November 16 – Beijing
Today was the real conference. In true Chinese fashion, all of the honoured guests sit in the front row of the auditorium, so there I was, perched between the Vice-President of the university and someone from the government. Unfortunately. this means that the translators sit in the second row, behind the person they are responsible for, so there is no opportunity to ask them what is going on. So there is no confusion, the names of the honoured guests are taped to the back of the chairs…everyone’s name in Chinese and mine in English.
After the many greetings that are required for the opening ceremonies, I did my keynote speech, which was well-received (or at least politely received, it is sometimes difficult to tell in a culture where it is considered rude to question a speaker). Then I got to listen to people speak in Chinese for the rest of the day…it’s a good way to learn poker face, since there are photographers who constantly take pictures of all of the important people, frequently popping up right in your face. It wouldn’t do to be caught on film napping.
Lunch was provided in plastic bags. Each has several plastic boxes in it, and a banana. One of the boxes had soup, one had enough rice to feed two or three people, one had two kinds of green things in it, and one had two kinds of meat like things in it. I was fascinated to see that the other people at my table ate everything – I’m not really clear why they don’t all weigh 900 pounds, but in fact I have seen very few fat adults here. The wrap up speech was delivered by the Chief Librarian from the University of Hiroshima- even more interesting than watching someone speak in Chinese, is watching someone speak in Japanese that is then translated into Chinese. I had no idea what he was talking about, but he had some nice pictures of his library.