"This week did not include any boat rides. However, it certainly did include rides on planes and trains and taxis, and so it makes sense to title this Thoughtlet: Planes and Trains and Taxis. The week started Friday morning with my ride from Houston to Chicago and then from Chicago to Beijing up over the polar route and via Siberia (0449.html).
I arrived in Beijing about 3:30 PM on Saturday, the 4th of December. It was already getting dark, by the time I got my checked bag and made it out to where the Taxi queue was. I got one of the black Taxi's that does not have a taxi bar across the top. Mistake. About half way to the Hilton Hotel he hit some kind of switch, caused the motor to cut out, coasted to an exit lane and onto the side of another freeway, and had the gall to ask me for 100 yuan for bringing me part of the way to the hotel. I found the meter under his seat and paid him the 39 yuan on the meter, and caught another taxi to the hotel. I really don't mind paying for services rendered. However, I have a very strong reaction to someone who attempts to take advantage of me as this taxi driver did. Oh well! It all turned out OK.
Normally I do not tip in China. However, the young man who helped me get my bags to the room was very nice, and so I gave him 5 yuan (the exchange rate is about 8 yuan per US$). Cheap, aren't I. Gijs Vermeer had made it in from Holland (0448.html). We met with Jialin Yan and reviewed our schedule for the week, and then Gijs and I went downstairs and ate at a seafood buffet. It was a nice evening, and I ate too much food. I had been working really hard on keeping my swallows around 120 per day, and had dropped from 250 pounds down to 240 pounds before the trip. However, by the time I got back home I was back up to 250 pounds, and I'm just going to give up on worrying about it until after I return to Houston from spending Christmas in Utah. Oh well!
Sunday morning I got up and had breakfast with Gijs. Then I went to church. The taxi driver got lost. I left about 8:30, and about 8:55, I got nervous and had him go to a hotel, where we got directions. I made it by 9:05, and it turned out Sacrament Meeting did not start until 9:30. It was Fast & Testimony meeting, and was a very touching meeting. I wrote one possible stanza for Prime Words:
Again I was surprised to have someone come up and introduce
themselves, and tell me they knew me in Nottingham Country
Ward. It was Carl Curtis and his wife Paula, who moved to
Venezuela from Nottingham Country Ward and are now in Beijing.
One of the youth to bear their testimony was the Jester in
the International School's Madrigal Dinner. Reminded me of
Matt and his not being able to be the Jester because he was
expelled from school for 3 days for the fight he got in. I
left church right after Sacrament Meeting to go back to the
hotel, check out, and meet Jialin.
Jialin and I had lunch with Xu Da-Kun, who gave me the nice Chinese Poem that was upstairs and which I enjoy so much. Mr. Xu is now the President of the Chinese Offshore Drilling Company, and they have about 120 drilling rigs around the world. He was in charge of BGP when Gary Jones and others worked for me at Landmark on the Ren Chu Oilfield interpretation project. Mr. Xu was the one who got our 18 Landmark people out of China after the Tinnaman Square massacre. Mr. Xu is one of my best Chinese friends, and I thoroughly enjoy being with him (0414.html & 0442.html). This lunch was different. Maybe it was because there was only three of us, or maybe it was because of the discussions between GDC and CNPC/BGP. Mr. Xu had specific questions and specific direction for me. I won't write about the questions nor the direction here, because this forum is too open. The thing that surprised me was how much Mr. Xu and Jialin just talked in Chinese, kind of ignoring me. Oh well! I could tell by the tone that the things being said were all positive, and I it was a very nice lunch. One of the things that really surprised me was the Christmas trees, the Christmas music, the Chinese girls dressed up in red and white Santa Claus suits, and the western influence that was at all of the hotels and restaurants.
After lunch Jialin and I walked across the street to Xuri
Huang's office. Xuri is one of Wei He's friends, and he
has developed some software for reservoir engineers which
he is interested in having me help him sell in the US market.
It is very good software, and it will be interesting to see
where this conversation ends up. We ended up talking with
Xuri too long, and Jialin had one of his friends pick up
Gijs Vermeer at the hotel and meet us at his office. We
left some of our bags at Jialin's office and went to the
Beijing central train station, where we caught an overnight
train to Da Qing, the largest Oilfield in China. 
I rode a lot of trains when I was on my mission in England. At the EAEG (European Association of Exploration Geoscientists) of 1983, Marti and I took a train from Oslo, Norway to Malmo, Sweden where my ancestors are from, and then to Brussels, Belgium, and finally to London, England. As I recall some parts of that train ride were in sleeper cars, although we might have slept in seats all the way. The 12 hour train ride to Da Qing was definitely the first 4 person sleeper car I remember riding on. Gijs and I had the top bunks in one car. Jialin was in the next compartment, and there was a Chinese couple in the two bottom beds. There was a kitchen and dinning room in the next train car to where we slept. It was long, it was noisy, it was hot in the train cars, and it was definitely an experience. Especially when we arrived and Gijs had changed to pajamas it it took him longer than the conductors wanted to change back and to get off of the train. He was still getting dressed as his bags were put off the train. And it was cold. About -15 degrees C, with snow everywhere. I tried to take a couple of photos of the train for Ethan, since he was so much into trains, and they did not turn out very good. Oh well!
We made our way outside of the station and waited until Jialin's friend arrived. We were taken to the Da Qing Oilfield's 5 star hotel, with it's Christmas trees and decorations. This gave time to shave, to have a shower, and to change into some fresh clothes. I got ready about the time it was time to go to breakfast with our host. At breakfast we learned what their objectives are, and after breakfast I was able to modify my presentation to show how GDC can help meet these objectives. The presentation went well. It was followed by a lunch banquet (yes, I gained back the 6 pounds I had lost in November). Because of the snow and the blizzard conditions they wanted us to stay in Da Qing and take a train back to Beijing. However, we had places to go and people to meet, and Jialin got them to provide us with a car, which drove us 3 hours across the desert to Harbin City to catch a plane to Beijing.
This was a very interesting car ride. Not just because of the blowing snow and the first class freeways, but because about an hour out of Da Qing, with no houses in sight, we passed a person on the side of the freeway with a snow shovel cleaning the freeway by hand. Then we saw another and another and another and I got some photos of some of them. I had been surprised to see folks sweeping the freeway in the middle of nowhere on previous trips, and it was a real shock to see people cleaning snow off of the freeway by hand with snow shovels. Maybe this is the type of activity we need the folks we put in prison in the states to do?
The wait in the Harbin airport was long and boring. I was still jet lagged and had a hard time focusing on my book, and I was glad to get on the plane. We got back into Beijing well after dark. We took a cab to Jialin's office. Just as we arrived, my cell phone rang. It was Dave Johnson calling from Malta. The trip to Libya, which would have allowed me to visit Sara in Benin, had finally happened just after I finalized my arrangements to go to China. Oh well! He wanted to follow-up on the conversation with Xu Da-Kun. It amazes me to be in a parking lot in downtown Beijing and to have my pocket chirp with a call from Southern Europe. Jialin and Gijs brought my bag down for me, and then Jialin drove us to the hotel Dave, Mike, Richard, and I stated at when we were in Beijing for the CPS/SEG convention in March (0414.html). It seemed like we just got to sleep when it was 4:00 AM and time to get up and shave and shower and take a taxi to the airport to meet Jialin for a plane ride to Urumchi (also spelled Urumqi). We ended up at the international airport, and it was a short walk to the domestic airport when Jialin arrived.
I was tired enough I slept most of the way to Urumchi. When we got there we were taken to the Tarim
Hotel to `rest' and to eat lunch. About 3:30 we went to
Sinopec's New Far West Area offices. All of China is on
the same time zone. However, because of when the sun comes
up, the folks in the far west do everything 2 hours later.
Lunch usually ends at 1:00 or 2:00, and so out west it
ends at 3:00 or 4:00. There were about 20 folks in our
audience. I talked until about 5:30, then Gijs talked
until about 7:00. They had meetings and so the three of
us went back to the hotel and had dinner. I spent the
evening and early morning working on `An Open Mind.'
I haven't worked on this for a long time, and it was fun
to get back into it. We were visited by Mr. Guo Jian,
the Chief Geophysicist, Wednesday morning about 10:00.
He used to be at Sinopec's Nanjing Oilfield, and at the
CPS/SEG convention had a necktie with seismic traces on
it, which Dave put in his presentations with the label:
`A Good Seismic Tie.' We had a very good discussion, and
there seem to be several opportunities to follow up on.
After lunch we went to visit Mr. Qin, the Chief Geologist. At first it did not seem like our discussions were going anyplace. He and Jialin were talking to each other in Chinese. Then I heard Jialin mention his Dad, and the whole room seemed to change. Business in China is done by relationships. Mr. Qin opened up, called several of his specialists in, and we had a great discussion. One sad piece of news was that my friend Lu Bang Gan, former Chief Geologist of BGP, as died. He translated my book into Chinese, and was a good friend. Death happens in China too. After our discussions we went back to the hotel for dinner and to check-out. There was a Chinese English Class that were dressed in red outfits with white fluff like Santa on the stairs at the hotel singing Christmas songs. It was obvious they did not understand the English, and they still did a very nice job. Christmas was everywhere we went.
After dinner we went to the train station and took another
all night 12 hour train ride to Koula City, where
PetroChina's Tarim Oilfield is located. I called Ethan
from this train. The first time I got through we got cut
off because we went through a tunnel. The second time I
got through we were able to talk for a few minutes, and
I think he could hear the noise of the train. Gijs and I
had the bottom bunks, Jialin had one of the
top bunks, and a pretty Chinese lady had the bunk over me.
I didn't sleep very well, mostly because it was so hot in
the car. These train cars had two sets of 4 bunks stacked
on top of each other, with two walkways. We were on the
bottom close to the railroad tracks. Definitely different
from getting in a car and driving someplace.
Koula City is in the middle of the Tarim desert, and has a population of about 300,000 people. We got there early, like about 6:00 AM Thursday morning, and the hotel wasn't opened. Finally we got in, and were able to shave and shower. Then we ate breakfast and then went to the Oilfield office. An Oilfield is a geographically limited, government established, oil company. There were about 100 people in the room waiting for us. They started out with an hour and a half presentation about their exploration problems. Then I quickly revised my presentation to cover points they brought up and talked for a couple of hours. Then we went to lunch. Then Gijs talked for a couple of hours. Then I talked for another hour. It was a good day and they seemed to be interested in what we had to say. We had a nice banquet in the evening (see trip4), and I spent several hours working on `An Open Mind.' I seldom turn on the TV when I am on a trip like this. Wish I did as well at home.
During the banquet, Jialin asked our host if we could go to the field to look at the kind of acquisition problems they face. He said yes, and we had 2 drivers, and 2 acquisition geophysicists waiting for us at 8:30 AM. The seven of us drove for about 4 hours to see an example of the foothills they have to cross with their seismic lines. The horizontally laid down rocks are standing vertical. I thoroughly enjoyed being out in the field. It was cold, and the geology was really fun to look at and to unravel it's structural origins. Most of the 8 hours in the car were spent reading and listening to a Chinese talk show in the background. However as we got close to Koula City, the driver put in a CD with Christmas music on it. It seemed very surreal to be riding in a four-wheel-drive car in far western China, and to be listening to `A Little Drummer Boy.'
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The upper left photo shows the scale of the foothills against Gijs Vermeer and others on the trip. The upper right photo shows beds standing on end, just as up Cedar Canyon. The lower left photo shows a photograph and some imaging processing of that photograph taken from the airplane on the flight from Koula City back to Urumchi. Note that as with other pictures included with these Thoughtlets, if you click on the photo it expands to a larger scale. |
Early the next morning, Saturday, we went to the airport and flew back to Urumchi on a prop plane. There were not very many passengers, and by this time I was pretty comfortable with using the new digital camera, and so I went to the front of the plane and would move from side to side to take photos of the geology from the different sides of the plane. Absolutely fascinating geology. When India crashed into Asia and created all of these mountains, it really shook up the flat laying stratigraphic layers of rock. The Urumchi folks were not available to meet with us, and so we spent a couple of hours being tourists after we arrived. We took a cab downtown, bought some Christmas stuff, Jialin and I ate some lamb shis-ka-bob, Jialin bought some nuts, and we all got cold. Then we went to the airport, where Jialin ordered way too much food for dinner. We ran out of time to finish it, and had to run to catch the plane. We got back to Beijing at 7:00 PM.
The Beijing Branch Christmas Party had started at 6:30. So I got Gijs to take my bags to the hotel, and I went straight to the Party. I got there just as Sister Barbara Shakespeare was telling stories about making root beer in Southern Utah. It was a fun evening. I did miss the food, and so I had a Dairy Queen Freeze as I left the building the church is in. I walked up to the SAS Radison Hotel, and got a card so I could use it to guide taxis to the Church. I caught a cab to the Hotel we stayed at on Tuesday night and picked up the bag I left, and then went back to the Hilton Hotel. I was tired once again, and it was largely because of planes and trains and taxis.
Sunday morning I got up and had breakfast with Gijs, and saw him off. Jialin and his fiancee took Gijs to the airport. I went to church, which this time I knew started at 9:30 AM, and with my new card for the SAS Radison we did not get lost this week. The opening song at church was `Far, Far Away,' my favorite Christmas Song because it was written by Grandma Morris' father, John Macfarlane (../9750.html). Grandpa and Grandma Morris adopted and raised Grandma Hafen (../9946.html). I found the feelings of hearing that song after a week in planes and trains and taxis spiritually overwhelming. I could not sing and not have tears falling down my cheeks. It set the tone for the Sacrament Meeting for me. What a wonderful spiritual treat. I wrote the following four possible stanzas for Prime Words during this meeting:
In Sunday School I went to the Family History Class with the
Shakespeares. There was a nice outline on writing your
personal history, which was the basis of the lesson. The
priesthood was very good. It was based around President
Faust's First Presidency Message in the December Ensign.
After priesthood, Stan Shakespeare and I sat and talked for
an hour while Barbara went to Ward Choir. Very enjoyable
time. After this I went back to the Hotel and waited for
calls from Christian Singfield in Australia and Jialin Yan.
I worked on `An Open Mind.' After these calls came in, and
I confirmed there were no more meetings for me to do in the
afternoon, I caught a cab and went over to the Shakespeares
for more discussions. I took digital photos of their
apartment to show Carole and Tom when in St. George. I
showed them the photos I took over the previous week. Then
their neighbors, The Nixons, called up and invited us across
the hall to their apartment for Family Home Evening. Brother
Nixon gave an interesting lesson on evil and Satan and how
to a large degree both represent an absence of light. It
tied into the reading I had been doing, 'Light' by Brian
Hales. They had popcorn and ginger cookies for a treat.
It was a most enjoyable evening. I was slow to get up and
leave and catch a taxi back to the Hilton to close out my
week of planes and trains and taxis."