I recently returned from my New
Years vacation in Chongqing and Chengdu.
They are the largest and 4th largest cities in China,
respectively, but that’s not why we chose to go there. By “we” I mean myself and Ryan Siu – my Peace
Corps traveling companion who is flexible enough to “plan” a trip with me. Planning goes something like this:
“So,
want to go somewhere warm in February?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s
stay in China since it’s the New Year festival.”
“Sounds
good.”
“How
about Chengdu. They have pandas and it’s
further south.”
“Cool. Hey, I see on the map that Chongqing is
nearby, maybe we can go there too?”
“Sure.”
“Great,
I’ll book my plane ticket.”
Planning
accomplished. We did book a hostel for
our first three days, but otherwise we were free to go where we pleased.
Where
to start… With the flight, I suppose. Up
until now, I had only taken buses and trains in China – both of which are
plentiful and efficient. Especially the
high speed trains which travel at an average of about 200 km/hr. A train ride to Chengdu, however, would take
34 hours from Ningbo and since we were traveling during Chinese New Year trains
would be really crowded. (For a really
vivid depiction of the traveling difficulties faced during CNY, I recommend the
documentary “Last Train Home.”) So,
flying. My flight was supposed to leave
at 8:20pm, but when I got to the airport, they told me it was delayed. At around 7:30, airport personnel rounded up
the few of us who were waiting at the gate and led us to buses where the rest
of the passengers were already waiting.
They told me we were going to a hotel.
I was confused. I tried to
explain, “I live in Ningbo. If the
flight is cancelled I will take a taxi home.
I don’t need a hotel room.” “Oh
no,” they said, “The flight isn’t cancelled.
We are taking you to a hotel to rest.”
I
figured I should be flexible considering that I live in a constant fog of
misunderstanding. A good example of this
is the time I tried to buy train tickets to Beijing. A few weeks before the trip I went to a train
ticket booking office near my apartment and proudly requested a ticket for
Beijing for December 31st – with a well practiced Chinese
sentence. To my dismay, the woman at the
counter shook her head. She passed me a
piece of paper with handwritten Chinese characters, which of course didn’t
help. In my frustration, I assumed that
she was saying that there wasn’t a train from Ningbo to Beijing. I stomped back home to the internet to arm
myself with information. I looked up the
train numbers, departure times, prices, etc., wrote it all down, and walked
back in a huff for having to “do someone’s job for them.” When I got there, the woman took my piece of
paper and began to laugh. Yes, we have
these tickets she said. I reached for my
money. “No, you can’t buy them.” What?!
So confused. Fortunately, a woman
behind me in line spoke some English and explained that I needed to come back
to buy these tickets 5 days before the departure date. Chinese train tickets are not sold two weeks
in advance. How interesting!
Back
to the airport. I followed the herd onto
the buses and arrived at the hotel where we waited in line for room keys –
with our roommates! A brave 28 year old
architect volunteered to be paired with the foreign girl. They told us that we could rest and that they
would call our room when the flight was ready.
Architect girl and I went quietly to bed at 8:30 and were awoken by the
phone call at 12:30. Back on the buses. Back through security, and finally on the
plane. I told my roommate that in
America they make you “rest” in the hard airport chairs when flights are
delayed. It’s just one more reason to
love life in China.
Well,
I arrived semi-rested in Chengdu at 6:00am and promptly began exploring with
Ryan. We generally use the following
approach to getting oriented in a new city: walk until your legs fall off. There’s no “getting lost” because we don’t
really care where we are anyway. Usually
when we finally buy a map we realize that we’ve already identified many of the
major landmarks. “Oh yeah, that soldier
statue – isn’t that near the place where we had noodles and saw the kitten on a
leash?”
In
Chongqing we actually stepped up our method a bit due the monstrous size of the
city. We played Bus Roulette. The game goes like this: 1) Identify starting
point. 2) Get on a bus (the first
available bus) 3) Choose roles – “Watcher” or “Mapper” 4) The watcher looks
frantically out of the bus windows to ID any and all useful information (e.g.,
“Hey, there’s a park – I think it’s called 沙平坝 /sha ping ba – oh yeah, there’s a shopping
center with the same name. A district
perhaps? Hey, I think that we just passed under the third ring road…) 5) The mapper must play “Where’s Waldo” with a
confusingly busy map – searching for Chinese characters without knowing the meanings. With enough landmarks, it’s usually possible
to make a rough estimate of the general direction. The game ends when the bus goes off the map,
in a direction away from civilization, or when you get tired of riding a
bus. Then you get off the bus as quickly
as possible and either repeat steps 1-5 or find the nearest metro station to
get back to the hostel.
In
Chengdu we got a little extra help with our exploring in the form of two
students whose homework assignment for their CNY vacation was to interact with
foreigners. We found them in the hostel
lobby, waiting to take people on a tour.
It went like this: “Hi, I’m
Richard and this is Sophie. If you want
we can, um, show you some places and, um, like a tour, you know? This is so we
can practice our English because speaking is very important.” It was so gutsy that Ryan and I couldn’t
refuse. I asked them if they were in
high school. “No, ummm…” “ College?” I
volunteered. “No, I’m 13 years old.”
“Oh, so, middle school!
Wow!” We started our tour at
People’s Park. Richard and Sophie
insisted that we ride the motor boats around a small pond. They also tried really hard to get us to feed
the fish, but we categorically refused.
The fish were giant koi who were fed by bottles. Yes, bottles of fish food strapped to sticks
which tourists place in the swarming water and watch the fish fight over. Disturbing and brilliant at the same
time.
This
is a good time to talk about Chinese parks.
The parks are the #1 most surprising thing that I’ve encountered
here. Considering that I’m in China,
that’s a major statement! They are that
shockingly wonderful. Even a mundane park
in China is beautifully landscaped.
Generally the flowers are planted in tight patterns of dense color. A midsize park will have open air buildings
for practicing tai qi. They will also
usually have tables for playing majhong, Chinese chess, go, or cards. At all hours of the day you can watching
ladies dancing with fans, couples practicing tango, old women who dance with
balls balanced on badminton rackets, loners who sing public karaoke with a
portable stereo, gong fu practitioners, people swinging their arms, hitting
trees, walking backwards and other healthful practices, children – so many
children – with their grannies, kite flying, tea drinking, lunch eating...in
short, parks are a hive of glorious activity.
You can buy street food, have conversations, climb aboard
ancient-looking carnival rides, or just photograph flowers. I love parks here.
Back
to Chengdu… After wandering the city on foot, Ryan and I did decide to see some
of the famous attractions – namely, Pandas.
Chengdu is near the remaining Panda habitat and they have a Panda
breeding center that is working hard to keep Pandas from going extinct. The park is great and we enjoyed seeing both
Giant and Red pandas. Red pandas look
like a cross between a cat, a raccoon, and maybe a badger. They are frisky and have adorable faces. The Giant Pandas were my favorite
though. They are hilarious because their
body is their own cushy bean bag chair.
They recline and chomp on whatever piece of bamboo is within reach. When they run out of reachable bamboo or just
feel a bit sleepy, they roll until they hit a tree or another panda. Sometimes this results in a scuffle,
sometimes spooning. But in the end, more
bamboo munching. Also, they are
amazingly proficient at climbing trees despite their bean-bag figure.
We
took one other guided tour while in Chengdu.
This was perhaps my most disappointing day. I had mentioned to Ryan that I’d like to get
out of the city for a day hike. You
know, stretch our legs, fresh air, get away from the hustle, experience nature.
The hostel offered a day trip to Mt.
Qingcheng – the birthplace of Taoism. A
serene mountain paradise of steep trails and isolated temples. The day trip turned out to be a very guided
tour, complete with yellow flag and loud speaker. The “hiking” turned out to be
stairs and a trip up the mountain in a cable car. The stretching our legs
became stopping every two steps because a tourist in front of us was taking a
picture. It was nearly the most crowed
place we visited. The “steep trails”
between temples were packed with people.
This
brings up another good point: crowds in China.
There is no denying the fact that China is crowded – there are, after
all, over 1 billion people in a country approximately the same size as the U.S. In his book, China Airborne, James
Fallows illustrates the population of China:
The United States and China have about the
same geographic area, although China’s mountainous and desert expanses mean
that it has significantly less arable land.
But China’s population is about four times larger than America’s. To match the challenge of human scale that
confronts China, the United States would have to bring in every person from
Mexico, more than 110 million in all, plus the 200 million people in
Brazil. Then it would also need the
entire population of Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean nations, plus Canada,
Colombia, and every other country in North and South America. After doing all that, it would be up to
around one billion people. If it then
also added the entire population of Nigeria, some 155 million, and every person
from the hyper-crowded islands of Japan, 125 million more, it would have as
many people as China—almost.
Mainly
I experience the intense crowds on the metro.
In Shanghai, for example, where the metro has an average daily ridership
of 6.69 million people, getting on line 2 feels like trying to break a Guinness
world record for “most people in a confined space with little air.” But really it’s not that bad; it’s a metro –
you expect to rub shoulders. There’s
almost a joy in the stoic disinterestedness of strangers whose bodies are
mashed into one another. So, metros are
one thing, but a mountain of temples is another. The crowds really made it difficult for me to
enjoy the location.
I
find that I have a love-hate relationship with slow-moving masses of
people. Sometimes it adds to the
excitement of the atmosphere –like at the lantern festival and dragon dance
parades that we saw on New Year’s eve.
At other times I just really want to be able to take a full step without
running into another body. While
visiting the Ciqikou ancient village in Chongqing, Ryan and I entered the
village at what turned out to be the “less traveled” part. We snacked on fried dumplings and spicy
potatoes. Played card games in a
charming tea house. And then we turned a
corner and were suddenly salmon in a rushing river of arms and legs:
 |
| Tea house |
One
of our main activities on this vacation was eating. Sichuan province is well known for their
spicy food – especially hot pot. At a
hot pot restaurant a heating element on the table keeps a pot of water and
spices boiling. The restaurant guests order various raw food items and then
cook them in the boiling pot. Sichuan
pepper, also referred to as “mouth numbing pepper,” literally coats your mouth
with an intense tingling sensation. They
are in the wonton you eat for breakfast, the noodles you have for lunch, and of
course the hot pot at dinnertime. In
addition to trying spicy food, we also participated in dumpling making that the
hostel hosted on evening. We rolled out
small circles of dough, places a bit of raw pork and onions in the center, and
then seal them up to be boiled and served with vinegar for dipping. Delicious!
We
also spent a good amount of time at two establishments near our hostel: The
Bookworm and Dave’s Oasis. The Bookworm
is a bookstore, library, café, bar, restaurant, and live music venue where we
could sit for hours. I spent enough time
there to read an entire book off of their shelves in a 24 hour period. (It was A Concise Chinese-English
Dictionary for Lovers which I highly recommend). Dave’s oasis was a beer and pizza handout
with a colorful cast of regulars.
Last
but not least, we also had the opportunity to attend a Sichuan opera. I wish I had done some research ahead of time
on the conventions of Chinese opera because most of the time I felt pretty
lost. There was a lot of fighting, parading, singing, lighting effects, crazy
costumes, and most importantly: mask changing.
A drawstring in the actors’ costumes allowed them to instantly pull on a
new mask over their face. Despite my
lack of understanding, the overall spectacle was definitely impressive.
