I am currently sitting in the computer lab in the university (where it is prohibited to smoke or play computer games, at least in theory - no smoking, but a lot of computer games going on... at least it's quiet!) Anyway, the point of me being here is to gain access to CNKI, the Chinese academic answer to Google. In theory (a lot of things in China work perfectly in theory...) I should be able to access the site and download articles on the assignment given to us by our teacher - "The Treatment of Intellectuals During the Cultural Revolution". Unfortunately, even after successfully finding and accessing the site, all the servers seem to be busy, which kicks me onto a page where I have absolutely no idea what's going on... so as I'm typing this, I'm also waiting for the page I want to (hopefully) load.
In other news, the snow is slowly starting to melt - it's much warmer today than yesterday, fortunately! One interesting thing about the snow is that it allowed me an insight into the Chinese snow-removal system - since it doesn't snow here that often (winter being an exceptionally dry time of year), there are no snowplows to speak of. I was watching a news broadcast yesterday which showed a truck with a large rotating brush in front being used to clear the busiest intersections - the thing looked like it would be more suited to sweeping a tennis court, however - it was hopelessly outmatched by five inches of snow. There are no snowblowers or sidewalk plows, or road salt, or sand - the snow is removed by what looks like neighborhood teams - groups of about 20 people working together to shovel snow off the sidewalk. I need to ask my roommate how those teams are organized and what they're called - they look like all volunteers. According to the news broadcast, they even called in local PLA troops to help shovel - because when you run out of volunteers, that's the only place to turn. Snow really does seem like an unusual event around here - traffic comes to a total standstill, busses run off schedule - the only thing that remains the same is cars refusing to stop at intersections - that's considered usual behavior, though when there's snow they're much more insistent about it, and the horn is more urgently used. Not only are they not going to stop, even if they wanted to, there's absolutely no way they could.
Last night I was involved in an international conflict of sorts, involving the guys who live in the suite across the hall from me. I was summoned urgently at around 10:00 last night to help them determine where the awful smell was coming from. Was it coming from the room on the left or the room on the right? Who was the culprit? An initial scan revealed that neither room smelled that great - there was a prevailing odor of old socks. Sneakers were promptly put out on the windowsill in response to my evaluation, and I returned to my room. That's about the extent of my excitement for last night - also, I had Korean food for dinner, which was really good.
OK - now back to try and figure out the website. It is currently yelling this at me: 提示: 勾选多个数据库后,点击按钮进行跨库检索;直接点击库名,进入单库检索! Do you know what that means? I don't either, and I'm going home to take a nap before the gym. zai jian!
