Transit

Kunming scene still good. The other day I ate some gut shredding hot pot near Green Lake Park (above) with Xiong Hui and another MinDa head, the sniper. Then we all went back to my dorm to watch "Laborn" and gang secure a semifinals victory. We were joined by the always flossing Xiao Hei ("little black," he is of the Wa ethnic minority), one of last year's bball kings. Good reconnect.

The next day the MinDa dudes all headed out to a new campus/dorm, 45 minutes away, as the old campus is being dedicated to graduate studies. Kind of bummed as I said goodbye to Xiong Hui in the basketball court, which was flooded with a sea of undergraduates preparing to load their possessions onto a fleet buses. I had my own journey ahead of me though, constant motion.

After meeting Tang Lei, manager of the Linden Centre, I killed a few hours then headed to catch an 8 pm flight to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province. The trip there entailed more adventure than I bargained for (and I did bargain copiously, for my plane ticket, taxi ride to airport, etc). The flight was initially delayed due to rain. We boarded about an hour late, then taxi'd around the tarmac for another 45 minutes before being told the weather was too bad to take off. In my experience Chinese aren't particularly courteous in crowded transportation situations, and there was palpable fury mounting as we all deplaned, got back on the boarding shuttle, funneled back into the gate and waited for the thunder gods to take it down a notch. I've mastered the art of airport calm so I just sat back and watched bemusedly. Another 45 minutes or so later we got the go ahead to get back on the shuttle bus that would take us from gate to plane. I got my ticket rescanned and stepped on the bus. And waited. For a long, long time. I'm not sure what exactly happened. Men were screaming. Women were crying. Babies were laughing. A couple of 8-year-old urchins kept creeping up on me, yelling "Hallo!" then running off in hysterics. At one point armed guards boarded the bus and curiously accosted an old man who had been patiently sitting at the front the entire time. We all had to get off the shuttle again. Wait another thirty minutes, then re-rescan tickets and rebus. I half-jokingly tell friends I like to play the dumb foreigner card at times to forego argument or embarrassment. In this case I had no other card to play. I just let myself be corralled from one place to another and hoped that I would arrive in Sichuan that day, in one piece. In the midst of the debacle was one good-natured Tibetan man, with whom I spent the majority of the time talking about the Olympics and Tibetan Buddhism. Eventually we were on the plane, in the air. When we landed in Chengdu everyone cheered and immediately ran for the exit.



I finally arrived at Sichuan University a little past midnight, where I was awaited by Yang Qingfan (above), a professor of Tibetan archaeology. Exhausted from the day's delays, I promptly crashed at the foreign students' dorm.



The next day was heavy rain, so I did minimal exploring. Sichuan is known for being a major player in Ye Olde Tea Game, so I started off the morning giving this place some business just for the cool sign.



Sichuan is perhaps less known for its Tex-Mex, but this wifi spot proved the ideal place from which to phone San Antonio and wish my dad a good bday. The Migas was actually better than any Mexican I've had in Boston, and this is the only place in Asia where I've seen Diet Dr Pepper (shoot out to DFJ). Backed!

The rest of the day was chill. Yang laoshi showed me around the archaeology library and pulled a ton of articles on Shaxi and Yunnan's Buddhist grottoes (almost none of which I can read). We went for a lunch of jiaozi and I retired to watch the US bballers win a gold and nap. That night I went out for Sichuan-style hotpot with Yang and her husband, an Inner Mongolian design teacher. Again got slayed by the pot, which in Sichuan entails dipping skewered foodstuffs into a boiling vat of chili oil. Into it though.



The next day was misty, not soaked, so I took advantage of the opportunity for some quick and dirty tourism. Caught a morning bus to Leshan, about a two-hour drive from Chengdu, and quickly negotiated transport to Sichuan's premier heritage attraction, Leshan Da Fo (Leshan Big Buddha). I've become a deft bargainer, in Leshan I literally quartered the tuk-tuk price with a reserved shake of my head, no Mandarin needed. On the ride there I checked out a croc surfer and gnarled guard. But for the most part I was strictly business.







Leshan DaFo is the world's largest Buddha since the world's largest Buddha retired. Another "biggest Buddhist _______" to cross off the list. I was impressed by the statue itself but also somehow unmoved by the serene environment. Just in manic sightsee mode I guess. Still I lingered for a while at the feet of this massive dude, couldn't touch him but I managed to sneak in a secret handshake before bouncing.



After exiting the park I wasted no time jumping onto a Chengdu-bound bus, getting back around 4 pm. I had grand plans to hit up another site in the city but it was closed by the time I got there. So I just wandered. Wound up at this riverside park with a chill taiji dude. If you squint in the background you can see a man getting a nice riverside shave. I was tempted...



It sucks to eat Chinese food alone so I got this cantaloupe milk tea in the place of lunch. Good pickup. Drank it sitting by this weird sculpture.





Spent a good few hours wandering around the Sichuan University campus, half-lost. It's massive. It takes a full thirty minutes to walk from the West Gate to the East Gate, and in my city meandering I never seemed to escape its periphery. I especially liked the the old-school school buildings and a nice artificial lake park/pagoda.

After returning home and getting bored I headed back into late night Chengdu. There were a lot of active clubs outside my dorm but I was just hunting down some midnight xiao chi and they seemed out of my price bracket anyway. I wish I had more time to explore the city, I know there's a lot there but in my short stay it left me cold compared to the familiarity of Kunming.







This morning Yang Qingfan showed me around the Sichuan University Museum, arguably housing western China's best ethnological art collection. Of course Yang laoshi was especially knowledgeable about the Tibetan collection, which was extensive (with political implications I won't discuss here), and the coolest thing I saw was this Tibetan skullheaded-out skull head. I was also feeling this ill thangka and this lil thangka. Honorable mention reserved for bronze drum culture. Apparently Tibetans are also into making horns from human bone. Wild.



Was this post boring to read? It felt too long in writing, my hand is starting to cramp. In any case, I don't know how much tourisming I have left in me. I'm back in Kunming now and it's pouring rain. Tomorrow is my last full day in China and it is dedicated to prosaic last-minutes and slow lingering. You can expect at least one more post from Asia, waxing nostalgic about the end of my days as a nomadic undergrad. Then we'll see if my life is still interesting when I'm rooted in one spot for more than 5 weeks...


Josh