Numb Me Tender
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2006
1
86
110
Trip End
Apr 01, 2008
Chengdu,
China
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Chengdu is big - 11 million or so in the greater metropolitan area and hard to walk. Rather, you have to pick a neigborhood / area and take a taxi or buses there. Some areas have some lingering old Chinese feel to them, but mostly the city fells modern, characterized by wide boulevards, big bank, office and hotel buildings, and a sense of lots of construction. Although the air is relatively pollution-free by Chinese standards, there is a feeling of dust in the air and the throat. Chengdu is also where many of the flights and the new pressurized modern train to Tibet run from and there was a lot of discussion about the current Chinese Tibetan violence and crackdown.
I wandered first to a nearby Temple and a sort-of touristly preserved architecture area for food, and got deepfried crabs, grasshoppers, scorpions and grubworms (see pic)
$150
. All were good - mostly tasting like deep frying crunch. I finally learned that the five Olympic mascots are supposedly a panda, a fish, a flame, an swallow, and a Tibetan antelope. You tell me, see pic. Later, I had sashimi, mystery Chinese greens and my taste of Baijo, a rice liquor I would describe as a cross between soju and brandy. 26% alcohol, a little sweet, a little cognaccy, and packaged in the beuatiful red and yellow boxes. Also surpisingly clean vis-a-vis the next day. I then tried to find the USD/W.Ky NCAA basketball tournament game at 2:40 a.m. at Chengdu's premier sports bar (the Shamrock). However, after sitting through two premiership games, mostly losing at pool and drinking a lot of Tiger beer, we learned that no station was showing the games. I was reduced to watching the game - spurtingly - on the hostel computer until 5:00 a.m. And USD lost. Doh.The next day I had my first Sichuan hot pot for lunch. This is a pot filled with a broth the color of a bleeding firehouse containing doxens of peppercorns and peppers and god knows what. You pick your additives. I went with balls of beef (not beef balls), mushrooms, and mutton rolls. They put the pot over a flame and you drop the foodstuff in to let it cook. So far, this is similar to many other country's dishes. The difference is the spice. The peppers are two kinds, one of which is a little up-front spicy like a jalapeno, but nothing hostile like a habanero. The other is novocain
Caution Falling Into Water
. Slowly, your mouth and lips become number and number, like repeatedly licking George Bush's frat-room mirror. It is alleged that some rural dentists use this pepper as an oral anaesthetic on their patients. Really good, but by the end of the meal, it seemed like you could be putting 180-degree food in your mouth and not realize it until you smelled your burning flesh. Good stuff. That night was another Lost in Translation night led by this American ex-pat I met at the Shamrock (again) in a bar tour of Chengdu. Having had another bottle of baiyo with dinner before drinks, I cannot provide details other than we went to several places with names I couldn't say while he spoke in Mandarin to bartenders, waitresses, taxi drivers, hostesses and doormen.But I pooped up the next morning for the tour bus to the Giant and Red panda preserved. Typically, I had mixed feelings. The facility (as zoos go) is amazing with acres and acres of habitat, equipment, food, etc. there are something like 50 pandas there and the researchers are trying to increase their reproduction because they are loner animals losing their natural habitat to human development. Plus, they just suck at reproducing well. The male's dick is too small, and it takes them years to become adult and virile. Then, there is only a small mating period and they often don't get it on even if they do find each other. Plus, the females can gestate for almost two years and then kill their cubs. In many ways, I felt like we should just let them go extinct like the mastodon, admitting that they don't have a place in the modern world
Chinese Heritage Area with Olympic Mascots
. But ...Their adorability and cute factor goes to twelve. And it is not just their looks. They tumble over themselves and each other, play with each other, and are totally tolerant of humans (being 99% vegetarian on bamboo). And, for $140, you can hold a baby, and for $50 you could sit with an adult and feed it. I'm a die-hard cynic and I found it hard to resist the "Awww" moments.
That suspect insight to my id passed, though, and I returned to town for a nap. That night I went to fancy chinese place for musrooms in an emptied-out orange and a glob of pork encased in glutinous skin-something. I checked out another alleged British pub - the Empty Bottle - but found it to be more of a a karaoke disco place, so I tried another place called the Hemp House - stoner alert! It, however, was closed. But I met one of the owners and some friends coming out and they invited me to join them for more dinner (spicy soup and skewers of things like stomach) and drinks at a French place - the Cafe Paname.
I had such a good time just talking to various expats and students that I invited a couple people from the hostel back the next night. For an equally good time, if you discount the dim Catalonian who could not understand the subtleties of my questions to her. For example, she told me she was for independence of Catalan. Fine, say I, but what are your generic overreaching conditions for independence? Catalan, Kosovo, Chechna, Tibet, Ossetia, Northern California, Berkeley, three cult families and their dogs? Where is the line drawn, and what is the basis? That elicited an emotional and almost hostil response about Catalan and how the rest of Spain "steals" their water. I never did get the twit to address a worldview or really say anything other than "You are not Catalonian, you cannot understand." But the evening ended with reflexology at a salon down the street from the hostel, so I was relaxed, rested and ready to end the trip in:
Hong Kong, a special administrative region of the Peoples' Democratic Republic of China
