A taste of Chengdu

Here I am in Chengdu, at the end of my eleventh full day in China!! I’m in my dorm as I write this, East International Student Dormitory; we moved here last Saturday after spending our first night in Chengdu in the swish Buddha Zen Hotel. When I say we, I mean myself and five of my Newcastle classmates – Rosie, Jessica, Kayleigh, Charlotte and Lauren. Most of us are Confucius Scholarship students which means we get free accommodation in the not-so-snazzy International student dorms. I’m sharing a sparsely-furnished room with Rosie, which we’ve made comfy already by rearranging the furniture we have, and buying some additions from Chengdu’s Ikea and our nearest Walmart! Our floor has 52 rooms, some single, some twin, most without a bathroom (like ours), and the corridor shares two showers and two toilets for girls, and the same for boys. The toilets are squat toilets, which honestly are fine (and will have a positive effect on our leg muscles), but there are squeals of joy whenever a shopping centre or restaurant has a ‘Western toilet’. Squeals of anguish are heard more commonly in the dorm, however, due to the bugs that share it with us. Unfortunately, I seem to be extremely tasty and have been torturously nibbled every night by mosquitoes – I now have a very fine collection of bites, and an equally fine collection of various Chinese pharmaceutical products which promise to defend me from insects, but have so far not proved themselves very effective. We were also forced to share our room with a cockroach for a few days, which, try as we might, we could not kill,until yesterday, when I accidently stepped on it with my trainers (hooray!)Thankfully we have not had a repeat of our experience in the hotel on our first night, when we spotted a spider the size of my hand in the corner of the lobby.

     Apart from the bugs, we’re sharing our dorm with students from Korea, Vietnam, America,Germany, Spain, Poland and there are still more nationalities arriving (classes don’t start until the 12^th), although we haven’t really had much contact with our neighbours yet, except for Jessica’s roommate, Xiyuan, who is Korean.Hopefully many friends will be made when classes start! We very occasionally see a non-Chinese person out in the city, at whom we yell, ‘Look it’s another waiguoren!’ (why-guor-ren meaning‘foreign person’), but we have otherwise become accustomed to attracting attention ourselves with second glances and murmuring in our direction. It was a bit strange, however, to catch a man taking a not-so-sly picture of me on his phone as I walked past him today… It seems, weirdly enough, that fair-skinned people have a bit of a celebrity status in China. We went to a really large shopping centre not far from campus last week, and all the posters outside shops used white-skinned models.We did not see a single picture with a Chinese model, even for the Chinese brands, which was quite sad. We knew Chengdu would be westernised to some extent - there are American fast food chains and Western clothes shops in most cities in China – but it feels like some Chinese things are maybe being replaced by Western things which is disappointing.        

    Chengdu is a big city, with 7.8 million people; smaller than London, but it feels bigger, as the buildings are taller everywhere, and the roads are rarely just two lanes.Outside the West Gate of Sichuan University campus (the other side to our dorm) is the main road, which has 7 lanes of traffic and large pedestrian bridges over the top. The traffic is an eclectic mix of cars, buses, motorbikes, bikes,and tuk tuks, all vying for position and ignoring the lane markings. The largest pedestrian crossings, at junctions of about 5 lanes, rarely have traffic lights, and so you launch across them (fearlessly if you are a local, and praying for your life if you are not), and the traffic just swerves around you without complaint. Our favourite thing about the roads so far is the dress style of the many motorcyclists when it rains – they all wear waterproof ponchos that fit over their handle bars, hands, head, seat and the back of the motorbike, and sometimes small children who stand up in the motorbike between the driver’s feet. The traffic is similar on campus, although slower and on a smaller scale, with the exception of the water trucks that career around corners, playing “It’s a small world” in double time, out of tingy speakers like UK ice cream vans, and blast high speed jets of water onto the road and pavement to wash soil back onto the grass islands after we’ve had a period of rain. Pedestrians on the wrong side of the road have but a few seconds to dart across the road, or press themselves as far as possible into a hedge, to avoid a soaking.

      It’s true that the pace of life here is quite slow compared to what one hears about China.Travelling on the bus and metro here is easy and straightforward (although being a Londoner probably set me up well for that), the people are easy going,the pace of walking is very slow (which to my horror I have adopted already),and the whole place feels safe. Despite being foreigners in a big country far away, we feel at our ease. The only things not slow around here, are the speed with which you are presented your food in restaurants, and the speed with which I eat it. Our ‘kitchen’ facilities here are two plug-in hot plates, so the chances of me cooking this year are slim (unlike me when this year is over).Eating out is cheap and convenient though, and when term starts and all the canteens on campus are up and running it will be even more so. We’ve spent large amounts of time in the last week trying out places outside the university, and found some ‘yum, soooo tasty’ food and then some ‘strange, but ok’ food. As I eat vast quantities with little discrimination, I haven’t had any problem with anything here, but caused some amusement to my more picky friends with announcements such as, ‘ooooh what’s this thing?, oh it’s bright pink, I have no idea what that is, oh well, I’ll try it and see.’ Our favourite place so far is a minority restaurant that serves Halal food, and is famous for its noodles made on the premises, in front of the street-side window. Their spicy beef noodle soup didn’t contain much beef, but boy, the noodles were good! I’m becoming more convinced by the day that I must not be English, because although Sichuan is famous for its chillies and tongue-numbing dishes, I have not had a problem (yet). I’ll let you guys know when that day comes (or more likely, when I discover my true identity).