Chengdu Hotpot

I still have a bit of a cough left over from Shanghai, but it is slowly going away. Tonight, I am switching from the 'dorm' room in the motel ($3.20 - shower down the hall without heat, sometimes without hot water, always kind of dirty, and there is no showerhead, just a pipe - but I met some really cool people) to a single room across the hall with my own shower and heater, where I will stay really warm tonight and take a long hot shower and read a book (for $15 - after a long process of impressing the hotel staff with my Chinese language ability and calling some other actual (expensive) hotels near the airport, the price for this room came down from 220 RMB to 120 RMB… hmm I think there are no tourists here now).

They are actually building a rail line into Tibet, through Qinghai province which is to the northeast of Tibet, north of where I am now, but it won't be done ‘til I think 2007. You can take a bus out of Tibet that direction, but it is like two days or something of miserable roads and cold and I don't know if I'm up for that - maybe if I'm feeling really healthy I'll try it, but probably not. I'm not as cheap as I used to be!! The trains here are really not bad - I usually take 'hard sleeper' which is like six people to a 'room' (although they aren't really rooms, it is all open which is nicer) and they are hard but I can sleep fine and I get to practice my Chinese with people :)

Let me tell you the story of my day yesterday. I spent the morning sleeping late and talking to my roommates - a Japanese-American guy from LA who was, as a child, in an 'internment camp' in California during WWII, and is retired now, has travelled a lot - like the trans-Siberian railway, etc. Another roommate is a lady from New Zealand who is in charge of an adult literacy program there and has lots of contacts in China through her work and is here visiting those people. Fun people!

Then I go for a walk to find a post office, and get waylaid by a businessman (Chinese) who works for an American company promoting development in western China through contact between Chinese and American businesses, and he wanted me to proofread (to make sure it was "American English") a couple letters, one of which was an invitation to a Chinese Company to visit a chemical company in York PA of all places, so I talked to him awhile about that and about development in western China which was part of what I wrote my economics paper on in Shanghai.

Then, (the post office is closed by this time) I keep on walking, meet this other guy who, when I ask him where I can find a tea shop, offers to take me to one. So we walk awhile and go to this tiny little place on a back alley - not a nice foreigner sort of teashop but a real Chinese neighborhood sort of place, and we talked a lot (in Chinese and English - his English was much better than my Chinese) and the daughter of the shop's owner is a freshman in high school and came out for awhile to practice her English, that was fun. Then he invites me to dinner, and we go to another tiny little place that I probably normally wouldn't go to, but it was cool. Sichuan province, Chengdu in particular is known for its 'hotpot' which is when you have this burner in the middle of the table with a wok full of some seriously spicy oil stuff with peppers floating all over the place, and you buy little kebab sticks with bits of meat and veggies stuck on them, and you just stick them in the pot, then you get them out one at a time and roll them around in a kind of sesame oil/garlic/salt/pepper sauce, then when they have that on them you can drop them in another bowl of peppers and dry sesame (I think, or was it peanut maybe?) then you eat! It doesn't really take as long to eat as it does to explain it, but let's just say that it is really hot and lots of fun. So we eat there, and he starts telling me about his life here in Chengdu.

This is what he told me, and after having talked to him for like five hours straight, I think he was telling the truth. His grandfather lived here in this town and owned a factory or something. After the 1949 revolution he was killed because that is what they did with rich people, basically (not quite that simple of course, but still sort of true). His father was for obvious reasons not happy with the system, and eventually he got into trouble with the government and was put into prison (I think this was the 're-education through labor' thing) where he was for the first 12 years of this guys life - so he meets his father for the first time when he is like 13 years old. After things start opening up, this guy gets into college and becomes an English teacher, marries and has a son. Then 1989, Tiananmen Square protests happen. There were protests all over China then, not just in Beijing, and this guy offers to translate for some of the protesting students when they talked to foreign journalists about what they were protesting. And after the crackdown, he gets into trouble for this and is in jail for seven months or so, after that he can't get an official job because of his political record. He can't make any money and his wife divorces him, later on he remarries. So now he tutors English to students, but still apparently can't get an actual steady job. And his house was just foreclosed on by the bank because he couldn't keep up the 'rent' (you can't own property here so you pay a pretty cheap 'rent' based on a lease sort of thing that is usually like 50 yrs or something) so he and his wife and son now live in a room someplace, his wife is sick, his son is hungry.

And can I loan him some money?

Well, so I thought about that for the night and this morning, and decided that no, I couldn't, based, I guess, on some kind of idealistic idea that loaning people money does not actually help them in the long run. (Don't take that literally, Dad!) So I called him back and told him that. Idealism is so harsh sometimes! I gave him the 30 quai in my wallet last night, more from appreciation for all the fun and intelligent conversation than as a loan or gift or whatever. And he said he still wanted to meet me again when I come back to Chengdu after Tibet (assuming that I do come back to Chengdu). I believe the guy and wish there was something I could do to help him get a job or something, which I'm not so sure that money would do. Anyway, that was my day - sometimes being able to speak a little Chinese makes life really complicated!

All part of the invigorating and sometimes frustrating experience of being a "rich" American in a politically controlled and economically divided country I guess.