would like to read part one, it is here.
Despite my previous post delving into much of Korea’s historical culture and development, Seoul is nothing if not synonymous with modernity.

This is definitely one of the first things that strikes you when arriving in South Korea. Of course, this is the land of the tech giant Samsung, etc, but I didn’t quite expect it to be on the scale that it was. Wherever you went, there was some technology around. Even most of the lifts contain TV screens playing some sort of adverts or shows, and there is WiFi EVERYWHERE. And when I mean Wifi, I don’t mean the crap kind where you have to stand in a corner to get just one bar of signal strength, and if you take a step in either direction, then you’ve lost it. I mean the good, four bars full kind of superfast Wifi, where gif downloads on your phone are almost instantaneous. Every single subway stop and many shops have WiFi, and although many are paid, most of them, such as one service called “Olleh” usually cost less than £2 for a whole day’s worth of WiFi, which can be used at one of their many points all around the city. The vouchers can be bought at many, convenient locations all over the city, such as any convenience store, just like phone top up vouchers. The telephone boxes in the street also have WiFi capability, and some places even have it for free, at familiar places like Starbucks, some other coffee shops and anywhere where you can pick up a network called “iptime”. The best WiFi was at the airport, where there were many points with really excellent signals (great when my filght was slightly delayed), and I managed to upload all my Facebook photos in a matter of minutes (I was taking full advantage of my precious few days of unadulterated Facebook access! And I finally managed to watch the infamous Paxman vs Brand interview!), although it wasn’t quite good enough for me to Skype my dad while I was waiting for my plane though!

Even at museums, such as Leeum Museum of Art built by the founder of Samsung near his former home, there was state of the art technology. The audio guides were essentially a modified form of a Samsung smartphone, with a retina display standard screen, and some technology inside meant that it detected when you got within a 1 m radius of any of the exhibits, and played an audio description of the item. This came in especially handy when we got to the modern art section, as that’s something that definitely needs explaining to me. I was surprised to find that there is actually a genuine explanation behind some of Rothko’s paintings (!) I was also glad when Aimee’s husband said he didn’t get modern art either. The Zaha Hadid structure still under construction at Dongdaemun is also met with similar confusion, and a touch of resentment at losing their old, beloved baseball stadium.

Staircase inside Leeum Museum of Art

Since it was an art museum, I don’t have any pictures from inside, just a few from outside:

My Korean friend Aimee and myself

Installation by Anish Kapoor outside the Samsung Leeum Museum of Art

Also, since my friend lives in Gangnam-gu (the region south of the river), which like in many major cities it seems in Asia, was the less productive part of the city until the era of skyscrapers, when many such buildings sprang up and it became a major business centre, bringing along with it all the economic benefits. This resulted in Gangnam becoming quite a rich area, what Aimee says might be considered a bit like Seoul’s equivalent of Chelsea (but with less history), or like Shanghai’s Pudong region. It also means that it has become the haunt of some rich, privileged types, of whom the infamous “Gangnam Style” song is making fun. Since I was staying in this area, I couldn’t resist a visit to Gangnam station, where there is a light-hearted structure erected to commemorate the surprise global success of this song:

Tribute to commemorate the crazy success of the "Gangnam Style" song

My Seoulite friends seem pretty nonplussed about the song though, I guess it’s a bit old for them and the craziness has died down now, but I still think it’s an amazing achievement - the most played video ever on YouTube – 1.8 billion (yes, billion) views at the time of writing, which would no doubt be much higher if YouTube was available in China! It has helped put Seoul on the map internationally, and I’m sure it will continue to do much for the economy for years to come, if only through tourism alone. But when I mention it, it’s met with comments like “oh, most of the video wasn’t even filmed in Gangnam, blah blah…..” But I guess it’s not exactly a piece of high-brow culture!

One of the things the song makes fun of is people’s vanity. A major effect of the prosperity in Korea has been a spike in popularity for plastic surgery. In the Asian world where job applications can specify things like height or weight, image is a very important thing. And nowhere is this more noticeable, than South Korea, which has become the plastic surgery capital of the world, where eyelid surgery, jaw reshaping and nose jobs are very common. This has supposedly resulted in ridiculous situations such as the man who successfully sued his wife on the grounds of marrying him under false pretences, after she gave him ugly children (although now it is widely reported that this story was actually completely false). Nevertheless, you are bombarded with a large number of visual adverts showing before and after shots of a number of surgeries, plastered all throughout the subway and other parts of the city. The health care system as a whole seems to be very commercialised, as there were many shops around for different specialists, and there was even a urologist next to the 7 eleven at the base of where I was staying. On the whole though, I would say that Koreans are definitely the most image conscious of all the Asian people, and in China is it fairly easy to spot them – the men are much more likely to be wearing they hair long (like Beatles 1970s style), or dyed (blonde is quite common, but it just looks so bad!), which makes a contrast for the more traditional, conservative Chinese look. But many of the Chinese are aware of this, and are keen to imitate the trendy Korean style. One of the first questions I got asked when I got back was whether I bought some clothes, and other people have proudly said to be that they had their hair done in a “Korean style” for their wedding (I don’t know what this means either!).

 

                Another thing that was high on my priority during my visit to Seoul was to eat some proper Korean food. After arriving in China, many people said that Korean food was particularly delicious, and it was a special treat to go to a Korean restaurant. My DK guidebook also told me that it’s exceptionally healthy for Asia, partly because they use much less oil than the Chinese, but also because they eat a lot of vegetables and cook things very fresh. It seems to be standard in Korean restaurants to bring bowls of fresh ingredients, and cook it on a hob embedded in the table in front of you, which means you can cook it just the way you like, no over-cooking, leaving all the good vitamins and minerals intact, and it goes straight to your plate, so it’s very nutritious

So, Aimee and Bina took me to the Bulgogi Brothers restaurant (불고기브라더스) to have bulgogi, which is a kind of beef stew with sugar and lots of vegetables, and it also came in this way. Aimee said that foreigners always like this dish, and I was no exception!

 

As we sat with our food steaming away in front of us, we nibbled on an array of vegetable side-dishes, including kimchi, mashed pumpkin and many others, which were all unlimited, so there was no fighting over who had the last bit, because you could always ask for more! This really was one of the tastiest dishes I’ve ever had, and the girls told me that this place is so popular that there are now stores in America, Canada and Malaysia (wish they would open one in London!).

                After this delicious experience, I was feeling ready to try anything new, so when Bina suggested getting Ddeokbokki for lunch the next day, I figured I may as well try it out. It was mentioned in my DK book under “top ten Korean meals”, and although it was described as “rice-cake chunks (ddeok) in a thick, and very spicy red-pepper soup”, Bina assured me that she knew a place in a trendy part of town Garosu-gil (가로수 길) that made a more tolerable version. Bina ordered, and our delicious meal came in all its fresh, raw glory, piled high with minced beef, spring onions, rice-chunks, noodles and sauce, all sat on our own personal camping stove.

Bina, with our lunch just after it arrived, ready to cook

Before trying the ddeokbokki

Looking back on it, I probably should have seen the warning signs, as this place was called “Villa de Spicy”. As soon as we started eating it was quite obvious that it was going to be a rough ride. Apparently Bina had asked for a “medium” spice, but even she and Aimee had struggled with the dish, looking round at the others in the restaurant going “why is no one else suffering?!”. As some of you will know I have a very low tolerance to spice anyway, so this was a real effort for me. All the other ingredients in there I knew were very delicious, and I especially love the rice chunks, so I tried to battle my way through a small plate. In desperation, we ordered some extra rice and I got myself a beer, but to no avail. Even a San Muigel couldn’t wash away all this capsaicin. After a while, it was possible to ignore the spice, mainly because we had lost all feeling in our mouths. I can honestly say that I have never tasted anything like this before, but that would imply that I was able to taste anything. I gave up after a plate and a half, and though the girls bravely ate some more, they couldn’t finish the dish either, and we decided that our next stop had to be an ice-cream parlour. By this point I had succumbed to the pain and it made my eyes water just a little bit!

After trying the Ddeokbokki!

I also developed a sudden headache, started to wonder whether I would be experiencing capsaicin toxicity for the first time. It was either that or the beer had gone to my head! It was a really interesting experience though, and I’d love to repeat it, but first I’d learn how to say in Korean to the chef “stop torturing people by making delicious food completely inedible and painful!”

Korean “ice flake” after the fiery meal to soothe our tongues

And the toilets! I could write a whole separate blog post about South Korean toilets! After some horrific experiences in both Beijing and Shanghai, you realise what a luxury it is to have a good, clean toilet. Before you wonder whether if I’m a few meatballs short of a dumpling, toilets in Korea are note worthy because even in most public places, they were so clean and were electronically controlled to within an inch of their life. I was so surprised to find that many seats are heated, even at my friend’s home and at the airport. The electronic seats have so many buttons at the side to spray water in this or that direction, you don’t really know what to do with them. Almost everywhere the remaining facilities were touchless motion sensors, but what really surprised me was that the airport even had a map of the cubicles when you first walked in, with red and green lights to indicate which places were free! I was so astonished, I wanted to take a picture, but I thought this was probably too much, and anyway, the facilities were so well designed that I would have been in full view of a group of women at the specially designated area with floor length mirrors for adjusting your looks (cleverly thought out to avoid having people blocking the way to the hand-wash basins – is there nothing they don’t think of?!). So, apologies, but no pictures here of coloured toilet maps and heated seats.

 

Getting back to more serious issues, as we sat at our trendy dessert parlour recovering from our experience and discussing the passage of time, as well as agreeing on when we should meet up next (the girls want a 10 year reunion with all the guys from our halls in Hong Kong!), I suddenly felt very lucky to be there, and the realisation dawned on me I thought that barely a stone’s throw away (about 50 miles to be exact) was a country at the complete opposite end of the scale of living standards in Asia. At the end of World War II, as the Japanese surrendered, they also had to give up Korea, which they were then occupying. The US, who had previously maintained troops there during the war did not really acknowledge the temporary government set up to rule Korea. At the same time, Soviet tanks entered North Korea from Siberia. The division was meant to be temporary, but during the years that followed, which precipitated the Cold War, each side began to be suspicious of the other, and would not yield their half of Korea. Each side felt that they had a right to govern the other, and in 1950, the Korean War broke out, when the North side decided to take forceful action to take back the Southern half and create a unified communist country. Of course, the Americans would not tolerate this, so they boosted their military presence by hundreds of thousands of soldiers, as well as from the help of other UN countries. Meanwhile, China got involved on the North Korean side. The conflict reached a stalemate, and eventually, an armistice was signed in 1953, which means that neither side has won, and technically, the war isn't over. It is frightening to think that earlier this year, North Korea had claimed that this armistice was now finished (a decision it made all by itself) and that North Korea "is not restrained by the North-South declaration on non-aggression." Despite this, people seem to be carrying on as normal for the time being.

           The net result of all the conflict mainly caused by North Korea is that it forced America to evaluate the importance of this country in Asia, and it decided that South Korea was valuable enough to protect and keep friendly, so in the subsequent years has maintained a steady presence with much aid in assistance from town planning and businesses, which has benefited the country enormously and is probably ultimately responsible for South Korea's current thriving economy. This small Asian country seems in infinitely better shape than China, a country with much more resources and a larger workforce. I have to admit that I naively believed that this is what all of China would be like before I came, but definitely, China is not there yet. South Korea is clearly one of the most comfortable Asian countries, which others look up to, to some extents. The American influence can be seen very clearly, from the naming of blocks as numbers on very long streets (as in New York), to the omnipresent "Dunkin' Donuts" stores. Never before has such a political experiment produced such staggeringly different results. The closest similarity that comes to mind is the chapter in “Collapse” by Jared Diamond, in which he compares how one Caribbean island split into two countries – Haiti and the Dominican Republic - has similarly massive chasms in prosperity. Although some have criticised his review of this situation, it would be interesting to see what he has to say on the Korean issue. The conflict is technically still ongoing, but apparently trips out to the Demilitarized Zone are very popular, and that’s definitely one trip out of the city I’d like to do next time I go back.

  Despite the political conflicts, Seoul has the luxury to indulge in some really nice renovations within the city. One night, after we came back early from dinner on account of Aimee’s baby and because Bina lives outside the city, I just couldn’t help myself, and I snuck back out to take a look at the lantern festival at Cheonggyecheon. This is a part of the old city that used to have a small tributary of the main river. However, due to overcrowding by the poorer communities, it became very polluted and unsightly and was filled in and turned into a highway by the authorities during a 20 year renovation of the city starting in 1958.

Then, in 2003, then mayor of Seoul, Lee Myung-bak (who subsequently became president of South Korea) decided that it would be a great project to restore the stream, creating jobs and also re-introducing more of nature into the heart of the capital (again, this seems to be a common theme that it held in high importance by forward-thinking South Koreans). It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but the mounting costs to remove the highway, and then the pumping of water artificially to the site to replenish the now dried-up stream, coupled with some safety issues, meant that the total cost of the project reached around $900 million. This left a lot of Korean tax-payers very unhappy, as they felt that this was a pointless vanity exercise.

However, I couldn’t disagree more! I really like the idea, and I really loved it when I got there. I think bringing the natural elements back into the city gives a really nice atmosphere and a very pleasant walk along major part of the city, since the stream stretches over 8.4 km. The removal of the highway improved the air quality in the city centre, although the air is already infinitely better than the major Chinese cities, which made me laugh when I saw the odd Seoulite with face masks.

Also, since I’m a lover of lights and night photography, I simply couldn’t resist the lantern festival, and took as many photos as I could before it closed at 11 pm. I only just made it back to the last subway home, but I think it was worth it (even if I had to walk the last stop or two back to the hotel!). Each lantern tells a story and there are full explanations next to them. There was everything from a traditional Korean wedding scene, complete with guests; to mythical creatures, flying fish and even something resembling a Christmas tree. These are some of my favourites:

Seoul Lantern Festival

It was also raining that evening, but there were still plenty of people about who, like me, were undeterred, and many left only once all the lights went out. So, this popularity, combined with the positive effect on the environment means it doesn’t seem like such a failure after all! But then, I could be speaking as a naïve tourist here, who just likes pretty lights!

Overall though, my main reason for coming to visit this city was to see an old friend, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover and fall in love with a beautiful city which has such a diversity of things to offer. I would definitely recommend it to others, especially in the autumn.

This trip was my main reason for getting my Chinese visa changed, but the new one they gave me gives me two entries, so now I have done one, perhaps I’ll do another before my time runs out…..