Todd Visits the Far East

In August 2005, I was invited to attend the Lotus Hill workshop in Ezhou, China by Prof. Song-Chun Zhu of UCLA. Jumping on the opportunity, I packed my bags and took a 13 hour flight with Prof. Jackie Shen to Shanghai. I had a great time, learned a lot, met some cool people, and even got some research done. These are some pics from my trip.

Before we headed to central China for the workshop, Jackie showed Peter Battaglia and I around Shanghai for a few days. The city is amazingly huge. The building are all new and the streets are packed with people. It's easy to get lost, but whenever we did Jackie just went up to a random person and asked for directions. People in China are extremely polite and kind, at least they were to us. This was honestly a little surprising to me, considering the political tension between our two countires and my personal history of disastrous relationships with Chinese women.
We visited the multi-level Shanghai Museum, appropriately located in Shanghai. Each floor has a different theme: pottery, paintings, sculpture, gift shops, etc. Here's a picture of Jackie taking a picture on the pottery floor.
We took day trips to Fudan and Jiao-Tong universitites and visited their image processing labs. Fudan has a cute statue of the Chairman in their quad. At Jackie's instruction, I gave impromptu talks on the Mumford-Shah functional at both universities.
We met 4 grad students, 2 from each university, on our visits and then we met up with them later at the conference in EZhou. Neat, huh? Lishui and Xian, who we met a Jiao Tong, took us to the river walk in Shanghai. It's a popular tourist and hang-out spot that gives a cool view of the giant neon skyscrapers. Left to right: Lishui, Jackie, Xian, and Pete.
After a few days in Shanghai, we took a short flight to central China for the workshop at the Lotus Hill Vision Institute. The institute is kind of like Banff, we eat, sleep, and hear lectures in the same building. The institute is located at an abandoned monastery of the Chi Gong. So we were surrounded by these empty temples and beautiful scenery. Kind of a strange Scooby Doo vibe. Looking out my dorm window, I had a view of this giant dragon statue.
Looking North from the dragon statue, we would see a temple on top of a hill. The temple has 8 snaking coridoors leading up to it, each with a different theme: history, medicine, religion, etc. My favorite was the science coridoor, which had stone carvings of famous scientists and even a few mathematicians (Newton, Gauss, Descartes). At the top of the temple, there's a giant fresco with dragons fighting Buddha.
Walking past the temple, you would arrive a large pond full of lotus flowers. A giant "bridge reaching to heaven" straddles the pond. All around the perimeter is a covered walkway, with the ceiling showing off paintings of different scenes from anicent Chinese history and folklore. Dragons, mountains, three kingdoms, that kind of stuff. On the first day, when I walked around in awe looking at all the murals, I asked Jackie how old the compound was. After some translation, he told me it was all built about 10 years ago. Not the answer I was expecting.
From the pond, you could look back on the Chi Gong compound to see these giant pagodas. I was there for 3 weeks, but somehow I never worked up the motivation to climb to the top of the tower. Funny how 100 degrees, humidity, and no AC can sap the life out of you.
For the first week or so, we went exploring around the compound a lot with the friends we met in Shanghai. Here's Yin from Fudan posing with Lishui, Xian, and Pete.
It was hard to pose for a picture without getting some sort of scenic monument in the background. Is the tower leaning? That can't be good.
The chefs at the Lotus Hill dorms served us lotus in as many different forms as they could imagine: fried lotus, lotus stalks, lotus noodles, lotus wraps, lotus cabbage, lotus on a stick. We got tired of that, so we took a 5 Yuan cab to the city of EZhou several times to eat at this trippy restaurant called "Yahweh". Xian and Aller seemed to get a little sleepy waiting for the food to arrive. Although I think it would be hard to sleep given that the place was jumping.
Since my 3 Chinese phrases couldn't order up food, Jackie did most of the ordering for us. We got to try a lot of unique dishes. Jackie and Yin were very happy when the sailor-suited waitress brought the hot pots out.
It seems like after every meal, we left an entire uneaten meal behind. Leaving all this food behind seemed a little odd to me, given that my mother would have scolded me for doing this by saying, "There are starving children in China." Notice the tarp on the table. The restaurant quickly buses the tables by just gathering up the plastic covers. Left to right: Pete, Lishui, Xian, Aller, Yin, and Jackie.
There aren't really bars in China to hang out. So what do you do after a big meal in downtown EZhou? Karaoke! It was pretty funny to spend the day with quiet polite Chinese students and then watch them wrestle over the microphone at night to see which one would be first to belt out Cantonese pop songs. Pete and I sat back while we watched Jackie Shen sing Jackie Chan. Surreal.
Xian and Pete sang a duet of that song from "The Bodyguard." You know the one. Xian has a really nice singing voice. Pete... not so much. Still much better than my monotone though. I tried one verse of "Losing My Religion" before giving up on karaoke.
We took a trip a Sunday field trip to see the sights around EZhou. First, we went to see the palace grounds of Liu Bei, the famous "man of virtue" from the Three Kingdoms stories. Funny thing: no palace. Apparently, the palace was lost around 200 A.D. But they did build a tower that sort of looks old. We took a picture at the top. Left to right: me, Xian, Aller, and Lishui.
After seeing Liu Bei's non-existent palace, we went to the park at Chi Bi. This site is famous for a naval battle from the Three Kingdoms era. You may recall that Zhou Yu, on advice from Kongming, defeated Cao Cao by tricking the Wei navy into chaining their boats together and then setting fire to their fleet. Chi Bi is also famous for a thousand year old poem written by Su Shi about the beauty of the river. Funny thing: no river. Apparently, the government moved the river several miles to the left. But they did build a park, gift shop, and roller coaster on the original site of the river. Xian and Aller posed for a picture at the top of the hill on Chi Bi.
As Lishui wished for world peace, the girls continued up the hill. Nice.
After seeing the non-existent river at Chi Bi, we went to the childhood home of a famous leader in the communist revolution. Very famous guy, but I can't remember his name. But I was told that he was a general second only to Chairman Mao in fame and power. I guess he had a tiff with the Chairman, because Mao had his plane shot down as he was trying to flee the country. Funny thing: no house. Apparently, his childhood home was torn down years ago. But they did build an adobe reconstruction of what his house might have looked like. Kind of a weird tourist spot for me. Like taking a Chinese person to see Abe Lincoln's fake log cabin. Xian and Lishui showed off their perfect posture for this photo.
There wasn't much to do in EZhou and even less to do on the Lotus Hill compound. So we walked down to the lotus pond a lot. For 10 Yuan, you could rent a fishing pole and bait. The bait was very funny, a sweet-smelling bread dough. The pond was jumping with fish. I got many bites, but I didn't have the skill or patience to nab any. Jackie was very successful, reeling in some pretty big catfish cousins. He would catch bucketloads of fish, bring them to the conference kitchen, and we'd eat them for dinner. So Jackie was not only a good lecturer at the conference, but also a good provider. He took this role very seriously. Towards the end of the workshop, he would ditch the talks to spend time at the pond and make sure the kitchen was well-stocked.
Man, do I look huge compared to the other people in this picture. I acknowledge that I'm out-of-shape in America, but staying in China made me feel enormous. At least I lost some weight while I was there, but that was mainly because I had stomach-aches for 3 weeks. Getting used to the food and water, I guess. Even so, I had a great time in China and I'll really miss the friends I made there. It's kind of like summer camp. You're in a foreign place and a new situation, so you make new friends quickly. But then you go back home and you never see those people again. Bittersweet. Left to right: Xian, Pete, Yin, Jackie, Lishui, Aller, and me.