Happy Year of the Tiger, all.
I’m pretty tired but I’ll try to give you a quick rundown of where I’ve been the past few days.
Since we got six days off for New Years, Gillan and I decided to head south to Chongqing and Chengdu. If you have a good memory and a head for Chinese names, you might remember that Chongqing is the city that I politely requested to teach in, knowing nothing of it, on a recommendation from a girl I don’t know, oh so many months ago.
This involved flying from Beijing to Chongqing rather early in the morning; the second flight I’ve made through Chinese airlines during my tenure here. It was okay but lacked some of the conveniences of American travel, notably being checked in through to the destination (we had to check in again during our layover), and looping the welcome to the plane intro movie like 12 times. The screens come down, a nice Chinese girl demonstrates all of the manoeuvres that aren’t going to save my life when we crash into a mountain, and they fold back up. Then they roll down and do it all over again. Why? It’s China.
I can’t explain Chongqing to you properly. It’s the kind of thing that you really have to experience to understand, but here we go.
Chongqing, moreso than any other city I’ve visited in China, is a spectacle. Its terrain is extremely hilly and it is built at a junction between two rivers, so the town is split up into thirds and loosely reconnected with bridges and cable cars.
Now, like most cities in China, Chongqing has people who want to sell you crap and poverty. Unlike other Chinese cities, Chongqing has people who walk around with bamboo poles. At first Adam and I had no idea what they wanted to sell us, but eventually we realized that they wanted us to let them carry our bags. Chongqing is very much a vertical city; its terrain won’t let it have roads on a grid and its age won’t let it have modern transport systems on the ground. The result is an orgy of skyscrapers, ancient hutongs, roads, rails, and stairs.
The roads here are more confused than Boston’s of London’s; they curve everywhere and most don’t have names. Usually getting from one street to another requires an elevation change of at least two stories, but the stairs are almost always hidden. Sometimes it is as simple as following the road and spotting the staircase build parallel into and of the same material as the wall. More often you have to walk through a run down residential complex, weaving down alleys and staircases, and observing the way in which the poor live.
This is why men as old as my father wander the city with bamboo poles offering to carry heavy weights up these labyrinthine stairs. If you have two large, heavy packages, they get suspended from either end of the pole; if you only have one extra large, really heavy package, they throw the thing on their back. Either way, they must have agonizing back problems.
I mentioned poverty. When I got to China, I noticed that every city has poor who live in crowded, dilapidated neighbourhoods. But in Shanghai and Beijing, even in Baoding, they are surrounded by walls—either of mortar or of store fronts—so that you only really catch a glimpse as you pass by the entrance. Chongqing does not have this luxury of hiding its uglier face. The city is huge, but in a span of minutes you can walk from utter poverty to a tres chique mini-times square.
The poverty is striking. People live in barren one room hovels, with maybe a dangling lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. The little laundry they have is strung up on lines outside. They might have a TV, but otherwise I didn’t see any electronics.
Changing gears, the city is also famous for hotpots, which is kind of like fondue, except instead of lame bowls of cheese, you have bowls of oil and chilies. Quite delicious. Quite spicy.
We took a six hour train to Chengdu. A pretty nice town, but not too much in the way of distraction. We saw pandas there. Do you know what pandas do? Eat bamboo, poop, sleep, and make girls melt. A baby panda tried to escape from its crib/cage while his attendant was cleaning another; this was hilarious and futile.
We also saw a giant statue of Mao. It was pretty big, but it didn’t shoot fire or anything neat.
Chengdu has hotpots like Chongqing; they are good, but not as good as the Chongqing variety, in my opinion. They also have spicy kebobs that are sold by street vendors. Just grilled slices of meat or vegetables covered with spice. Interestingly, some of the best meals—including these spicy kebobs, as well as the best fried rice and Chinese equivalent of pulled pork sandwiches—I’ve had in China have come from unregulated street vendors that Adam and I just stumbled upon.
A Chilean who was laid up with a cold in the hostel gave us wine tips. Hostel life is quite interesting.
Finally, we took a twenty four hour train back to Baoding. There were no beds, so we sat the whole way. It sucked. And to think I used to romanticize about travelling by train.
