Monday, October 26, 2009

First impressions from Xi'an, China

After having arrived in Xi'an, China on Saturday afternoon, my first experience was already at Beijing airport with a Chinese Red Bull can (see figure left) and I've to say that the taste is somewhat different to what is served back at home. The term "different" seems to be something which can be appropriately applied to whole China? Well, let's see what's coming next.

My hotel is very nice and (very) luxury - depending on what you're usually used to. However, although I've a room on the 15th floor (out of 18) I do not have a clear view of the city (see figure right). Thus, I wonder whether the Chinese language has any sign for respirable dust...

Another experience was my first dinner together with some colleagues from MPEG. We simple entered an arbitrary restaurant that looked nice from outside and ordered something by picture. Yes, "order by picture" which is similar to "query by example" where one also gets something similar to what is represented in the example picture (see figure below ;-)
Finally, the people here are very nice and friendly although sometimes communication turns out a major issue resulting in strange misunderstandings. For examples, yesterday evening we asked for cold drinks and just got ice cubes as we had our drinks already on the table, or trying to order fried rice as shown in the figure below, hmmm...
The fun will continue tonight, I assume ... so stay tuned!

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