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.