Vacation

I recently returned from my New Years vacation in Chongqing and Chengdu.  They are the largest and 4^th 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 31^st – 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.