Greetings from the smack middle of China. I am writing to you from the luxurious (actually no sarcasm for once) Golden View hotel in Chongqing, China. This is my stopover from Chengdu where I spent the last few days.
It’s not that my hostel in Chengdu was bad, the staff was super friendly and helpful and the place was clean. However, I was debating flying home early or sticking to my original plans of going to Chongqing. A little exhausted, mostly because I am not used to being this laid back, I decided to rest at a 5 star chinese hotel in Chongqing. The Golden View is very nice; I have two TVs (that I don’t understand a single program but I put the news on anyways), two couches, two refrigerators (?) and a big bed. The bathroom is probably as large as my room in shanghai, which is still big for Chinese standards. I'm also looking forward to my Cantonese style (dim sum!) breakfast tomorrow.
The fine selection of nice hotels, super highspeed trains and abundance of highend shopping (giant Louis Vuitton and Gucci stores) has made me consider that the Middle of China is more developed that the middle of the United States. I will fully support this “middle” theory but if you want to to consider Chicago and the greater Midwest, then it’s a closer competition. So you go to the Midwest and you go to Chicago… are there daytrips outside the city? Hardly. In Chengdu you can spend a half day watching adorable little pandas and you can even volunteer with them! There are half a dozen ancient villages nearby such as the one I visited. So let’s leave difference in per capita GDP aside and say that I would prefer Chengdu over Lincoln, Nebraska any day.
I also want to thank Pepto-Bismol for helping me digest Chengdu’s spicy food and weird vegetables. Couldn’t have made it through the train ride without you. Don’t get me wrong the food was delicious and I definitely ate a lot of it. Lots of ma po dofu, ya cai baozi and streetfood covered in spice. Oh I also drank a lot of milk tea which since I can’t drink milk, wasn’t a good idea either.
On the panda tour I met two new Chinese friends, Dora and Snail (no joke). Dora was actually the tour guide and she carried a backpack which made the Dora the Explorer jokes abound. She wakes up at 6:30 am every day, give the tour, then goes straight to classes at the university where she is an English major, then she goes back to the hostel where she works!
After the tour, Dora went to class and I went to get lunch with Snail. Snail is from Gansu province, the province just north of Sichuan (where the pandas are). Snail was an English major in college too but she graduated four years ago and her English is barely intelligible because she hasn’t used it since college. She now works for the Family Planning Bureau and her job involves her going door to door to see how many children each family has and punishing them if they have more than one child. Actually, rural families can have two children if the first born was a girl but everyone else gets fined and either has to give money, some crops, or spend time locked away! Anyways, Snail treated me and a very attractive French couple (who I want to be) out to lunch. Lunch was a typically Sichuan meal of spicy noodles and jiaozi (dumplings) and only cost 4 dollars for the four of us but Snail insisted she pay. That’s the Chinese way, if you suggest going out, you pay. We decided before we got to China that we would not be practicing that rule in our apartment.
As repayment, I told snail I want to take her and Dora out for a western meal. We talked about this on our tour and they had never had western food. It’s not that they weren’t open to the idea, but they were told all the western food in China is bad. There are KFCs, McDonalds, and Pizza Huts galore and it surprised me that they hadn’t been to one. I offered to take them not just for the experience, but to complete a homework assignment, which was to take a Chinese person to enjoy an activity they always wanted to do but haven’t. Honestly, my options to do this assignment were limited. First, I had to survey ten Chinese people and find out what they like to do, and what they wish they could do but haven’t. Most want to travel and find a spouse and I wasn’t going to be much help in that area. So the third most common response was go out to dinner.
I gave them a choice of KFC, Pizza hut, and cheap Mexican restaurant that was advertised on the back of my map. They really enjoyed it. Their one comment that stuck out was that the food is bland, which I could only assume was a comparison to their spicy sichuanese food.
Dora is coming to Shanghai in two week and hopefully I will see her again then!
In conclusion, the people in Chengdu might be the nicest ever. Unlike my last solo trip, or any time I spent in South east asia in general, I was not the least it harassed. A few times someone would ask if I wanted a ride in their cab or motor bike but that was it. In South East Asia I would be pulled towards a specific store or harassed to stay at a certain hostel. I really enjoyed Chengdu but I am looking forward to R&R and seeing the sights (not sure there are any) in Chongqing.
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