Chengdu 7 May 2007

I can barely flex my knees and ankles this morning and find walking to the bathroom a challenge. This worries me given that I am about to head out on trek. I stretch and stretch and stretch but I know my muscles will need to work it out in their own time.

I find Julia at a hotel across the street just in time to whisk her off to the airport in my private car! Ok, it’s a Honda but it has linens on the seats and we sit in the back as we would in a limousine. I take a photograph at Beijing airport. This is very illegal but I like the image of a man in a Maoist outfit talking to a woman behind the ticket counter. His outfit looks more hip than revolutionary. He gestures at the woman as he talks and her head is just barely peeking out over the desk because she is so small and the desk is so enormous.

Beijing Airport is very clean and tidy. The bathrooms, like every other bathroom in China apart from those in hotels for tourists, are all squatters with varying degrees of sanitation. In fact, there is an immense range on the sanitation scale here. You would never think such a range is possible, but it is in China. It was perfected over many centuries of socially acceptable spitting and nose snotting. There is no toilet paper supplied to the public restroom user. You must travel like a girl scout and come prepared. Especially for unexpected “friends.” I thought I could never be convinced that there is anyplace on earth worse than Italy on a Sunday to get your period without supplies. Take it from me, Ladies. Hands down, China takes the cake on this score.

We fly to Chengdu to meet up with the rest of our trekking companions including Julia’s sister, Louise (or Louie as Julia calls her) and a woman named Carol whose resume is eerily similar to mine despite the fact that she’s a scientist and I’m in marketing (we both successfully escaped Amgen). That‘s it. That’s the whole trekking team: four ladies and Bart, our Dootch (Dutch for “Dutch”) trek leader.

In Chengdu, we stay at the Sheraton, which is pretty swanky by Chinese or Tibetan standards but pretty much like any other Sheraton you have stayed in whether it be Boston or Wichita or Rome. The best part of my room is the view of the Chengdu football stadium. It is actually the prettiest view of Chengdu that I see the entire time I am here. No kidding. I do like the Euro styling of the streets with their arbored curves, a stark contrast to Beijing, which is a barren, Maoist grid. But Chengdu is so terribly polluted that the sky is a grayish white from dawn to dusk. It’s more like a pallor than an atmosphere. The sun doesn’t shine here. Ever. This stadium is where the region’s soccer team is based, although it doesn’t see much action these days because it’s going through a bit of a rough patch and according to one cab driver, the fans in Chengdu are strictly fair weather.

Julia and I wander around for several hours before dinner to check out the city and look for pens and blank books with Chenglish covers for writing in along the trek. I buy one with little blue dancing figures that are the capital “Y” in their own name: Yilly. The book is covered in a childlike graffiti that looks like my notebook from 8th grade. There are doodles and sayings such as “Happy I ♥ Cute,” “Hot Happy Together” and “I count myself in nothing else so happy as in a soul remembering my good friends.” I have no idea what this means.

At the end of the day, we conclude that Chengdu is much like other large Chinese cities:

supremely populous, overflowing with bikes and mopeds and tons of cars which are increasingly and un-communistically BMWs mixed with teeny tiny QQs (or “cute” in Chinese), featuring a technology district rife with wired comedians who combine humor with cacophony in an attempt to sell more cell phones, tidy grocery stores solely stocked with plastic vacuum packed foods, and sprinkled with street vendors selling “freshly” made food that is neither identifiable nor sensorially acceptable.

In other words, Chengdu is a big, stinking city. And all I get here is a blister on my heel...a reward for defiantly eschewing my hiking boots for a pair of flat Jimmy Choos. Why do I cling so tenaciously to some semblance of fashion on the eve of a 15-day hike and while wandering a loud, dirty, concrete jungle? Do you think anyone even noticed the shoes?

We eat grilled chicken and a salad in the hotel and finish it off with a lovely Australian Chardonnay in the lobby with the rest of our group instead of venturing out again. Truth be told, I am not a big fan of Chinese food, especially the authentic kind.