cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Diane Cluff, and Maxine Shirts
"Last night I was talking to Sara and I realized I have inherited my Dad's poor communication skills. She had no idea about what I was doing the 19 previous times I went to China. When I was talking to Roice a few minutes later, I mentioned how good it was for Matt to be able to go to China with us, and how I missed the boat not taking kids on trips with me when I was doing all of the travel in the old days. He said `Well you took us on nice vacations.' Have not even done that for Heather, Audrey, and Rachel. Oh well! At least Matt was able to go with us to China, and thanks to this trip, at least he knows something about the BGP: Bureau of Geophysical Prospecting.
When church was over at the Beijing Twig (0224.html), we helped put up some of the chairs, and then took the elevator from the fourth floor down to the lobby. Miss. Chai was coming up to the door as we got out of the elevator. They took us back to the Celebrity International Grand Hotel where we changed, and then they took us out to lunch. We ate at one of the resturants we walked by the previous evening, next to the Beauty Salon called the Image Project, which gave Andrea a big chuckle, because she said if she went in it would be a project. This was the first of dozen's of giant meals. They had a private room for us, and they kept bringing in more and more and more and more food. I took photos of many of the meals, before, during, or after, and these will show what it was like. Good food. Just too much of it. After lunch they dropped us off at the north gate of The Forbidden City. I prefer to start at the south gate, next to Tianamen Square, where there are giant courtyards, which I compare to the Telestial Kingdom. Then the farther north you go, the smaller the courtyards become, which I compare to the Terrestial Kingdom. Then you arrive at the royal gardens, close to the north gate, with beautiful limestone sculptures, beautiful old trees, and little chinese rooms for the emperor and his concubines. I compare this to the Celestial Kingdom. Anyway, we went through it backwards, starting at the smallest areas, and so I wasn't able to get my analogy across very well to Matt.
He was sort of interested in the museums and all of the stuff. He liked the shops best. He had an artist paint a dragon picture of his World Geography teacher's name, Mrs. Griffin, written in chinese characters. Pretty neat gift for his teacher. He bargined for and got a pair of Russian military binoculars at one of the shops just inside the outside wall of the Forbidden City. We took a lot of digital photos, and these will eventually be indexed and put on the web at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/China/Beijing_June_2002. It is hard to believe it has been about 8 years since I have been to China. It is also hard to believe this was my 20th trip to China. However, both of these facts kind of settled in as we walked out of the south gate onto Tianamen Square. There were dozens of Chinese kites flying in the square. It is really big. The Great Hall of the People is on the north west corner, and I recalled the banquets I have been to there. The statues to the communist soldiers, the Mao mausoleum, and the polluted skys were just as I remembered them. There was not the statue of liberty the students had put up on one of my previous trips. There were street vendors, and I let myself get talked into buying a little red book of Chairman Mao's sayings for our library. After his initial offer, I gave him an offer about 1/3rd his asking price, and by the time he left, he came down to my price. We also got a birthday present for Ethan, which Matt is convinced he will really like. No more hints until July 13th! We met Miss. Chai and Mr. Qi, our driver, and her husband, a Petroleum Engineer for CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) at Kentucky Fried Chicken, at the southwest corner of Tianamen Square. They took us to a banquet. I can't believe how skinny Miss. Chai is and how much she eats. I guess I'm just jealous. Thjs was the first dinner I recall them bringing a live fish to the table in a plastic bag, and then seeing it come out on a platter a few minutes later.
After dinner they took us to a night of entertainment at a chinese Tea House. I wasn't suppose to take photos, and I didn't know that until about the last act. So there are photos and movies of most of the different singers, actors, magicians, etc. I was starting to drag because of jet lag, and yet it was an enjoyable evening. There was no problem falling to sleep when we got back to the hotel. There was just a little problem of staying asleep. Maybe it was because the President of BGP had meetings all day Monday and was not available to meet with me until Tuesday.
Matt did eat breakfast the next morning with Miss. Chai. However, Andrea and I skipped the buffet breakfast. We had slept in until 8:50, and it was 9:10 by the time we made it downstairs. Soon we were on our way to The Great Wall of China. We went past the part of the wall we had always stopped at on my previous trips to China. And before we knew it we were on a gondola, riding way back up into the mountains on the south side of the freeway. The sky was overcast with pollution from the city, and it was not possible to get good photos of the Great Wall in the distance. We walked up the hill to start with. I'm definitely not in as good of shape as when I was coming to China before. Matt wasn't interested in climbing and walking, and so when we got back down to the gondola, he and Miss. Chai took it back down to the car, where he started playing cards with the driver. Andrea and I walked down. We almost took a 6-Flags type ride they have set up for tourists and is just opening. We ended up walking down, and then across the valley, and back up to where the Cadillac was parked. I was tired by the time we got back to the car.
The ride back to Beijing was interesting because of the terraced hills we kept driving by. I can not comprehend the number of manhours of work that were required to hand cut all of the terraces in all of those hills. I've moved some rocks at Calf Springs Ranch to rebuild a little bit of a rock fence, and it is incomprhensible to have manual labor put 200 terraces on miles and miles and miles of hills. I guess there are more people in Beijing than there are in Southern Utah. Still, it is eye opening.
When we got back to Beijing, they took us to the Temple of Heaven. However, before we went there, we went to another resturant, climbed to the third floor, and had our private room with tons and tons of food. There were some really good garlic like appetizers. There was another fish. Andrea had a rice casserole inside of a pineapple husk. We each had a dish of noodles. There were large prawns, another fish, etc., etc., etc. I did not do very good at counting swallows eating with chopsticks, each deposit of which is less than a swallow, and having so many different items to keep track of. Matt was impressed with the hole-in-the-floor toilet, and so I took a photo of one.
After we ate they dropped us off at the South Gate of the Temple of Heaven. It has changed since I was last there. There were tickets for each of the 4 walls around the Temple of Heaven. We had fun at the echo wall, and I got a reasonable capture of Andrea talking from around the wall as a digital movie. I don't know how to describe these places. Hopefully the photos will do the trick. There were some interesting Buddah's, monoliths, and I really like the circular architecture and the blues, greens, and reds the ceilings are colored. There were some musicians playing, and I captured at least one of them. We got lost, and had to back track a little bit to get to the North Gate. Matt was glad to see Miss. Chai and Mr. Cui when we arrived at the North Gate. Miss. Chai went to Zhuo Zhou to set up my meetings with BGP on Tuesday morning, and Mr. Bo Tao became our new translator and guide. He took us shopping, where we got Christmas presents for most of you. I don't like to negotiate or barter with the Chinese, and Andrea and Matt love to do this. We got some neat stuff. Too bad you don't get to see it until Christmas. From here we went to eat dinner. I was suprised I could eat. When we walked in the resturant all of the waiters called out. They brought another big fish wiggling in a plastic bag, and then shortly he was back on a plate with his eyes looking up at us. Interesting eating fish with chop sticks. We were tired and didn't stay up long when we got back to the hotel.
Tuesday was the day. They picked us up at 8:00 and we arrived at the BGP hotel in Zhuo Zhou about 9:00. I remember watching them build the freeway, one wheelbarrow full of dirt at a time, and it was amazing to ride along this freeway, as nice as I-10, to Zhuo Zhou. When I made all of the other trips we traveled narrow two lane roads, around tight turns, facing a donkey cart or a big old truck around every corner. It was just us on the freeway, once we left the traffic of Beijing. And I did not recognize Zhuo Zhou as we drove through town from the east. Gary Jones and I used to jog along the main street, and there were all new office towers, the freeway, and all kinds of changes. It was like a new town had grown up in the middle of the rice fields. When we got to the Hotel we were ushered to the second floor into a large conference room where my friends Mr. Meng Ersheng, who started this trip after an e-mail exchange about someone from Beijing University hacking my system, and Mr. Yuan Bing-Heng, the former retired Chief Geologist that Gary Jones and Ken Mallon and company reported to when we did the interpretation project for the Ren Chu Oil Field. It was good to see my old friends again. Mr. Meng is 81, and so he truly is old.
About 10:15 Mr. Xu Wenrong, President of BGP, Mr. Wang Tiejun, Vice-President BPG/President of BGP International, and Miss. Yin Xiaorong, Vice-President of Marketing for BGP International came in. We had been talking to Mr. Chen Bingwen, Manager of the Liaison Office, and Miss. Chai's boss when they arrived. Discussions started immediately, and it seemed to get pretty intense. Matt kind of broke the ice by giving everyone a candy from the U.S. I pulled out the posters I had made, printed and covered with plastic at Kinko's, and we went through the basic points I wanted to cover:
Of course Xu Wenrong also covered his main points. Over the last year has had to cut the staff of BGP from over 24,000 professionals to less than 12,000 professionals now. This has been very hard, especially in a society where folks always have thought they have a job for life. CNPC is reorganizing, and BGP will be a big part of this reorganization over the next 12 months. BGP is expected to end up with more seismic crews, to be able to participate in exploration, and to have a focus on collecting and processing multi-client or spec seismic surveys. In addition, BGP has 350 interpreters who are working in 7 Oilfields (the Chinese equivalent of an oil company, where the company is geographically bounded). This service is expected to expand. A key development will be the training of all of his professional staff. For instance, he plans to teach all of his staff a foreign language, and the two at the top of the list are English and Spanish. He said at one point, `I will welcome a proposal to meet our language training requirements.' Matt and Andrea were in the room for all of these discussions. I was really proud of Matt. He watched intently, did not interrupt, and was on his best manners. He did need to go to the rest room after about an hour and a half of intense discussions. And Andrea just sat and watched and learned.
A little after noon they took us downstairs for a banquet. It was a first class banquet, just as I remember from my previous visits to China. The four executives, Miss. Chai, my two old friends, Andrea, Matt, and I surrounded the round table. Of course, there was a specific seating order, with the President to the south, me next to him, Mr. Meng to the west, Mr. Chen to the north, and Andrea to the east, between Miss. Yin and me. I never can remember what all of these directions mean, and obviously south was the most important. As always we had the discussion about the Word-of-Wisdom. Mr. Meng seemed to drink extra Mauti (sp), Chinese liquor which he pointed out only costs about $1 per gallon, and which those who have drank it claim tastes like kerosene. At the end of the banquet, I gave Mr. Xu the giclee print Ken Turner had framed and sent over with us. It was the signing of the Peace Treaty at San Sabo in 1847 by John O. Meusebach and the Commanche Chief, the only Indian treaty kept by both sides in Texas history. We also gave Mr. Xu the other prints we brought with us, as mentioned in the last thoughtlet (0224.html). He had never seen anything like Ken's ghost figures, and was very impressed. The prints and paintings all quietly disappeared and we were given two nice gifts. Andrea got a nice silk scarf, and I was given a very pretty orange and blue shining photograph of the Great Wall under glass and framed with a BGP logo on it. It is nice, one of those things one of you will want to keep after I am dead.
After lunch Mr. Xu and I went back up to the conference room where I showed him some of Dynamic's stuff on their PC, and we talked about next steps. He was interested in three of the TMI's: The Infinite GridSM, vPatch, and Best Practices, and less interested in the Abbott Online Atlas, ImageTech's core and cutting scanning, Bavinger's data mining tools, measuring spatial intelligence, the Knowledge BackboneSM, and HyperEdge. He was not intersted in revival of China Cattle Corporation or investing in Texas Apartments, aka Doug Hastings and HomeCrest. He set up for me to present to about 30 of his technical staff Tuesday afternoon, and then I was to do a presentation about the exploration opportunities (AMIs) on Wednesday at CNODC, China National Offshore Development Corporation, which makes investments in foreign oil fields. Then he left for another meeting back up in Beijing.
Andrea and Matt were taken to a local High School. It was an eye opening experience for Matt. Old wooden chairs, like were at the old Junior High School across from where the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City is with 35-40 kids in a class. Class goes from 7:30 AM until 5:30 PM 10 months of the year. There are no janitors. The kids take turns being pulled out of class for a week at a time to mop the cement floors with a bucket of water. They do not have supplies. Andrea is planning to set up a sister school relationship, to find English readers, soccer balls, and basketballs, and to ship them over to them. Their soccer field is dried mud. The kids sang for Matt and Andrea. They talked in several classes. How I wish I was smart enough to have arranged for each of you to have had this type of experience when you were Matt's age or younger. Oh well!
I lectured from 2:00 until 5:30 to about 30 folks. The most animated discussion was about Best Practices. You never know what is going to pay off. Of course, I left at the end of the day not having any idea if and when they were planning on investing or proceeding with our discussions. After the lectures and school tour we were reconnected in one of the rooms of the BGP Hotel. Matt was very glad we were staying in the Celebrity International Grand Hotel. As I looked out the window at the track, I recalled all of the mornings I had spent jogging around that track. They had painted all of the red buildings white, and I hardly recognized anything. The dried mud track looked exactly the same.
We thought they were taking us out to the cars to leave, and they took us downstairs and fed us another banquet. Mr. Meng and Mr. Yuan, Mr. Chen and Miss. Chai were there with Andrea, Matt, and myself. Too much food, and I was beginning to worry I was going to undo all of the effort to loose what weight I have been able to shed so far this year. Like most things we worry about, this turned out to be an irrelevant worry. I was tired, and slept in the car on the way back to Beijing.
Wednesday morning Andrea and Matt went down for the buffet breakfast. Matt went down early and had on his Texans hat for the new Houston Football Team. A guy named Lan Bentsen, who is a friend of the owner of the Texans, introduced himself. He is an Executive Vice-President with Frontera Resources, which has purchased $100 million worth of fields in Azerbjian and the former Soviet State of Georgia. He was very interested in Dynamic Resources and our approach regarding dynamic replenishment. I gave him a couple of copies the paper Roger Anderson, Larry Cathles, and I wrote back in 1992, a reprint from the Oil & Gas Journal. We agreed to talk more during rest of the week. Andrea and Matt went to see the Summer Palace, have lunch, and buy a rug. They had a lot of fun. And so did I. It started with purchase of a big bottle of water for my breakfast and lunch. Then I went upstairs and spent the morning preparing a special presentation for CNODC, based on Tuesday's discussions. My presentation was to about 20 Chinese, each of whom spoke English, so there was no translation. I did miss the gap translation allow to think through the next thing to say. Bright folks. Economists, Geologists, Reservoir Engineers, Geophysicists, Geochemists, etc. Mr. Chen Bingwen was there from the BGP, along with Zhang Mugang, the BGP Chief Geophysicist. Here I learned that Mr. Chen was the geophysicist on Kjell Finstadt's Iran seismic crew that collected the Mega Survey (../9918.html, ../0041.html, and ../0052.html). Just before we left Houston Ed Rogers called and said that the State Department had finally responded to our request to work with Finstad on the Iran data. The response was no, because it would help Iran. What a small world.
The meeting was headed up by Dr. Zhang Xing, Manager of the New Venture Department. Dou Lirong, Deputy-Director of the CNPC Research Center, Liu Wenben, Manager of CNPC Services and Engineering, and Zhang Weijun, geophysisict with CNODC seemed to be the key folks. Mr. Lin Jincheng, a geophysicist with CNODC came up and introduced himself and reminded me he had visited our house for a party a decade ago. What a small world. The presentation seemed to go very well. There were good questions, we covered a lot of information, and there seemed to be sincere interest. I started out with a description of Dynamic:
I ended the presentation with the stanza written for Yuan
Bing Heng about interpretation workstations (see
picture to the left
, which hangs upstairs):
There was particularly interest with vPatch and with helping
them establish real-time monitoring at the head office of
their overseas operations. Mr. Peng Jixuang, Head Director
IT (Information Technology), was brought in for a special
presentation from 4:00-5:30 about vPatch. It was left that
they would contact me by e-mail.
We spent Wednesday evening with Andrea and Carole's tour guide. Carole is Andrea's Best Friend whom she went to China with 4 years ago. His English name was Dennis back then, and it is Owen now. I've never felt jealous of Andrea's feelings towards another man before. It was an interesting experience. We ate in the Celebrity International Grand Hotel resturant on the ground floor. As with breakfast, dinner was a buffet. Owen was late because of traffic and work, and I was definitely hungry by the time he arrived. As I recall, Matt and I actually went in and started to eat before he arrived. There was an obvious connection with Andrea, although he was just another Chinese guy to me. A little taller than most. Glasses. Shacked up with his girlfriend. Fairly successful in his new career of selling cashmere sweaters. Good English skills. Andrea summarized the reacquaintance as seeing a Chinese Yuppie. He still e-mail's regularly to Carole, although he doesn't have time to send as long of letters as he sends to her.
Thursday we had no meetings scheduled. Mr. Bo Tao was our interpreter and Mr. Cui was our driver. They took us down past the Sheridan Great Wall Hotel, where I stayed with Grandma Hafen and Aunt Linda, and where my passport was stolen from my jeans when I went out for a run the first morning we arrived. It was the first time I got my bearings. We went down to the main street that goes along the south side of The Forbidden City and saw the Jin Guang Hotel, the first where foreigners stayed when China opened up. As we drove along a new freeway along here, where I have jogged several times, I realized how much Beijing has changed in the last 8 years, since my last vist. There were almost no bikes, and when I first came in 1983 there were almost no cars. All of the skyscrapers out on the 5th loop where we were staying, were just being built the last time I was in Beijing. We went down by the embassy's, and went to an open air market. Andrea and Matt had a lot of fun shopping. We finished up buying Christmas presents. I bought a nice Chinese bone carved chess set for 200 Yuan (they started out at 400 Yuan). For reference there are about 8 Yuan per US$, and so 200 Yuan is US$25. We also bought some worry balls, scarfs, bracelets, and ties for the families Matt and I Home Teach. I found some Yellow Mountain Tea which Mom had requested. Matt had a great time barganing. We were accosted by street vendors as we left, and Andrea gave in and bought a couple of things. Even in our financial position, it is sad to see folks who obviously don't have basics.
I was concerned about not having any meetings, and I wanted to share as much as possible with BGP and their partner companies as thanks for the nice vacation. So I had Mr. Bo Tao call his boss, Mr. Chen Bingwen, and see if I could meet with Xu Da-Kun, who gave me the painting of the poem, or Mr. Yan Dun Shi, who was the Chief Geologist of CNPC when we were doing all of the work over here. I expected them to be busy, and yet I thought it worth the try. Mr. Xu Da-Kun was busy, and could not meet. Mr. Yan Dun Shi was available. I found this amazing, since according to his card he is now working as a Vice-Minister for `The Supervisory Panels of the Key and Large-Sized State-Owned Enterprises.' I recalled how hard it was to meet with him when we were making all of the trips. After the marathon week we put in with Gary Jones, Geoff Morris, and the Chinese interpretation team, I had always been able to meet with him when I asked. However, I was told that Halliburton, GSI, Western, and major oil company executives often spent months just getting an appointment with Yan Dun Shi. Mr. Bo Tao mentioned in passing, as we left the shopping and went to a resturant for lunch, that Mr. Yan was available to have dinner with us. I was pleased.
After lunch we went to the Lama Temple. Andrea did not
go here when she came to Beijing before. This is an
active place of Buddist worship. I took several photos
of folks bowing to one of the many Buddah's in one of
the many buildings in the Lama Temple. The photos tell
the story better than I can (see Lama Temple
photo to right 
). There was inense burning in front of each
building, and Andrea was getting sick by the time we
left. There are `tithing' collections, glass boxes
with thousands of different denominations of Yuan in
them. There are neat paintings. Hindu and Buddist
Gods, with multiple arms and scary faces are in most of
the buildings. There was a Buddah that must be about
50 feet tall, with a building built around him. And
as I left the last building and walked back, I saw a
little bird drinking out of the cap to a water bottle.
I thought it was so neat, and took a photo of this bird.
A few minutes later Matt asked me if I saw the bird he
put water out for. I grew to appreciate what a good
and soft heart Matt has in that moment. The trip has
not only been good for Matt.
We were all tired when we got back to the hotel room. The movie `Clear and Present Danger' was on HBO in the hotel room, and Matt was not hungry, so he decided to not go down to the dinner with Mr. Yan Dun-Shi with us. We went downstairs at the appointed time. At the elevator I met Reginal Spiller, Lan Bentsen's colleague at Fronterra. We were exchanging schedules to see when we could get together when Mr. Yan Dunshi walked in. I excused myself because `this man is with the Ministry.' We shook hands, I introduced Andrea, and he introduced his wife. I thought we were going to go into the same resturant we had gone into the night before. Mr. Bo Tao informed me we were going upstairs to eat. So we went upstairs. There was special room set up for us, with gold chop sticks, gold spoons, gold chop stick holders, and gold rimmed plates. It not only look extravagant, it felt extravagant.
The first thing that happened was the word-of-wisdom discussion. We had had this discussion several times before, approximately 8, 10, and 12 years before. I approached it a little different. I said:
Mr. Yan looked and me and told me he understood. Then he
told Andrea how he remembered when I worked all night to
prepare a presentation and how good that presentation was.
He said I helped the Chinese people a lot. His wife spoke
up and told us how much her husband was looking forward to
getting together for dinner, and how he talked about the
work we did back in about 1989. Mr. Yan asked if our
church was in China. I responded that it was not yet
legal for the church message to be preached in China. He
turned to me and said, `When it is legal, I will join your
church.' Both Andrea and I were shocked. He went on to
describe how his is 80 years old now, and he doesn't work
as hard as he used to. I asked what he does now, and he
said he makes music. I asked him what instrument he plays,
and he said the guitar. He has a 12-string guitar, and
two 6-string guitars, and he likes to go to the park by his
house and play guitar with his friends. He says there are
sometimes 100 people listening to them play in the park on
a Sunday afternoon. I told him I play the guitar, and said
we should go to the park and play guitars together after we
eat dinner. He said good idea.
Then he asked about my work. I explained that Dyanamic was a new type of oil company. That I was using tools, instead of building tools. That there is only 1 employee in Dynamic, and yet because of the Dynamic NetWork, Dynamic has the ability to technically compete with the largest oil companies in the world. He asked some questions about the NetWork, and said, `This is like the Internet.' I said, `Exactly!' He said, `This is a good way to look for oil and gas. I have 3 years left in government service, and when I retire, I am going to work with you.' What a ringing endorsement! I was full, and yet somewhere in the middle of the conversation I ate. The meal was by far the best food we had been given. A mushroom the size and consistency of a hamburger pattie, with gravy. Raw fish. They made a pineapple frape for us as a drink because we don't drink alcohol. Then the assorted set of different dishes. They even had some sweets, which were really, really, really good.
After we were stuffed he invited me to look at some seismic
data he had brought with him. I asked Andrea to go up to the
room and get the computer the BGP had let me borrow for the
CNODC presentation, as well as some Infinite GridSM
maps I gave to Mr. Yan as gifts. He has developed, what to
me, is a new and innovative way to work interpret Chinese
Basins. He breaks the data into structural units, and then
breaks these structural units into genetic stratigraphic units.
He then does detailed seismic facies analysis on each `block.'
We had a great discussion, and then I showed him some of the
data I'd put on the computer for the CNODC meeting. Then we
went to the park to play guitars. I think he had his guitar
tuned different than we do in the west, and his cords seem to
all be subtle variations of Am. We didn't sing very well
together, and it was hard to follow him because of the way he
plays his chords. It was fun. Our best song was `Take Me
Home, Country Roads.' 
It was quite dark when we finished at
about 10:00, which was when the park closed. Matt came with
us, and quickly got bored. Oh well! He played cards with
the drivers. As we left, Mr. Yan explained to me that he
was the Chief Geologist for CNPC for 30 years. That he
personally located over 10,000 drilling locations. That he
has worked for years with the Russians, speaks Russian, and
has very good connections there. And he said, `I am going
to retire from my government job in 1 year, and work with
you Mr. Nelson.' From 3 years to 1 year in one evening, and
firm commitments. I feel it was more than just an interesting
evening, and, of course, time will tell.
The next morning we packed. Andrea and Matt were not hungry, and so I was the only one to go down to breakfast. I wasn't hungry either, and I knew the guys from Fronterra Resources would be eating. I sat by Reginal Spiller, he introduced me to his two partners, and we had a good discussion. They are looking to move back into the states, and they can raise $100 million in a matter of a couple of weeks to purchase fields. They expressed interest in the 17 fields Maritec is looking to buy offshore Louisiana. I agreed to send them an e-mail after checking out some details. Won't it be neat if the best business opportunity comes from Matt and the fact he was wearing a Texans baseball cap in a Beijing Hotel.
Andrea and I went for a walk and went into one of the shopping centers by the hotel. We bought a skirt for Heather, and I took some digital movies of what the store is like. Beijing has changed so much. There is affluence in the air. Mr. Chen Bingwen and Mr. Cui picked us up right at 11:00. We went to have lunch together the last time. It was at the same place Andrea and Matt ate the day they went to the Summer Palace. Mr. Chen was obviously impressed that Yan Dun Shi had dinner with us. He referred to him as the `Big Potato.' After too much lunch, and our first time to taste the Chinese milk (yogurt tasting milk with some sugar), they took us to the airport. They paid for all of our hotel bill, for the airport tax, and they had paid for all of the meals and tourist tickets. What a vacation! And I only had to talk two days for all of this. We flew from Beijing to L.A. on Air China. Waited a couple of hours and flew to Houston on Continental. They had an edited version of `The Castle' on TV. I don't understand why when a movie is released the first time they can't release a PG-13 version, for whimps like me.
We were back to the house by 9:00, and arrived just as Phillip Nelson's mother called to wish him a happy birthday. Phillip is one of Paul and Kate's neighbors and friends at BYU, and he is spending three weeks as a patent law intern in Houston, and staying with us. He arrived at about 10:00, as I was cleaning up spam from my e-mail box. I find it interesting that there have been no more kid@walden3d.com e-mails since I sent out my note and contacted the company in Seattle. Saturday was spent getting unpacked, going for a run, catching up on the papers, and watching a movie on TV about `Little Man and Fat Boy.' Sunday was the Talley's farewell before they move back to Ohio. Marion gave me the Gospel Doctrine Manual to teach for her the next three weeks. I've always wanted to teach Gospel Doctrine, and not the Old Testament. Brother Morales taught the Priesthood Lesson on Testimony. It was a good day. Matt and I went Home Teaching in the afternoon and delivered all of our gifts. It was a good experience. Especially when we went to Brett Thompson's house, who asked us to have his name removed from the records of the church last time we were there, and to Norbert and Laurie Schmidt's. At the Schmidts Matt talked about the school in Zhuo Zhou, and about how the trip had opened his eyes. I had tears as we left. Then I came back and spent the evening writing the first of two Thoughtlets. And I spent longer than I intended today, writing this one out. As I reflect on our week in China, hopefully there will be some good come from it all for us as well as for the BGP: Bureau of Geophysical Prospecting."