Chengdu and Environs

Twelve days anywhere is a lot to fit into a blog, but I felt like my time in Chengdu was particularly noteworthy. So there will inevitably be things skipped over or left out this format.

We came to Chengdu because of another Workaway, one that was a bit sketchy on the details but again offered free housing in exchange for English speaking. It turned out that some Chinese college students had taken a gap year and opened a café which was essentially a front for an English school. Foreigners would share an apartment with the hosts and draw customers to the café so that they could practice their English. We arrived on the first day of business, though no customers came until the third day after some vigorous hawking by me and Auberon. The hosts weren't particularly worried about the low turnout, because at the end of August the nearby university would open and the floodgates of students would open. Based on the small but steady stream of people we got during this summer holiday, things ought to speed up soon.

On these slow days in the café, Auberon and I (there were other volunteers but they left soon after we arrived) chatted with the hosts, drew up business ideas, and played chess. I practiced the guitar and tried half-heartedly to tackle reading some books in Chinese. I've always wanted to get good at making those chalk art designs on sandwich boards in front of cafés. Sudden showers got the chalk wet more than once, but I practiced English and Chinese calligraphy and made some pretty designs.

The hosts were the best part (I've changed their names here). We mostly hung out with the two girls Lori and JD, since the third girl was gone for most of our time. A guy, Rob, also shared the apartment but kept to himself a bit more. He did take us out to the city one of the first days and put up with our endless wandering, so kudos to him for that. JD had a lot less English than Lori (our main contact through workaway) but studied Italian and wore high fashion. I poked fun a bit at the care she put into her appearance, but she told me that her parents didn't allow her to travel. I scrimp and save constantly to take trips, and as a consequence I have few nice things - stained clothes, broken phone, aging camera. She simply puts that time and money into art and fashion.

Lori was a language person like myself, majoring in Indonesian at university. She had traveled to Korea and Japan solo and had had wonderful experiences there that inspired her to start the café project. Since I was getting free housing, I thought I'd give her her money's worth and so when she asked me to help with English I jumped at the chance. My linguistics area of interest is phonetics, so we worked on advanced pronunciation techniques to get her closer to that eternal goal of natural native-sounding speech.

My Mandarin got quite a boost too. Lori and company (most everyone in Chengdu, actually) spoke Sichuan dialect to one another, which at first is incomprehensible to a speaker of standard Mandarin. But everyone was more than willing to use Mandarin with me when I wanted to practice, and I bought a small notebook to write down new things. Having had little luck finding resources for Sichuanese before I arrived, I was over the moon when Lori and Rob agreed to record a set of phrases in both Sichuanese and Mandarin. Through careful listening to these and the speech around me, by the end of the Chengdu leg I could understand a surprising amount of Sichuanese conversation, and my Mandarin speaking was a lot more confident. Perhaps most importantly, Auberon and I learned a colorful range of Sichuan curse words. As much as I love the idea of speaking colloquial street Chinese, I think the best strategy is to learn the standard register first. I'll try and publish the Sichuan recordings in some way, but for me just learning to understand a little is enough for now.

I practiced one particular Mandarin sentence many times: "We came to Sichuan because he loves spicy food" - punctuated with significant pointing at Auberon. He has an immense tolerance for spicy food, well beyond my own limit. We've asked for spicy food before, and they always take it easy on us. In Chengdu we found lots of food, generally oil-based, that had generous amounts of spicy sauce or powder added. Auberon only met his match once, though, in a hot pot restaurant where the diners were cook spicy food in boiling spicy oil, then cool it down by dipping it into room-temperature spicy oil. It was delicious. All the food in Chengdu was wonderful and very affordable. My heart lies, though, with the pork bun place right next to the apartment complex. The owner was always glad to see me even though he never quite grasped that my use of Chinese to order and pay was more than playacting. I'd order, he would prepare the food, then he'd double check by silently mouthing the order details (in Chinese) and making elaborate hand gestures. I'd confirm and say goodbye in Chinese, he'd smile and wave, and the process would begin again the next morning.

In the last few days we took a reasonably perilous car ride to Lori's hometown, a great place with excellent river views. We stayed there a night, enjoying her mother's fine cooking, then the next day went to a more touristy old town not far away. In both places we were the only Westerners, but surprisingly we weren't really pointed and laughed at the way we were in Vietnam. The old town reminded us both strongly of Hoi An, with the type of old storefronts you'd find someone being thrown against in a kung fu movie. Since it was very hot, these streets were peaceful and slow moving compared to the city bustle.  So far it's the only place we've yet seen insects (dead and alive) for sale like nuts or fruit.

When back in Chengdu, we said our goodbyes and left for our overnight train to Xi'an. It was really an excellent city, and I'm very glad I got to see it through the lens of the young people who live there. I'll miss them.

I didn't take that many pictures with my phone, and none of them are particularly representative. But here's a few (I hope the app lets me attach more than one). First, a view of the inside of the world's largest building by floor space, a wonderfully strange complex of a mall, a theater, a water park, apartments, abandoned rooms and busy startups. Next us with Lori (JD barely visible in the back) at one those sushi restaurants with the conveyor belt. Lastly us as we tried and failed to bring Mexican quesadillas to China, land of little cheese and no salsa.