Just Cheng-du It: Part One

Recently, while planning my five-week vacation over Spring Festival (春节, chūn jié, known in the west as Chinese New Year), I realized there are way too many things I want to do here to fit into five weeks. Homework be damned - I need to start making better use of my weekends. So on Friday after class the roommate and I decided to run off to Chengdu (成都), The capital of Sichuan province, which is just a two-hour train ride from Chongqing.

Although I've been living in China for three months now, it didn't really occur to me till I got to Chengdu that I've never actually been a traveller here. When I arrived in China I went straight to school, a comfortable life already cut out for me complete with accommodation, income, and a community of Chinese friends to show me around and help me with the tricky things. Although being a full time resident here has certainly not been without challenges, travelling has a whole different set. Or maybe they're really all the same challenges, only you have only a limited amount of time to figure them out. In any case, as soon as I got to the train station on Friday afternoon and elbowed my way through a sea of chattering, shoving, staring people and onto a train bound for a city I'd never seen, I realized I was about to have a totally new experience here.

We'd done some research ahead of time and found a few hostels that looked promising, but chickened out when it came to actually calling them to book a room - without the ability to use body language or hand gestures, talking on the phone in your second language (or with someone else who's using their second language) is extremely difficult. It's becoming my new hallmark of language proficiency, really - when I can comfortably make a phone call in Chinese, I may actually consider myself bilingual.

So anyway, midafternoon on Friday we arrived at the Chengdu north train station and were about to hop a bus and start searching for the nearest hostel when we heard someone calling to us in English (it happens all the time - despite the fact that plenty of people come to China from non-English speaking countries like Russia, France and Germany, people here tend to assume that anyone with white skin is an English-speaking American). We turned around and saw a couple of people holding a large sign saying "Sim's Cosy Garden Hostel," which just happened to be one of the hostels we'd chickened out of calling. Not only had the place looked great, but they'd advertised a free pick-up service, which apparently doubled as a way to rustle up business. We didn't even need the sales pitch. Feeling lucky and opportunistic - and anxious to ditch our bags and start exploring the city - we decided to just take the chance and go with them. They brought us to a city bus, paid our fare, and escorted us back to an absolutely charming bohemian oasis hidden behind the dull concrete facade of Chengdu's urban jungle. The place was so gorgeous I didn't even bother taking pictures; I knew they wouldn't do it justice. Just check their website to see what I mean.

We had a look at the tiny double room and decided we'd actually have more privacy in the spacious four-bed dorm, which had two bunk beds, shelving, lockers and its own bathroom, including a shower and a western toilet. At 45 RMB (about $7.50 CAD) per person per night, it was an awesome deal. The place even had a mellow little bar/restaurant/cafe which served real coffee. The eclectic, bohemian atmosphere of the place reminded me so much of the Ocean Island Backpackers Inn back home that I forgot I was in China at times; I felt a wave of culture shock every time I stepped through the heavy gates onto the street.

We settled in, freshened up, and went off to find dinner and acquaint ourselves with the neighbourhood, which was in the northeast end of the city. We immediately became lost; Chengdu, like the rest of China, is under relentless development which no map or guidebook can keep up with. The streets generally had a different name on every block, and our map infuriatingly neglected to record this. It also appears they rename the street every time they demolish and replace a building; even when we got a newer, better map, the names often didn't match up.

We'd originally set out to look for the famous Wenshu Temple, which was just a few minutes' walk from the hostel and boasted a vegetarian restaurant, but somehow ended up overshooting the turnoff and ending up closer to the middle of the city. We found ourselves in a plaza of boutiques, restaurants and snack stalls and decided to cut our losses and just pick a random dish from random restaurant. We ended up at a noodle shop where I managed to communicate to the proprietor that I wanted something - anything - vegetarian. Her responses were all completely unintelligible to me, but I ended up with a tasty bowl of noodles in a miso-like fermented bean broth with some kind of vegetable which I think might have been sweet potato leaves. Satiated, we resumed our search. Using our totally inadequate free tourist maps, we eventually found ourselves in a touristy recreation of an ancient Chinese village. We knew we were close to the temple, but it had already gotten dark and we knew we'd probably end up getting lost again, and what's more it would already be closed. So we tried to make a mental note of where we were and turned around to head back to the hostel.

Several wrong turns and nearly two hours later, we finally found the right street and arrived at the hostel. We grabbed some books from their little international library and relaxed at the cafe for a few minutes, plotting our next move. Then we dragged ourselves off to our bunk to prepare for another day of being clueless tourists.

To be continued...

Chinese word of the day:
迷路
mí lù
to lose the way; lost