Tuesday July 26, 2005 - 9:30 pm

A long day today. After not much sleep and being woken up early I was pretty sleepy all day.

We left Wuxi at about 3:30 and had a long drive to Huaxin where our main supplier is located. There was a lot of traffic along the way and I never get used to the way they drive here - going 140KM at one minute and then down to 40km the next. Weaving in and out of the cars - honking the horn everytime you pass someone so they don't move into your lane. It is just so different from our American highways and it make me very nervous to watch them. I think I was white knuckled the whole trip.

We arrived at 6:30 and checked into the room - Wow - it is very nice! The bathroom is huge and the shower is cool - it has I think 6 different nozzles on it :) Yes, I am impressed by the little things.

We met a large group for dinner - there were several people from our Supplier there - even the president of the company. This is very common here - if there are guests they love to take them out for a big chinese dinner and serve many dishes. The restaurant we went to tonight is located in the hotel. There are private dining rooms for each group which is nice. And you usually have a group of serves that hover in the room to pour wine or clear a plate and bring new food out.

A guy from the supplier and the head guy with my group invited me to help them choose dinner. I wasn't really sure what this meant - but we left the room and were led to a large area where there were different displays and examples of food you could get. There were a lot of things that I was just plain scared of (like the big pig ear, or the whole baby chicken, a lot of feet of differnet animals, tongue, heads of things - just not your average burger joint!) But, we picked a good variety of things from sushi to dumplings to soup and veggies. There was a lot to eat - but everything I had was very good. They had ordered some crab and it is just interesting to see how different our cultures are. They just bit right into the shell and then spit out the pieces of shell - where we would normally crack the shell open and only eat the meat. They were kind to me and gave me a little cracker and fork :) so that was nice!

As part of the main courses they served a hot papaya - it was served with something in the inside - we couldn't quite figure it out - they told me it was swallows nest - but I think it was a tapioca. With the papaya you got 3 little cups of liquid to add to the inside - honey, coconut milk and regular milk. I have never had hot fruit in this way before but it was soooo good! It was very different from anything I had had before but I really liked it! And - yes they did think it was very funny that I was taking a picture of it.

Along with the dinner we had Great Wall wine. Boy did we have wine! They would fill the wine glass with just about a shot worth of wine and then someone would say a toast and you would drink "Kung Pai' (not sure of the spelling) which is "bottoms up" and you would drink all the wine in your glass. Then the little server girl would come over right away and refill your glass and someone else would toast. It was a bit crazy! Good think it was good wine and that I was eating a lot of food with it!

While I had the camera out we did a group photo - toasting of course! The man I am toasting with is the president of the supplier we use - He kept apologizing for not speaking English so that he could talk directly with me (we had to have one of the people translate for us) but I kept telling him I didn't speak Chinese so it was ok.

overall it was a very good dinner and it was good to meet the people that we will be working with tomorrow in a more relaxed situation.

I am not sure how long we will stay here tomorrow. It will be another long trip back to Wuxi - which I won't look forward to - but it will also be good to be back in my own room.

Tina