"hiking" in China

So I think I have a new thread for that New York Times series "China: Choking on Growth."

The "hike" that a group of us went on today was more like being shuttled through a sidewalk/stair chute at the going rate with a few trees on either side. Seriously, there was NO room. Your pace was pretty much dictated by the rest of the people walking. It was actually a really steep hike, so that rate was pretty slow. It was therefore also very loud. Lots of chattering. But the crowning moment came on the way down, when the shuttling stopped, and everybody was looking and pointing at a tree. I looked, hoping to see something interesting. But no. It was a SQUIRREL. The traffic was stopped FOR A SQUIRREL. Incredible! I wouldn't have even noticed that I hadn't seen a non-human creature that day (though I saw enough humans to fill my yearly creature quota), but this certainly brought that point to light. No animals. Anywhere.

I was laughing hysterically and making comments to Jim. Then I started to tell them that "Squirrels are very common in the United States. Actually, we consider them pests. When I was younger, we had so many squirrels in our backyard, that my dad used to catch them in a trap." Then they looked at me big-eyed and, I am not making this up, said, "and then you ate them!!!!" to which I responded, "No, no, in fact in the U.S. we only really eat pigs, cows, chickens, and fish. No, we didn't eat the squirrels. My dad would drive it far away out into the country and let it go." "Ohhhh." We then returned to things we could symmetrically relate to, like why the hell do so many Chinese wear suits on overnight trains, on hikes, other entirely inappropriate places, etc. (The answer, evidently, is that these crackpots think they look good in suits, and don't care about getting them dirty. Baffling to the group, although more familiar to the Chinese.)

Another random note: I was discussing Baidu, the Chinese Google/extensively used search engine, with my friend Manni. It works much better for Chinese characters, so they use it to search the Chinese web. She told me that it involves a lot of manually-created tags for the different pages, and that's why it works so well. As someone that works in computer vision, and right now specifically automatic tagging, I was telling her how insustainable that is. I was also expressing surprise that the manual tags could be that extensive, to which she replied, "Yes, but this is China. There are so many people, so manual tagging is easy." I looked around at the river-of-people hiking trail, and understood.

By the way the picture of me and Manni Duan doing the peace sign at the pagoda on top of the "mountain," absolutely surrounded by people, would make a great photo for the NYTimes piece.