After staying up talking so late (early?) I didn't wake up until the afternoon. I made some coffee and Ashley woke up and we went to get the bus to the lake. I had to guess which bus we needed and thankfully I had guessed correctly. We got off in the middle of an old looking part of town with some really old buildings. A group of young girls were cycling along in the road behind us shouting hello. I was amused to hear the same tone in Ashley's voice as I have developed. A sort of monotone robotic 'hello' in response. I told him I hope when I am back in England I can get out of the habit of sounding so bored when I say hello! We looked around for a bit and then headed to the lake.
The walk to the lake involved a narrow path and a climb over branches. I'm really not a narrow paths and climbing branches kind of person! Plus I was feeling a little hungover and very hungry. We climbed up an old watch tower type building. I noticed in one of the turrets there was a strange object and I asked him what it was. He picked it up and it was like a piece of old wooden banister or something. So of course I had to take a photo to add to my random collection.
We climbed back down the steps and then found a restaurant which had been built on a platform on the water. It had private dining rooms and the window was open and the lake was literally within touching distance of the window. The waitress told Ashley all of the vegetarian options they had available. We decided between us on a few dishes. He said there was one he didn't understand. The other foreigners in China often go on about 'mystery meat' meaning that they don't always know what it is they have eaten. As I never get to partake in this (not that I'm really complaining!) we agreed to order the 'mystery veg'. It turned out to be a plate of lettuce! We also had a nice dish of broccoli, some spicy potato and some rice. It doesn't sound like ideal hangover food but it was really good.
After lunch we walked across the 21 arches bridge which crosses the lake. This side of the lake is more fun, there are green grassy areas for people flying kites and stalls selling bits and bobs. There was also a man painting. We watched him for a while and a lady gave him the equivalent of 50 pence for a painting. I asked Ashley to speak to the man and find out if he could do a painting for me. Ashley used his iPhone to find the characters of my Chinese name Mòlì - 茉莉 - and the guy hand painted it for me. It's really lovely!
In the evening we went to the supermarket and actually found some red wine to share. The shop assistant didn't seem to understand when we asked for a corkscrew, even with Ashley's language abilities and my attempts to mime opening a bottle! We searched around the shop and luckily we found one. We then went to Lilly Coffee as Mohamed had invited us to a Pizza Party. I have never been to one of Mohamed's official parties before (only the unofficial ones) and I was a little unimpressed at first. There were so many Chinese people there from the university. We had to pay to get in and for the price of a usual individual pizza all we got was one slice and one coffee. The Chinese students cornered us foreigners. I apologised to Ashley as this was not what I had been expecting. They were asking all sorts of questions of us and it was more like work! The Chinese students have a curfew, however, and a lot of them left quite early. The few of them which stayed had really good English skills so we ended up having more intelligent conversation than just what foods we like to eat.
The crowd was pretty varied. Mohamed is Muslim, and I finally met Alex who has a Jewish background, Ruth had a Catholic schooling, and I think the rest of us were non-religious (some may say atheist, but in my opinion this is too strong a word, I am not anti-religion). It is really interesting being able to discuss this type of thing in this environment. I've learned a lot about the expectations and beliefs of several different religions during my time so far in China. As it often does, the conversation moved on to my vegetarianism. People are so curious, but if somebody did not like to eat potato (just for examples sake) they would not confront them and make them justify why they choose not to eat potato! Really I don't mind though, as long as people understand I'm not trying to convert anybody and they want to listen to me then I am happy to talk. They asked if I ever had children would I want them to be vegetarian. I said no which I think surprised some people. I explained that if I had a child who was sat in a room, just as I was, with all these people looking at them and asking them to justify their choices and explain their beliefs, I would want them to be able to do this confidently, without just saying "because my mum made me". But then I changed the subject as I'm not really ready to think about having children!
We also talked about various philosophical problems. I think the Chinese students must have recently studied something on these lines as they were using pretty classic examples. "You are standing on a railway bridge. Looking down the line, you see an out of control locomotive heading towards five people on the track. Within minutes, they will be crushed under the wheels. Nearby is a lever which you know you can use to divert the train. Unfortunately, there is one person on the other line. You can save five people only by condemning one person to certain death. What do you do?" The Chinese said they would do nothing as they would not want to be responsible. Ashley tried explaining to them that by doing nothing, they had made a decision of sorts and were therefore doing something! This was a lost cause; they did not really understand him. The problem continues with "As before you are standing on a railway bridge, a locomotive is hurtling down a track towards five people. You can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. There is a very fat man next to you leaning over. Your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?" This time they said they would push him, I think there reasons were that he does not look after himself and may die soon anyway because he is so fat! I decided to shake things up a bit… knowing how the Chinese respect the elders in their families; I asked what they would do if the fat man was their father. They said they would jump off the bridge themselves!