The floor is dirty
During my first few weeks in Chengdu I would often put my bag on the ground at work or a restaurant, and this would immediately illicit complaints from my friends as they would run over and pick up my bag to put it on a chair. Even the surfaces of the tables that we were going to eat on were not considered clean, in fact much the opposite. When I would put a piece of paper on the table there would be a general outcry from the locals seated beside me. The reasons for these respective definitions of dirty surfaces became clear to me on several occasions. The floor is always considered dirty because it is considered completely normal to spit on the floor if you are in a restaurant or cafeteria. In addition to this, spitting small pieces of bone or spilling food on the floor is also acceptable. But what really takes the cake on this matter is that launching snot from your nose towards the ground is not a big deal. One day I was eating lunch and I saw a girl with an exceptionally long strand of snot dripping from her nose towards the floor. With a casual flick of her head she broke the strand and down onto the ground it went. My friend Yuanqiang noticed me gawking at this entire proceeding and said “ta ganmao”, meaning she has the flu or a cold. Although this was a completely satisfactory explanation of the situation for him, at the time I was still quite taken aback. The reason that the tabletops are considered unclean is quite simple and has to do with the many bones in the various meats that are eaten. Because of these small bones, you have to spit them out or else suffer dire consequences. Of course the logical place to spit them out is on the tabletops. In between meals, the pieces of food are removed by servers, but they don’t do a particularly good job, and there is no use of soap or water.
Time for a shower
Most people who work in my office are graduate students and they still live in dorms instead of apartments off campus. This is due to the usual reasons such as safety, convenience, and price. One of the results of this is that they live in a small room with four other people. They have a small balcony and a bathroom adjoining the balcony. Although there is a shower in the bathroom, there is no hot water, and with current temperatures flirting with freezing at nighttime you would have to be a hero to take a shower there. The solution to this lack of bathing equipment is twofold. The first is that every night one of the four roommates goes to retrieve hot water from outside the dormitory. This hot water is used to wash the feet. Not only do feet get pungent if you don’t wash them, but according to traditional Chinese medicine they contain an important part of the nervous system. These two reasons lead my friends to wash their feet every night. As for showers, they head to the shower house at most once a week. One of my friends was laughing about how he hadn’t gone in two weeks because he didn’t have enough time. I mentioned that maybe his girlfriend might find this to not be so funny, but he said that she controlled everything in his life, except when he took showers. I guess you have to hang on to what you can in some relationships.
Meat
Although I was raised in a family where I was routinely allowed to steal small amounts of raw beef and egg from meatballs before they became meatballs, the standards of what needs to be refrigerated and for how long are still pretty different here. Every day in the morning I walk by women with a large bowl of raw pork with some spices diligently making dumplings to be cooked later that day, the only issue is that dumplings that are going to be cooked at dinner are made early in the morning, and they aren’t refrigerated in between. Additionally, butchers leave meat out unrefrigerated all day, and I don’t know what they do with it at night. I don’t think that their practices are necessarily unsanitary; it is more that there are different standards here than in America. So far I’ve only gotten sick once. Hopefully it will stay that way.
Being an American
An obvious and interesting part of travel is the conception that other people have of your culture and how you choose to portray that culture. Being an American is like carrying the AK-47 of cultural firepower. If you bury it in the sand for 30 years it still fires. The evidence of American influence is everywhere, from the most popular sport (basketball) to the most popular clothing and accessories. That is not to say that China doesn’t have its own incredibly potent culture, but the meshing of America, globalization, and old Chinese culture is merging into an entirely different beast. Despite the great firewall of China, almost all students have found a way around this using proxy servers, and combined with access via other media avenues such as television (which, although edited, still has a lot of international content) the outside world is making its way into China.
Being an American leads to some very funny questions. Because of the sources for their conception of Americans, people often say things like “so in America, do you ever eat vegetables or only meat?” This is because in movies and television, the meat eating, beer drinking American is alive and well. The concept of a heterogeneous American culture seems completely foreign to most people here. When I try to explain that culture varies widely across the United States, despite such variations in China, people have a hard time accepting it. This is because Kobe Bryant and Michael Scofield represent America in China(the show prison break is incredibly popular over here). The same thing could be said about China and Jet Li and Jackie Chan in America, but at least they both speak English and they were both very popular in China before coming to the US. Here you have not only certain specific representation of America by stars that have acclaim in China, but you also have those stars being translated as apposed to speaking in the native tongue.
The result is a strange mix of western and eastern culture that China seems to be. Kobe Bryant, while certainly very popular in America, is not the most popular NBA player and far from the most popular athlete, but in China he is a megastar. The same thing goes for Prison Break, a show that started out with some promise, but then was less than exciting in subsequent seasons, is widely popular here. This idea penetrates to the most basic parts of daily life. Chinese fashion is an odd imitation of western fashionable dress incorporating western ideas but then giving them a strange remix. A good example of what is going on is that my good friend Liu wears shoes with an anarchy symbol on them. I asked if he knew what that meant, and he had no idea, he just liked the shoes. Basically, it seems as if the people of China have taken western culture and then completely reinterpreted it. Some parts stay the same, but some are completely changed in the translation process. I don’t know nearly enough about Chinese culture to say why they interpret things the way that they do, but it is a fascinating process to observe and be a part of.
As a tall, white man I command quite a bit of attention while walking down the street. Although at first this was overwhelming, I’ve become pretty relaxed with the idea that everybody is going to be looking at me all the time. I have to thank Ticht Nat Han for his indirect help dealing with this situation. Ticht Nat Han says, among other things, that there is a great power in smiling at people and that most often when you smile at somebody they smile back. I’ve found that this is a great way to handle people staring at me. Instead of being uncomfortable and purposefully averting my eyes, I try to look back at people and give them a friendly smile. Although I obviously don’t stop and look at every single person (I’d never make it work!), I’ve found that spreading a few smiles every day has paid off in terms of returned smiles. And frankly, it puts me a in a better mood and allows me to deal with sticking out.
English is difficult
I always was told that English was a very difficult language to master as a second language. I was certainly aware of the complexities concerning grammar and mechanics, but editing English papers written by people for whom English is a second language and trying to communicate with Chinese people in English has taken my respect for the nuance and depth of the language to a higher level. Most people in China have been studying English for upwards of 10 years, but their spoken English is usually timid at best. This has a lot to do with their education system, but I’ll address that at another time (and probably place). To summarize in brief, although most highly educated Chinese people possess an immense English vocabulary, they have very little functional English, either written or spoken, and their ear and pronunciation is untrained. This has lead to some early struggles in communication, although people usually pick things up quite quickly because their foundation is excellent. Written English is a similar story with misused vocabulary and punctuation abound. Getting people to understand basic rules is challenging, but I try to apply patience, because my grasp of the written language was slow (and still is in some ways) in developing.
As an editor, it is hard to draw a line in terms of how much I should change. I get papers from highly respected individuals and centers from across the nation that are written in a repetitive and simplistic style, and it is hard to decide how much editing I am allowed to do. Reading their paper and starting from scratch sometimes seems like it would easier (and more fun) than fixing several mistakes in every sentence. I suppose this is something that I’ll just have to keep an eye on as my editing skills improve. It is an interesting juxtaposition, because obviously these touted intellectuals don’t want their papers to be redundant and childish, but I don’t know if they want me rewriting their articles.
I hope that heat returns to those who lost it in the ice storm soon!
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving to all! I hope you enjoyed time with your families and a good food (Stan, I hope they didn’t mess up the turkey this year).
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday for two core reasons. The first is that Thanksgiving is secular in nature and not related to the military, the government, or any other specific group. In a time when holidays are distorted to serve the agenda of the media and the economy (Xmas, halloween etc.), or sometimes used to empower governmental or political beliefs, Thanksgiving has remained for the most part impervious to such cultural acid rain. The second reason I love Thanksgiving is for what it embodies. Undoubtedly, Thanksgiving means different things to different people, but to me it is a chance to pause and reflect on the vast opportunity that being alive poses to all humans. It is a reminder of the inherent goodness of life, and a chance to slow down and meditate on the gifts that we have received and continue to receive in our experience.
Partaking in Thanksgiving in another country was quite different from normal. Several people did know that it was Thanksgiving, and they did say “happy Thanks day” or something to that effect. It was hard being alone in my understanding of the holiday, and despite these attempts by my friends to express their happiness for me, I felt pretty depressed throughout the day. With the exception of when I was feverish and my insides were fulminating, it was the most homesick I have been. I kept reminding myself I had told my parents that I demanded a Thanksgiving dinner in the summer, or whenever I returned to the United States (my father assured me that they still had turkeys in the summer). The main problem was the physical withdrawal from the Thanksgiving food. I was pretty successful at compartmentalizing my emotional feelings, but the hunger for stuffing and turkey has not left my bowels even at this very moment. Of course when I start thinking about those little onions bobbing up and down in a boiling cream sauce, or the gravy drenched mash potatoes, my mind inevitably turns to my home, my family, and the other people that also put in time and effort to make both the meal and my family what they are.
I did discover, however, that perhaps I was channeling the true spirit of Thanksgiving when I did finally decide to celebrate it by going out to dinner with two of my friends in Chengdu. Only after the meal did I realize that in fact, the spirit of Thanksgiving had been with me on my entire trip in Chengdu. The first Thanksgiving was a feast to celebrate the bountiful harvest of 1621 after a harsh winter which left many of the pilgrims dead. It is thought, however, that none of the pilgrims would have survived that first winter without the help of the natives. I feel the same way about my trip to Chengdu. Without the help of the “natives” I would have had little hope in establishing a happy living and working situation. I could list hundreds of instances in which a local’s help has been invaluable, and I have covered some already such as getting an appropriate apartment contract and being shown around the city. In many ways, my dinner last night carried the spirit of those first pilgrims and the Native Americans that kept them alive in harsh conditions. I had an opportunity to share good food with good people that were instrumental in my ability to build a successful life in a foreign place. There have been many instances in my short time in Chengdu where I have done just that, eaten food with new friends that have helped me to craft my own existence in an admittedly nuanced and unexplored world. I hope to continue to hold on to that cooperative spirit and to flesh out my feelings of thanks in order to convey them to those who have helped me. I only hope that one day they can come and join me in my home for some turkey and stuffing.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday for two core reasons. The first is that Thanksgiving is secular in nature and not related to the military, the government, or any other specific group. In a time when holidays are distorted to serve the agenda of the media and the economy (Xmas, halloween etc.), or sometimes used to empower governmental or political beliefs, Thanksgiving has remained for the most part impervious to such cultural acid rain. The second reason I love Thanksgiving is for what it embodies. Undoubtedly, Thanksgiving means different things to different people, but to me it is a chance to pause and reflect on the vast opportunity that being alive poses to all humans. It is a reminder of the inherent goodness of life, and a chance to slow down and meditate on the gifts that we have received and continue to receive in our experience.
Partaking in Thanksgiving in another country was quite different from normal. Several people did know that it was Thanksgiving, and they did say “happy Thanks day” or something to that effect. It was hard being alone in my understanding of the holiday, and despite these attempts by my friends to express their happiness for me, I felt pretty depressed throughout the day. With the exception of when I was feverish and my insides were fulminating, it was the most homesick I have been. I kept reminding myself I had told my parents that I demanded a Thanksgiving dinner in the summer, or whenever I returned to the United States (my father assured me that they still had turkeys in the summer). The main problem was the physical withdrawal from the Thanksgiving food. I was pretty successful at compartmentalizing my emotional feelings, but the hunger for stuffing and turkey has not left my bowels even at this very moment. Of course when I start thinking about those little onions bobbing up and down in a boiling cream sauce, or the gravy drenched mash potatoes, my mind inevitably turns to my home, my family, and the other people that also put in time and effort to make both the meal and my family what they are.
I did discover, however, that perhaps I was channeling the true spirit of Thanksgiving when I did finally decide to celebrate it by going out to dinner with two of my friends in Chengdu. Only after the meal did I realize that in fact, the spirit of Thanksgiving had been with me on my entire trip in Chengdu. The first Thanksgiving was a feast to celebrate the bountiful harvest of 1621 after a harsh winter which left many of the pilgrims dead. It is thought, however, that none of the pilgrims would have survived that first winter without the help of the natives. I feel the same way about my trip to Chengdu. Without the help of the “natives” I would have had little hope in establishing a happy living and working situation. I could list hundreds of instances in which a local’s help has been invaluable, and I have covered some already such as getting an appropriate apartment contract and being shown around the city. In many ways, my dinner last night carried the spirit of those first pilgrims and the Native Americans that kept them alive in harsh conditions. I had an opportunity to share good food with good people that were instrumental in my ability to build a successful life in a foreign place. There have been many instances in my short time in Chengdu where I have done just that, eaten food with new friends that have helped me to craft my own existence in an admittedly nuanced and unexplored world. I hope to continue to hold on to that cooperative spirit and to flesh out my feelings of thanks in order to convey them to those who have helped me. I only hope that one day they can come and join me in my home for some turkey and stuffing.
More photos!
This time, some photos from around the office:
My workspace:
Hospital from the office:
More of the view from the office:
Not from the office, but a nice shot of the Foreign Affairs Office:
My workspace:
Hospital from the office:
More of the view from the office:
Not from the office, but a nice shot of the Foreign Affairs Office:
Finally, photos!
Here are some photos from around the home:
From my balcony:
The kitchen (where the PB&J happens):
...and the kitchen sink:
The living room:
The bathroom:
And finally, the all-important place of rest:
From my balcony:
The kitchen (where the PB&J happens):
...and the kitchen sink:
The living room:
The bathroom:
And finally, the all-important place of rest:
Mamahuhu
This oft used Chinese idiom literally translates as “horse horse tiger tiger”. The meaning, however, is that an experience is just so-so. If you were to ask me how my second week in China was going, I would probably answer: horse horse tiger tiger. Personally, I feel as though this idiom is offensive to horses and the tigers as neither species in their respective fluidity and power elicits the connotation of ok or merely all right. But personal feelings about animals aside, this week has been a mixed bag.
Physically, this week was an ill-fated adventure. After spraining my ankle last Friday while getting a rebound and summarily landing on top of a teammates foot, I was willing to except a lazy week with little exploration and lots of sitting. Little did I know that a viral equivalent to bacterial traveler’s diarrhea was lurking in my future. I’ll spare you the details of my fever and diarrhea which started on Monday and lasted for 5 days. Basically, it involved me sitting around trying to force myself to eat and having trouble maintaining my body temperature. Finally I felt bad enough that I went to the hospital where they informed me that I had a virus and they couldn’t do anything about it…
I think it is more important to go onto other topics such as my discovery of peanut-butter and a famous dumpling house. Retrospectively, it makes sense that I hadn’t seen any dumplings anywhere. I was subconsciously hoping that at one of the dinners with my Chinese friends they would order some things that I didn’t recognize and a pile of Sichuan specialty pork dumplings would come out accompanied by beautiful women and free beer, but it wasn’t to be. This is of course because dumplings are in fact, a specialty, and you have to go to a special place to find them! I mentioned in passing to a couple of friends that I wanted to try and find a restaurant with good jiaozi (dumplings), and five minutes later we were in a dumpling house. The house consisted of three floors, the bottom a cafeteria like area, the second primarily for tea drinking, and the third for Majong. The dumpling menu was extensive, and I demanded pork dumplings (go with what you know right?). The result was 6 bowls of various pork dumplings for the four of us. The local specialty zhongshuijiao, consisted of pork, garlic, and salt wrapped in a shell and steamed. They were served in a spicy vinegar-soy based sauce with the Sichuan style additions of oil and hot peppers. The other two varieties had a different shell and the additions of scallions and mushrooms respectively. As many of you know, there is nothing like a well made dumpling to soothe the soul. This was by far the most satisfying meal I have had in China. I even went so far as to comment to one of my friends that “this had made the trip to China worth it”. The funny part about that statement is I was fairly serious. I mean if didn’t find good dumplings then this whole experience was pretty much a waste of time right? As for the peanut-butter, I had looked for this to no avail the last time I visited the TRUST mart (supermarket), but this time I had to the good fortune of stumbling upon the foreign foods aisle. Although it was disappointingly small, I was able to find both peanut-butter and jelly, and spaghetti as a bonus. Needless to say, I promptly consumed 8 PB and J sandwiches over the next 12 hours 8.5 of which I was sleeping. Despite a minor stomach ache (nothing like last week though, my goodness), life was good again in Chengdu.
Physically, this week was an ill-fated adventure. After spraining my ankle last Friday while getting a rebound and summarily landing on top of a teammates foot, I was willing to except a lazy week with little exploration and lots of sitting. Little did I know that a viral equivalent to bacterial traveler’s diarrhea was lurking in my future. I’ll spare you the details of my fever and diarrhea which started on Monday and lasted for 5 days. Basically, it involved me sitting around trying to force myself to eat and having trouble maintaining my body temperature. Finally I felt bad enough that I went to the hospital where they informed me that I had a virus and they couldn’t do anything about it…
I think it is more important to go onto other topics such as my discovery of peanut-butter and a famous dumpling house. Retrospectively, it makes sense that I hadn’t seen any dumplings anywhere. I was subconsciously hoping that at one of the dinners with my Chinese friends they would order some things that I didn’t recognize and a pile of Sichuan specialty pork dumplings would come out accompanied by beautiful women and free beer, but it wasn’t to be. This is of course because dumplings are in fact, a specialty, and you have to go to a special place to find them! I mentioned in passing to a couple of friends that I wanted to try and find a restaurant with good jiaozi (dumplings), and five minutes later we were in a dumpling house. The house consisted of three floors, the bottom a cafeteria like area, the second primarily for tea drinking, and the third for Majong. The dumpling menu was extensive, and I demanded pork dumplings (go with what you know right?). The result was 6 bowls of various pork dumplings for the four of us. The local specialty zhongshuijiao, consisted of pork, garlic, and salt wrapped in a shell and steamed. They were served in a spicy vinegar-soy based sauce with the Sichuan style additions of oil and hot peppers. The other two varieties had a different shell and the additions of scallions and mushrooms respectively. As many of you know, there is nothing like a well made dumpling to soothe the soul. This was by far the most satisfying meal I have had in China. I even went so far as to comment to one of my friends that “this had made the trip to China worth it”. The funny part about that statement is I was fairly serious. I mean if didn’t find good dumplings then this whole experience was pretty much a waste of time right? As for the peanut-butter, I had looked for this to no avail the last time I visited the TRUST mart (supermarket), but this time I had to the good fortune of stumbling upon the foreign foods aisle. Although it was disappointingly small, I was able to find both peanut-butter and jelly, and spaghetti as a bonus. Needless to say, I promptly consumed 8 PB and J sandwiches over the next 12 hours 8.5 of which I was sleeping. Despite a minor stomach ache (nothing like last week though, my goodness), life was good again in Chengdu.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Hello from China!
Hello everyone and welcome to my blog from China. Here is a summary of parts of my first couple days and the trip over.
The trip over was relatively painless, or as painless as such undertakings can be. The flight from Boston to Chicago was easy enough as it left on time and arrived thirty minutes early into O’Hare. During the flight I passed out from utter exhaustion. I don’t recall being so emotionally and physically drained as I was in the minutes preceding that flight. The hangover of sleeping only 5 short hours and being both elated in the Obama victory and having to say so many important goodbyes caught up with me on this first flight.
Even with the early arrival to O’Hare time was of the essence before the longest leg of my journey. I had one hour to make a couple of phone calls and decide on the best meal from the food court that I would not be able to have in China. There wasn’t any pizza to be found (surprising in Chicago) and fast food didn’t seem optimal, so I chose a tuna and egg spinach salad with a blueberry fruit juice drink. I have yet to see tuna fish, spinach, or blueberries on this side of the planet so I stand by my beleaguered choice for a last American meal. At the gate the pre-flight composition was mostly Chinese people with a few westerners mostly of the business type. On my flight to Beijing, I ended up sitting next to one of the above mentioned business men, a gentleman from the Midwest (he seemed straight out of St. Louis) going to Beijing to negotiate a car manufacturing deal. The flight itself was unremarkable as I read Drawing of the Three a Steven King novel and slept.
After clearing customs problem free, Beijing itself compromised three hours of frustrated attempts to log on to the internet using my iPod Touch. In the interim between tries to connect to the internet, I tried to make international phone calls all of which returned busy signals (although I doubted that many of those lines were truly busy at 5 AM EST). My mental state at this point bordered on drunkenness as I wandered around aimlessly listening to music in order to negate waves of sleepiness and homesickness. After finding my gate and clearing security, I waited with my music on full blast trying to sustain with overstimulation those few brain cells that were still functioning. My endeavors were not in vain -- although the permanent damage to my hearing may be regrettable -- as I made it onto the flight where I promptly and uncomfortably fell asleep for another two hours.
Getting to Chengdu was a relief, and as advertised the salient smell of chemicals in the air hit my nose upon entering the jet way. I have not since noticed the smell, in fact it only lasted for several seconds, but based on the air quality I don’t doubt that my lack of detection fails to indicate reality. After getting my bags I came out to find a short Chinese lady and man with a sign reading: Gareth Marshall. After a brief introduction and finally putting a face to the mysterious professor Li I had been corresponding with for the last 8 months, we headed to the taxis and waited in line. The man who accompanied Prof. Li was her first graduate student Yuanqiang. I was informed that Yuanqiang would be helping me get around the city and accomplish tasks, such as getting an apartment, that I had no hope of doing on my own. To be quite honest I remember very little of that first conversation that I had in the Taxi. The 18 kilometer drive blended together and the only two memories I have are the realization that Yuanqiang was interested in the NBA and a glaring mental snapshot of a neon splattered business park outside the city.
After a late night check in to an international student dormitory and a night of tossing and turning I awoke to get ready for my first day in Chengdu. Yuanqiang had arranged to meet me in the dormitory lobby at 10 AM and we promptly walked to the Chinese Center for Evidence Based Medicine where I would be doing my work. After some more introductions and a quick tour Yuanqiang, Wenjing (a post-doc), and I headed out into Chengdu to find an apartment. The apartment agent was a skinny young man dressed in a cheap suit. He walked and talked with a quick pace and after making a few phone calls showed us a couple of different apartments. The one that I ended up choosing was on the 21st floor of an apartment building about a 10 minute walk from the EBM center. Both Yuanqiang and Wenjing expressed an overreaching concern about the quality of each apartment and the contract itself. Not that I wasn’t thankful for their help and thorough nature, but at the time it was excruciating because of my own scrambled brains. After bearing with them and making it through the 7 hour process which included trips to different banks (we finally found one that accepted my ATM card), different apartments, and getting lost along the way, I had an apartment. After that red stamp of my thumb print was on the contract I thought that I would find some relief and be able rest for awhile, but I was informed that my welcome dinner with the deputy of foreign affairs and my department chair started in 10 minutes.
There is nothing like some delicious food and beer to take the edge off of a situation, but the dinner was still a little tense for me nonetheless. For instance, the first thing that the Deputy of Foreign Affairs said to me was that this was the only time that anybody has been approved to work at their hospital who wasn’t a fulltime professor. Feeling under-qualified doesn’t quite capture the demoralizing content of such a comment, but I decided to hell with it, I was only editing journals to begin with after all and I thought that I could at least to a decent job of that. The dinner was mercifully short, and I returned to the international dormitory (I hadn’t yet bought sheets, blankets, and pillows for my new apartment) to get another night of pseudo sleep.
My second day in China was fairly exciting in that I got to go to the local version of walmart to outfit my apartment with Yuanqiang and one of his friends who spoke excellent English. The store itself consisted of multiple levels with an internal escalator. It seemed loosely similar to an American mall, except it was much more compact and full of people. The trip was fairly successful as I was able to get almost everything I needed in terms of kitchen supplies, bathroom supplies, and bedroom supplies. The evening did have an interesting turn as we came out of the store during “the busy time”, as Yuanqiang put it, rendering us stuck outside the store as it was impossible to get a taxi. Fortunately, Chen, another post doc was willing to get a cab from the EBM center and meet us downtown. After some unpacking and organization I finally had an outfitted apartment.
To change subjects without warning or reason I’m going to make some cultural and physical observations about the city of Chengdu which may or may not also be true throughout China.
***
Air pollution, construction, and transportation:
The air quality in Chengdu is terrible. Even on sunny days, it is rare to see the sky, and even if you can see the sky, it is still a hazy blue not a true blue. This is due to the fact that Chengdu is in a basin causing the smog to be trapped similar to LA.
One of the things that struck me the most in my last trip to China was the pervasive and constant construction. Things haven’t changed that much in this respect since my last visit. From any vantage point in the city it is quite common to see upwards of twenty new buildings under construction. The sight of cranes and green netted scaffolding quickly become familiar as you walk around.
Transportation in the city of Chengdu is one of the most interesting parts of my stay here so far. Even though I have yet to buy a bicycle, simply walking around the city and taking the ever so complicated bus system is an adventure. Not only are there hundreds of bussing routes, but the buses themselves are usually packed and noisy with a mix of every type citizen from business man to beggar. Walking is a bit of a trip because of the way that the public space works. As far as most people are concerned there are no rules about were to drive, walk, or bike. Although this is hyperbole, it really is chaotic. For taxi drivers the goal seems to be to drive as fast as possible taking up space wherever it is. It is almost as if for the drivers they are pacman and everybody else is those little ghosts trying to eat them. Regardless of lane suggestions and even the dividing line taxis will roam free trying to get from one place to another using their horn to notify everybody to get the hell out of the way. The use of the horn is both liberal and consistent among taxis and regular drivers alike. Things are further complicated by the large number of bikes and pedestrians subscribing to similar rules (if there is a space you had better take it before anybody else does). I am yet to see a car get “pulled over” despite having seen some interesting moves pulled directly in front of police cars. I find it exceedingly funny everyday at rush hour when a fierce gridlock of bicycles, pedestrians, motorcycles, and cars occur at major intersections. Sometimes a pedestrian walk guard (who at all other times only blows a whistle to notify people of changing lights) has to come over and untangle the mess. The locals unsurprisingly don’t find this quite as funny as I do.
Eating dinner and being in a hurry:
One of the largest differences between my experiences in Chengdu as opposed to the US has to be the treatment of meals and being in a hurry. There never seems to be a time when people aren’t in a hurry. For example, there is never any sitting around at a table after a meal. As soon as the last person of the group has finished their food everybody bolts to their next activity. Even if the next activity is lets go back to your place and watch tv, people still won’t sit around at the dinner table. In fact, the idea of sitting around and talking seems to be quite foreign. The idea of general communication being an activity per se does not seem to exist, at least among my group of peers.
The food:
The food in Chengdu is quite delicious. Usually dinner consists of a combination of spicy peppers, oils, garlic, salt, and whatever else the actual dish is. I’ve had some great pork, beef, tofu, and vegetarian dishes here all with those same basic flavors. There is also a spice here that I have never encountered anywhere. It is local and is used in pretty much everything, giving the cuisine a unique flavor. It is called the flower pepper and according to wiki “has lemony overtones giving the mouth a numbness”. What is interesting is that this numbness does not inhibit the ability to taste flavors. This is very strange indeed. I’m sure I’ll be writing a lot about particular dishes in the future.
Well, that’s all for now, more on my first week later. Thanks for the read.
P.S. In case you were worried, (and I certainly was) have no fear: they have cilantro at the supermarket.
P.P.S Sorry for no pictures -- they are coming next time, I promise.
The trip over was relatively painless, or as painless as such undertakings can be. The flight from Boston to Chicago was easy enough as it left on time and arrived thirty minutes early into O’Hare. During the flight I passed out from utter exhaustion. I don’t recall being so emotionally and physically drained as I was in the minutes preceding that flight. The hangover of sleeping only 5 short hours and being both elated in the Obama victory and having to say so many important goodbyes caught up with me on this first flight.
Even with the early arrival to O’Hare time was of the essence before the longest leg of my journey. I had one hour to make a couple of phone calls and decide on the best meal from the food court that I would not be able to have in China. There wasn’t any pizza to be found (surprising in Chicago) and fast food didn’t seem optimal, so I chose a tuna and egg spinach salad with a blueberry fruit juice drink. I have yet to see tuna fish, spinach, or blueberries on this side of the planet so I stand by my beleaguered choice for a last American meal. At the gate the pre-flight composition was mostly Chinese people with a few westerners mostly of the business type. On my flight to Beijing, I ended up sitting next to one of the above mentioned business men, a gentleman from the Midwest (he seemed straight out of St. Louis) going to Beijing to negotiate a car manufacturing deal. The flight itself was unremarkable as I read Drawing of the Three a Steven King novel and slept.
After clearing customs problem free, Beijing itself compromised three hours of frustrated attempts to log on to the internet using my iPod Touch. In the interim between tries to connect to the internet, I tried to make international phone calls all of which returned busy signals (although I doubted that many of those lines were truly busy at 5 AM EST). My mental state at this point bordered on drunkenness as I wandered around aimlessly listening to music in order to negate waves of sleepiness and homesickness. After finding my gate and clearing security, I waited with my music on full blast trying to sustain with overstimulation those few brain cells that were still functioning. My endeavors were not in vain -- although the permanent damage to my hearing may be regrettable -- as I made it onto the flight where I promptly and uncomfortably fell asleep for another two hours.
Getting to Chengdu was a relief, and as advertised the salient smell of chemicals in the air hit my nose upon entering the jet way. I have not since noticed the smell, in fact it only lasted for several seconds, but based on the air quality I don’t doubt that my lack of detection fails to indicate reality. After getting my bags I came out to find a short Chinese lady and man with a sign reading: Gareth Marshall. After a brief introduction and finally putting a face to the mysterious professor Li I had been corresponding with for the last 8 months, we headed to the taxis and waited in line. The man who accompanied Prof. Li was her first graduate student Yuanqiang. I was informed that Yuanqiang would be helping me get around the city and accomplish tasks, such as getting an apartment, that I had no hope of doing on my own. To be quite honest I remember very little of that first conversation that I had in the Taxi. The 18 kilometer drive blended together and the only two memories I have are the realization that Yuanqiang was interested in the NBA and a glaring mental snapshot of a neon splattered business park outside the city.
After a late night check in to an international student dormitory and a night of tossing and turning I awoke to get ready for my first day in Chengdu. Yuanqiang had arranged to meet me in the dormitory lobby at 10 AM and we promptly walked to the Chinese Center for Evidence Based Medicine where I would be doing my work. After some more introductions and a quick tour Yuanqiang, Wenjing (a post-doc), and I headed out into Chengdu to find an apartment. The apartment agent was a skinny young man dressed in a cheap suit. He walked and talked with a quick pace and after making a few phone calls showed us a couple of different apartments. The one that I ended up choosing was on the 21st floor of an apartment building about a 10 minute walk from the EBM center. Both Yuanqiang and Wenjing expressed an overreaching concern about the quality of each apartment and the contract itself. Not that I wasn’t thankful for their help and thorough nature, but at the time it was excruciating because of my own scrambled brains. After bearing with them and making it through the 7 hour process which included trips to different banks (we finally found one that accepted my ATM card), different apartments, and getting lost along the way, I had an apartment. After that red stamp of my thumb print was on the contract I thought that I would find some relief and be able rest for awhile, but I was informed that my welcome dinner with the deputy of foreign affairs and my department chair started in 10 minutes.
There is nothing like some delicious food and beer to take the edge off of a situation, but the dinner was still a little tense for me nonetheless. For instance, the first thing that the Deputy of Foreign Affairs said to me was that this was the only time that anybody has been approved to work at their hospital who wasn’t a fulltime professor. Feeling under-qualified doesn’t quite capture the demoralizing content of such a comment, but I decided to hell with it, I was only editing journals to begin with after all and I thought that I could at least to a decent job of that. The dinner was mercifully short, and I returned to the international dormitory (I hadn’t yet bought sheets, blankets, and pillows for my new apartment) to get another night of pseudo sleep.
My second day in China was fairly exciting in that I got to go to the local version of walmart to outfit my apartment with Yuanqiang and one of his friends who spoke excellent English. The store itself consisted of multiple levels with an internal escalator. It seemed loosely similar to an American mall, except it was much more compact and full of people. The trip was fairly successful as I was able to get almost everything I needed in terms of kitchen supplies, bathroom supplies, and bedroom supplies. The evening did have an interesting turn as we came out of the store during “the busy time”, as Yuanqiang put it, rendering us stuck outside the store as it was impossible to get a taxi. Fortunately, Chen, another post doc was willing to get a cab from the EBM center and meet us downtown. After some unpacking and organization I finally had an outfitted apartment.
To change subjects without warning or reason I’m going to make some cultural and physical observations about the city of Chengdu which may or may not also be true throughout China.
***
Air pollution, construction, and transportation:
The air quality in Chengdu is terrible. Even on sunny days, it is rare to see the sky, and even if you can see the sky, it is still a hazy blue not a true blue. This is due to the fact that Chengdu is in a basin causing the smog to be trapped similar to LA.
One of the things that struck me the most in my last trip to China was the pervasive and constant construction. Things haven’t changed that much in this respect since my last visit. From any vantage point in the city it is quite common to see upwards of twenty new buildings under construction. The sight of cranes and green netted scaffolding quickly become familiar as you walk around.
Transportation in the city of Chengdu is one of the most interesting parts of my stay here so far. Even though I have yet to buy a bicycle, simply walking around the city and taking the ever so complicated bus system is an adventure. Not only are there hundreds of bussing routes, but the buses themselves are usually packed and noisy with a mix of every type citizen from business man to beggar. Walking is a bit of a trip because of the way that the public space works. As far as most people are concerned there are no rules about were to drive, walk, or bike. Although this is hyperbole, it really is chaotic. For taxi drivers the goal seems to be to drive as fast as possible taking up space wherever it is. It is almost as if for the drivers they are pacman and everybody else is those little ghosts trying to eat them. Regardless of lane suggestions and even the dividing line taxis will roam free trying to get from one place to another using their horn to notify everybody to get the hell out of the way. The use of the horn is both liberal and consistent among taxis and regular drivers alike. Things are further complicated by the large number of bikes and pedestrians subscribing to similar rules (if there is a space you had better take it before anybody else does). I am yet to see a car get “pulled over” despite having seen some interesting moves pulled directly in front of police cars. I find it exceedingly funny everyday at rush hour when a fierce gridlock of bicycles, pedestrians, motorcycles, and cars occur at major intersections. Sometimes a pedestrian walk guard (who at all other times only blows a whistle to notify people of changing lights) has to come over and untangle the mess. The locals unsurprisingly don’t find this quite as funny as I do.
Eating dinner and being in a hurry:
One of the largest differences between my experiences in Chengdu as opposed to the US has to be the treatment of meals and being in a hurry. There never seems to be a time when people aren’t in a hurry. For example, there is never any sitting around at a table after a meal. As soon as the last person of the group has finished their food everybody bolts to their next activity. Even if the next activity is lets go back to your place and watch tv, people still won’t sit around at the dinner table. In fact, the idea of sitting around and talking seems to be quite foreign. The idea of general communication being an activity per se does not seem to exist, at least among my group of peers.
The food:
The food in Chengdu is quite delicious. Usually dinner consists of a combination of spicy peppers, oils, garlic, salt, and whatever else the actual dish is. I’ve had some great pork, beef, tofu, and vegetarian dishes here all with those same basic flavors. There is also a spice here that I have never encountered anywhere. It is local and is used in pretty much everything, giving the cuisine a unique flavor. It is called the flower pepper and according to wiki “has lemony overtones giving the mouth a numbness”. What is interesting is that this numbness does not inhibit the ability to taste flavors. This is very strange indeed. I’m sure I’ll be writing a lot about particular dishes in the future.
Well, that’s all for now, more on my first week later. Thanks for the read.
P.S. In case you were worried, (and I certainly was) have no fear: they have cilantro at the supermarket.
P.P.S Sorry for no pictures -- they are coming next time, I promise.
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