I'm already laughing. Even if this blog doesn't entertain anyone else, the simple thought of it is entertaining me.
Some people want to see the Great Wall, some want to see the Forbidden City, and although I'm sure sites like those are absolutley fascinating I chose to spend 2 1/2 weeks of my month long winter vacation in Chengdu. Chengdu is a city in the Sichuan province in southwestern China. I had heard very nice things about it from friends here in Kaili. Specifically I was told that Chengdu had pandas, great food, and beautiful women. I will touch on all of this and more. Ultimately, I chose Chengdu because I didn't think that tourists could ruin pandas for me. I've always been an animal lover and I can't think of anything more interesting or more uniquely Chinese than pandas. Back in 2001 or so, I spent some time in Mexico. My friends' family and I went to see Teotihucan, the Aztec Pyramids. They were awesome. They were also crawling with tourists and annoying peddlers trying to sell me shit that I didn't want. China is also full of tourists, many more than Mexico was, and there are far too many pushy vendors trying to get me to buy their crap. Seeing the Great Wall would be cool, but I've got a funny feeling that it would be crawling without about 10 billion tourists who would bump into me and there would be annoying peddlers stationed about every 5 feet or so. But not with the pandas. I knew ridiculous crowds and pushy people would not be able to ruin pandas for me.
I debated writing this next part, simply because it makes me look like an idiot. But it's true, and what it comes down to is that it's just too funny to leave out of this blog. So, this is me swallowing my pride: Gulp. I arrived in Guiyang to go to the airport and hop on my plane to Chengdu. The bus dropped me off at a bus station I didn't recognize. I learned later on that the bus station I knew had closed for good. The old bus station had been near the airport. This new bus station was next to a large, silver, shiny building. It was within walking distance. At this point in time I had only been to two airports in China: Guiyang and Nanchang. I walked up to the building, wondering where the entrance was, when a security guard came out. Next thing I know I'm in a room full of laughing security guards and I'm trying to ask them how to get into the airport. They took pity on this stupid foreigner and found me a taxi. I wasn't sure what was happenning until the taxi pulled up in front a large sign reading "Guiyang Airport." I realized what had happenned. Because I was so used to the bus parking near the airport in Guiyang I had automatically assumed that the large silver building near me was the airport. I had also gotten the appearance of the Nanchang airport confused with the Guiyang airport. The Guiyang airport looks nothing like the large silver building near the new bus station. I'm starting to worry about the number of brain cells that I have left.
Even with my brain cells rapidly depleting (maybe it's all this polluted air) I managed to get to Chengdu. I checked into a place called "Sim's Cosy Garden Hostel." The name is cheesy but it's not a lie. There was a pretty little garden inside the grounds with fish in a pond and a big gray rabbit hopping around some Chinese gazebos. And the place was cozy or cosy or, whatever. The staff were nice and helpful. I met some cool travellers there, many of them were using Chengdu as a jumping off point for a trip into Tibet. That's a good idea and I'd love to try it someday. But Chengdu was exciting in its own way. The staff were absolutely delighted when I told them I wanted to stay for 2 1/2 weeks. Most people just come and go within a few days, but I had decided that I'd prefer to take some time getting to know the city well rather than go bouncing around various places in China, spending a lot of time and dealing with the hassles on public transportation. If I were a travel writer I'd be giving "Sim's..." an excellent review.
On my second day in Chengdu I discovered that I was capable of walking from Sim's, which was well on the north of the city, to the city center in about 45 minutes. Upon learning this and then peeking at the map, I theorized that I could walk to every place I wanted to go in the city. I made a decision, "No public transportation unless absolutely necessary." That was a decision that saved me a lot of money and and helped me burn off the ludicrous amount of cheese that I ate. There was cheese! There was Italian food, Mexican food, and cheeseburgers! There was Starbucks and WalMart! I even got milk! Can you believe it? I drank milk! And Guinness! There was an Irish pub in Chengdu, patronized almost entirely by expatriots. There was a place called Peter's Tex Mex Grill, where I wolfed down a few billion chimichangas. There was a place called Grandma's Kitchen which had burgers, fries, standard American fare. You walk through the door of Grandma's Kitchen and sudennly you're in small town Indiana. I sat down to the first real cheeseburger I'd had in about 5 months and it was then that I knew, "Grandma really loves me." There was also a cool place called The Bookworm. I'll get to that.
I spent an absurd amount of money in Chengdu and it was mostly because I couldn't stop eating "Western" food. Everything western was super expensive, but I knew that I'd be back in Kaili soon enough and Kaili is the land of nothing western. There are times when I enjoy the small size of Kaili and there are other times when I find myself becoming jealous of people teaching in cities like Chengdu. Cities that have western food, foreigners to talk to, and stuff to do. In Kaili, the nightlife scene is almost entirely karaoke. I have yet to find a bar where I can just go and hang out without having a giant group of people with me. It seems that every bar in Kaili has a ridiculously high minimum drink purchase price that makes it almsot unthinkable to go the bar without a large group of people or planning to get completely shit-faced.
I don't want people thinking that the only stuff I ate in Chengdu was western food. I knew perfectly well that I was in the famous Sichuan province. In America we have quite a few Sichuan restaraunts and I just HAD to know what authentic Sichuan food was like, another reason why I'd chosen Chengdu in the first place. Sichuan food is famous for its spiciness and there's a perfectly good reason for that. It's spicy stuff! I really really love Sichuan food! In fact I like it more than the food here in the Guizhou province. Sichuan food is spicy but this is spice for the sake of flavor not just for the sake of spice. There were times when I got the feeling that the locals were actually a little proud of me for taking on the spice. I paid some terrible gastronomic prices for that decision (somehow I managed to avoid the dreaded "Mao's Revenge") but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. You sit down at the table, taste the food, and every time you're faced with the same decision: Dig in or wimp out. I dug in. Every time. What's the point of eating Sichuan food if you're not going to take on the spice? But the not-so-spicy stuff was good too, even if there wasn't much of it. If Chinese food is art, then Sichuan food is a masterpiece.
A lot of the sites to see in Chengdu were temples and monasteries. On one hand, I'm fascinated by the amazing architecture of many of these buildings. On the other hand, I feel like I'm getting to the point where I see a temple and start thinking, "Another temple. So what." It is either strictly forbidden or just considered rude to take photographs inside of most temples here, which is dissapointing because the interiors of these buildings tend to be amazing: statues galore, fantastically colorful pillars, masks, gold, all kinds of Bhuddas sitting around. I go to temples in Kaili, Chengdu, wherever, and I watch the people praying or whatever the proper term is and I start becoming an amateur philosopher. I am not a religous person and I'm perfectly happy with my unbelief, so I stand there watching huge tides of people come in and out of the temples, buying their firesticks which they burn at the at the altar, usually near a statue of some sort, and I just don't get it. But that's ok with me. I don't need to get it. I don't need to understand why sooooooo many people believe in coming to a temple and worshipping Bhudda or whatever the proper term is. It's just interesting to think about. Some things strike me as odd. At places like the Wenshu Monastery I see things that seem out of place to me. Monks on cell phones. That was surprising.
I see animal statues all over China: Lions, Tigers, Birds, and of course the ever present Dragons. I see animals depicted in art a lot. And yet I also see homeless animals every day. I see live chickens being carried home in plastic bags as if they were nothing more than a abiotic object. I know that I'm in a country full of cultures unlike my own and the polite thing to do, the culturally sensitive and mature thing to do, is probably just to keep my mouth/keyboard shut, but I sometimes feel like I'm in a place that makes a big show of its nature and then trashes the hell out of it by polluting everything and treating animals like shit. I've mentioned before that there are certain things that I outright hate in China. The treatment of nature is number one on my hate list.
Unlike Kaili, Chengdu has unmarried women in their 20's and 30's so dating was possible. There is a lot of pressure for marriage, mostly for women, in China. I went on two dates with a cool woman. After a short time she decided that my name was no longer sufficient and she started referring to me as, Big Boy. Later on, she decided that Big Boy wasn't good enough either so she began calling me, Shu Mao. Panda. No I am not getting married and I don't even know whether or not I'll have a chance to see her ever again. That's as far into my lovelife as blog readers are allowed to go.
The Bookworm is a Chengdu hangout that caters to expatriots. It's a restaraunt that's full of books. For a book junky like me, it's great. What made it even better was the fact that on my 4th day in Chengdu I found a Bookworm sign that was advertising a David Sedaris reading there. I was psyched to learn that, yes, I would still be in Chengdu when Sedaris came. I decided that my brain cells were not quite so depleted to make me dumb enough to miss a Sedaris reading, so 3 days before leaving Chengdu I went to the Bookworm and saw David Sedaris do a reading from his recent book "Squirrel Meets Chipmunk." David Sedaris is a cool, little, wiseass (that's a compliment) of a man and I enjoyed the reading. He had previously been to Japan and was doing a quick tour through China. Almost everyone at the reading was an expatriot and we all laughed our asses off when Sedaris began comparing Japan to China. He described Japan as being place full of very polite people and then he mentioned his experience in the Beijing airport. He was in line when he sudennly felt a lot of pressure from behind him. His first thought had been that he was being pushed but then he thought, "No. People wouldn't push." At that point, I shared a telepathic connection with every expatriot in the room. We all wanted to stand up and say, "Welcome to China."
The pandas were kickass! Just north of Chengdu lies the Panda Breeding Center. It houses both Giant Pandas and Red Pandas. The giant pandas weren't really all that big. They ranged from 3-5 years old and not even the 5 year olds were much larger than a standard New England Black Bear. But they were a lot of fun to watch. They seem to have two different modes: Sit Down and Do Nothing Mode and Extremely Funny Mode. They are completely graceless animals which makes them hilarious. There was one goofball up in a tree who tried climbing down by stepping onto a tree branch that was sure to give way under his weight. I had gone to the center with a tour group from Sim's and I stood there with a Canadian dude as we tried to figure out how this heavy clunky animal was going to make it down the tree. In the end, the branch held and the panda ended up doing a surprisingly successful manuever in which he dropped off the branch and spun down the trunk by "bear hugging" it. I apologize for the bad pun. This same panda, a short time later, climbed up onto a swing that had been built for them. He hung out there for a little bit just swinging and then started climbing up on the horizontal bar in the middle. I don't know what the intention was but the result was that he promptly front-flipped over the bar and plopped down on the opposite side of the swing platform. We all laughed like crazy. I knew I had made the right decision, there's just no way the Great Wall could be better than that.
Red Pandas are cool little guys who look like large red raccoons with small panda heads. They're energetic little animals and they're a lot of fun to watch. They skitter all over the place and chatter a lot. The British girl next to me got one to come over to her by imitating it. I couldn't do the imitation. Damn it! And she was there with her boyfriend. Double damn it! There was also a panda museum which shared such interesting "facts" as: Giant Pandas are 9 million years old. There was a hilarious poster showing the evolution of various bears of the world. Every bear depicted on the poster had lines branching off of it showing its ancestors. Every bear except the Giant Panda. There was only one line going from the present day Giant Panda 9 million years back to a single ancestor. I want to check the credentials of the "scientists" who researched the information in that museum.
It's the Year of the Rabbit now. I can tell because of all the decorations. I see cartoon rabbits everywhere. But mostly, I can tell because of the fireworks. Fireworks at 2PM. Fireworks at 8AM. Firworks on New Year's Eve, of course. And fireworks at 3AM when I'm making a futile effort to sleep. In Guiyang, I saw an intersting thing where people were lighting fires inside what looked like paper lanterns and then launching them into the sky. It looks fascinating. But the excessive celebratory fireworks here have made what is already a gigantic pollution problem even bigger.
I said goodbye to Chengdu reluctantly. Even though it's a fairly large city and I've never considered myself to be a city mouse, I had a lot of fun there. I might go back someday. But, I caught my plane and went to Guiyang. I got ripped off by the cab driver and didn't even realize until it was too late. Cabbies here are like vultures. They wait outside the airport for you and a lot of them seem to think that shouting "Hello!" at you will make you want to take their taxi. A lot of these guys won't turn on the meter unless you tell them to. I forgot tell him and for some reason the red flag that should have gone off in my brain didn't go off. I had spent a buttload of money in Chengdu, had been walking around wearing a backpack that weighed about as much as I do, and I was tired. I found a cheap hotel, went to the room, and laid down on the bed.
This is what I thought was happenning: I went to bed around 11:30 at night. When I woke, the clock read 1:30. The hotel room was pitch black. The only window looked out on the hallway. Who puts a window looking out on a hallway? It was closed. I thought it was 1:30 in the morning. The walls were thin as could be and the bed was hard as stone. I could hear everything in every nearby room. I lay in bed trying to sleep. Impossible. Around what must've been 2 o'clock the phone next to my bed rang. I didn't answer. I couldn't believe these people would call my room a 2 in the morning and wake me up! Around 3, I still couldn't manage to sleep, a staff member knocked loudly on my door. I thought, "What the hell is going on?" When I didn't reply, she opened the door. Either I'd failed to lock it or she had a key, I'm not sure. I jumped out of bed to see what the hell she wanted and when she heard me she just walked away. I tried to sleep more. I was hungry, but I didn't think that any restaraunts would be open until around 8 so even though I didn't believe I was going to get any sleep I sat there reading until 6. At 6, I quickly packed up and walked to the front desk. They charged me almost twice as much as I they had initially told me. I had been ripped off by the cab driver the night before and the receptionist who admitted me to the hotel had been a rude woman. I was under the impression that I had been sleep deprived, all night, in an uncomfortable bed, in a thin walled room, with people calling my room, knocking on my door, and then opening the door in the early hours of morning when all normal humans would have been sleeping. When she gave me the bill, I was seriously pissed! I said, "Fuck you!" to the receptionist (this was a different receptionist) because I thought she would understand those words or at least the tone of my voice. She understood. I left, found an open restaruant and ate while I thought about what time I wanted to get my train to Kaili.
What must have really happenned: I thought I have been more or less sleep deprived. But when I sat in that restaraunt eating my "breakfast" I realized something. It was nearly 7. The sun hadn't come up. I had essentially slept ALL day, from 11:30 at night until 1:30 in the afternoon. I could hear people moving and talking loudly because it was the afternoon. They called me and knocked on my door because I had only checked in for one night, but had stayed in the room until 6pm. I said, "Fuck you!" to a perfectly nice receptionist because I thought I was being ripped off. This all could've been avoided if my phone displayed AM and PM. I've never been in solitary confienment, but I've heard that one of the most torturous things about it is the fact that you lose all sense of time passing. That's sort of what happenned to me. I never sleep that long! I'm still shocked! When I went to sleep, it was dark. When I left the hotel, it was dark. I think I'm well on my way to insanity.
I'll mention a few more things and then stop. This blog is friggin' long. I'm halfway through my time here in China, 5 months to go. I'll write more about this later, but I'm at the point where I'm trying to fugure out what I want to do after this year. I know that I want to return to the USA to see family and friends for a while, but I'm not just teaching English here for a fun and excitement. I'm not trying to 'find myself' or anything so cheesy as that. I'm trying to build up my resume. Since I have abolutely no interest in returning to school, I'm going to put this experience on my resume and hope that it will be vaulable enough to get me a decent job elsewhere. However, most American companies that I've checked seem to want their English as a Second Language teachers to have at least 2 years of ESL teaching experience. After this year I will have 1.5 years of ESL experience. That means I have the following options: Return to the USA and hope that my experience is valuable enough to get me a decent job there. Extend my contract here in Kaili.Return to China later and get some more experience. Go to a different country for more experience (the program I came here with is called CIEE and they also have a Teach in Spain opportunity which sounds interesting. Many of the ESL schools in the USA seem to value teachers with experience in a variety of places and Spain has always interested me.) Months ago I got in touch with a man in England who told me he could get me ESL teaching work in for summer time in one of various British cities. These are all options that are spinning around in my head right now. Happy Year of the Rabbit!
