The CEFCO Conference begins. There are about 600 people attending and of that, maybe 40 are Westerners, some of whom live in Asia. The opening and closing ceremonies are quite formal, with key government representatives making speeches about the importance of the industry and the conference. Something a bit unusual is that the moderator/master of ceremonies gives a brief summation after each speech.

The simultaneous translation was pretty good, but our favorite mispronounced phrase was "wing wing situation"!  The Chinese sense of formality and style of speaking is very flowery (not unlike Spanish to be honest). But they make up or use some English words none of us had ever heard of (Chinglish). The best examples being informization and agglomeration. (Huh? That's what we all said). Some of the descriptions of the seminars were also lost in translation, but overall, were pretty interesting.

The other thing that gave us a bit of a chuckle was the music played between speakers - most of the time it was the theme from "The Man from Snowy River". Another day it was "Love Train".

For those of you who have read my previous blogs, or watched the coverage of the Olympics, a story is not complete without a discussion of banquet food in China. The tables are rounds, set up with "lazy susans" in the middle for the regular attendees, and more festive, minus the lazy susan for VIPs. The VIP's are given individual portion sizes of all the food - and it's usually a different menu than the other folk attending.

The first night, there were several appetizers that were pretty good, but I passed on the pig ears. Then the feast began! Seahorse soup for starters. I'm sorry, but seahorses belong in aquariums, not in my belly! It went downhill from there - intestines, fish belly casserole, etc. The dishes that did look good had - you guessed it - bell peppers (I'm allergic). The beer was good! I'm so thankful for the jar of peanuts I always travel with! Yum!

                                               
     
            Yancy and Leslie (from InfoSalons) with the seahorses from their soup in Nanjing.

The second day of the conference was interesting and the lunch banquet had some good stuff (and scary stuff). Most embarrassing moment:  trying to use the chopsticks to pick up a marinated mushroom with a table full of Chinese watching me, waiting for to grab some other dishes on the lazy susan. I am usually pretty adept at feeding myself with chopsticks, but occasionally have some challenges. This was, of course, one of those times.

I ended up using my hand to pick up the darned thing. Once I did, the whole table burst into spontaneous applause and laughter. Who needs entertainment when I'm around right?

Later that afternoon went back to the hotel to put on warmer clothes (it's still cold - in the 20's F at the highest. And everyone from LA telling me about it being 80 at home the whole week - THANKS. So our little group of IAEE/SISO meet up in the lobby - Jo, Jenny, Lew & Clare, Margaret Pederson, Steven Hacker, me and a couple of others - 9 in all. We go out to the front of the hotel at the appointed hour and wait for the bus to pick us up to go on a boat cruise.

One of the shuttle buses from the event comes by to drop off some folks and they inform us that it's going to be another 1/2 before the other bus comes. So we decide to head back into the hotel and up to the bar for a drink. The bar isn't open yet, but one of the managers tells us we can have juice, soda or water. We say "alcohol"???!!! She says the bar is locked but she has a bottle of gin down in the restaurant and can make us gin and tonics. We order 9. Somehow, Steven is able to procure a vodka on ice (we're still not sure how he did that).

As Margaret described it, "We had a cocktail 1/2 hour - 28 minutes of waiting and 2 minutes of drinking." We redress and go outside to catch the bus (again). We're waiting, and waiting and waiting. No bus. It's really cold. Even colder than before. And there's a lovely wind that's sprung up.
            Jenny, Margaret, Jo, Me, Lew and Clare FREEZING

Another shuttle from the convention center comes around and we are informed it's going to be another 15 minutes for the bus for the cruise. Meanwhile our freezing group has grown. About 15 minutes goes by and one of the guys calls someone else from the conference and relates the following:

"Two full buses left the convention center. The bus drivers have parked in the middle of nowhere, turned off the vehicles and the drivers have left the buses." We laugh, happy it's not us on those buses - while we're developing hypothermia waiting for our bus. It finally arrives. We drive over to the nearby sports complex parking lot and - there are the other buses! The looks on people's faces was one of frustration since they had been sitting there for 45 minutes.

It turns out we were getting a police escort through town. Ended up at the Confucius Temple and the cruise was a ride through a relatively new tourist area describing what it was like during the Ming Dynasties (1 & 2, before the capitol of China was moved back to Beijing). It reminded us of the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas, only a different theme and no TexMex.

About 20 people ended up in each boat with a guide who spoke the entire time, unfortunately for us, in Chinese. A couple of people on our boat translated a few salient facts. The tour was really pretty, decorated for Chinese New Years and really cold. Everyone had frozen rear-ends when the cruise finished!

The area we were in used to be the red light district but the "workers" were more like geisha's than traditional gals. They were skilled in the arts of conversation, dance, singing, etc. When Mao came to power, he "liberated" them from having to sell their bodies to make money.

Went off to a buffet dinner (good - not too scary) but there was a dish called "bean curd with pungent odor". Skipped that one! All of our friends who had eaten at the VIP tables were happy to be able to hit the buffet as well. As I mentioned earlier, when you sit at the VIP or Head Table at a banquet, they serve you individual portions of each course. It's considered rude not to eat or at least sample them. Poor Clare. She thought she was eating a noodle appetizer at each of the meals. Turns out it was some kind of marinated jellyfish head.

Then off to the annual InfoSalons Party held in a teahouse on the river we had just toured. It was lovely � Aussie wine!!! YAY!!! Jo "translated" the welcome toast for Gu according to a script. Best moment � after Gu spoke for a good minute or two, Jo translated, "He said 'Welcome!'" They had a woman playing a traditional Chinese string instrument that was 2000 years old. No - not a typo. Two THOUSAND years old. It sounded amazing as old, well cared-for string instruments tend to do.

                        

         We love Aussie Wine!!! Me, Margaret, Clare & Jo...Margaret, Lew, Clare & Jo

       Grace Mak from E.J. Krause & Associates, China & Me

Last day of the conference was nice and the buffet lunch was good. I was able to by-pass the scary stuff and had salad and carved prime rib. Nice! Jo, Lew and Clare at the VIP table got part of a different lunch before we headed back to the train station to return to Shanghai.

(Continued in Blog 4)