And so in early 2006, the first great waves of American plasma physicists began traveling to China for conferences. Among those conferences was the Seventeenth International Conference on Plasma Surface Interactions (PSI 17). The PSI conference is held every other year with its location rotating from one country to another. In addition to featuring great science, it is renowned for being held in interesting and enjoyable locations. This being the first trip to China for many attendees, the interesting part was easy; of course, it was also enjoyable. To make it even more interesting, the contingent from PPPL (Daren, Charles, and Leonid) took a three day side trip to Beijing. What follows is a brief and somewhat illustrative photographic record of the journey. The sections are roughly in chronological order below (since I had no better ideas).
The PSI 17 conference was convened in Hefei, Anhui Province. As the photos suggest, Hefei is booming. What's less obvious is impressive the conference center was.
An evening of local entertainment or color is also a tradition for PSI meetings. The PSI 17 Gala featured performances by the Peking and Anhui Opera troupes and others.
One of the outings on the PSI conferences free afternoon was to Chaohu Lake, one of China's 5 most beautiful sites (so said our guide). That was all fine, except the trip took six hours longer than advertised.
The last stop in Hefei was a visit to the local plasma physics lab, The Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Here we parted company with the rest of the conference attendees and headed on to Beijng.
These are two of the most well known sights in Beijing.
These are some miscellaneous shots taken around Beijing during our visit.
These two sites came highly recommended by our guide books. But, apparently they didn't provide too many photographic opportunities (I was a little worn by the time we got to Beihai Park).
And on to the Great Wall. While at Tiananmen Square, Leonid found a guide who offered to take us on a day trip to the Great Wall. On the day of the trip, we found out that he had also contracted with a group of young Russians. He drove them in one car; we rode in another vehicle with a (non-tour guide) driver. Unlike many of the other Great Wall sites, the one at Huanghuacheng is not overrun with tourists (yet). In fact, our group was the only one there.
Our last stop prior to heading to the airport. We didn't have much time. In fact, I didn't think it was worthwhile to load the camera. So, all of the credits on this page go to Charles & Leonid.