The last two weeks have been a chaotic mess of trying to accomplish too much with too little time, trying to say goodbye to everybody, and all the while having an ongoing case of what I think is/was a stomach virus or infection. I think I got out of Sichuan just in time; the food there is not good for people who are trying to recover their digestion. Cantonese food, apart from being better on the stomach, is phenomenal. For dinner tonight we had stir-fried soybean noodles with zucchini, greens, and dried shrimp, steamed fish with ginger soy sauce, fish-stuffed green chilies, fish-stuffed eggplant, and boiled greens (there was only one non-fish meat dish). After dinner, we passed a "cold tea" herbal medicine place (the first of many), and I sampled a cup of dark brown, syrupy tea. "It might taste a little bitter, but it's good for your stomach," said the lady. If you condensed the essence of the word "bitter" into a cup, this is what it would taste like. I had the plum juice. Now I am looking forward to sleep.
I wrote this other post a while back, but because of all the happenings mentioned above, I never got around to posting it.
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The apartment where I live is inside one of several small communities of apartment buildings, which together are designated the Zongbei community. Each community or complex has about ten buildings, and each building has about ten staircases, and each staircase has seven floors, and each floor has two doors. So I guess each complex must have about 1,400 apartments.
Across the street from and standing far above the Zongbei communities, there is a big tower of condominiums called the Zongbei International. A lot of foreigners live there; it's close to the University, the U.S. consulate, and the majority of Western restaurants in Chengdu (or at least the plurality), and it's nicer and more expensive than the Zongbei community. One day my friend Anna and I tried to get onto the roof of the Zongbei International, thinking it might be a good place to study. Taking the elevator to the top floor, we found that the hallway ended in an open ledge that you could lean out over, from which you could see the complex where I live (you can actually see the back window of my apartment on the far right side of the picture). It was also a perfect place for throwing paper airplanes.
From that hallway, we went up an unlit staircase, which after a couple of switchbacks and a ladder came to a room full of big pipes. There was a metal gate through which we could get to an outdoor walkway. The walkway ran between the outer wall of the building and an overgrown patio. Unfortunately, the walkway was a dead end. After spending a while admiring the strangeness of the little patio trapped in a cage on the top of a skyscraper, we went back down and ended up studying in the park (where by studying I mean making collages).
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A few weeks ago, there was word around the school that a TV company was looking for some foreigners to be on TV for an evening. In return, participants would receive free dinner and 100 kuai. Interested people should show up in front of the school building at 5:30. I got there right at 5:30, and there were already six or seven other people waiting. A few were friends, and we talked about what we thought we were going to have to do. There was a rumor that they were taking us to the Panda Base to look at pandas, but someone brought up the fact that the Panda Base closes in the evening. Anyway, what was interesting about watching foreigners look at pandas?
Around 6, a van crawled up to the school. The driver opened the side door of the van, and then nodded at us while vaguely staring at some point in the distance. I was a little bit wary of climbing into a van before even making eye contact with the driver, but I did it. The rest of the students came in after me--now there were about eight of us. Without a word, the driver and another Chinese guy got back into the car and we drove off.
As we pulled away from the school, we started hypothesizing about a Chinese gang bribing school officials to abduct foreign students. Then the van stopped in front of a bar. We were in a neighborhood called Jiuyanqiao ("nine eyes bridge"), which is a bar and club area next to the river. On our right was a narrow park and then the river. On the left was a row of bars, most of them with bright flags and banners, neon lights, and outdoor tables.
They led us into the nearest bar, which actually comprised several small, one-room buildings scattered around an otherwise table-filled garden. In a wooden room with broad, low tables and benches with colorful pillows, we sat down. Then they explained to us (through one of the best Chinese speakers in our group) that we were going to wait here while they put makeup on us, and then we could eat.
The makeup, food, and everything else were supposed to take about four hours (i.e., five or six hours), and some of us were starting to talk about forgetting the whole thing. We were still within walking distance of the school. We told the young man who had explained things to us--I had mentally started to call him our handler--that we weren't too impressed with his plan. We suggested a pay raise. He quickly said he couldn't make that decision, and would have to talk to his boss. We assumed the issue had been dropped and kept trying to build up the nerve to walk out, but a little while later the handler came back and said he could pay us each 200. Only one person left after that.
After an hour of putting makeup on some of us (I declined the offer, unlike at Chengdoo Magazine's '80s-themed anniversary party), they told us we could eat. We crossed the street again, and in the little park on the river there was a table stacked with plastic takeout boxes. To tell the truth, when I'd heard about a free dinner I had been expecting the kind of big, round table, 30-dish feast that usually happens here when somebody is somebody else's guest. So I admit I was a little disappointed with our insipid-looking rations partially falling out of their flimsy white containers. Also, predictably, all or almost all of the dishes had meat in them.
After some prodding, the handler agreed to give me some money to buy my own dinner. "Just come back," he said. A few blocks away I found a restaurant and ordered eggplant and potatoes to go, and then bought some lychee at a fruit stand. When I got back, the rest of the foreign students had finished eating and were sitting at a table in the garden of the bar, drinking beer and watching Portugal vs. North Korea on a big projector screen. The beer was from the convenience store down the street and not from the bar where we were all sitting, and waiters kept coming to our table to ask if we planned to order anything. There was one Japanese guy in our group, A____, and as the only one who looked like he was from East Asia, he was the one the waiters always approached. To their dismay, however, A____ pretended not to speak any Chinese at all, and this probably gained us an extra thirty minutes at the table while the staff searched for someone who spoke English. Eventually they did find someone, and then A____ started to explain to them about the TV show, telling them they should talk to the TV crew. Just then, the handler appeared of his own accord and told us we were going to start filming.
They ushered us into a small, fenced-off area with a stage. There were already about 30 other people inside the area, although they mostly clung to the edges in small groups. We found out we were shooting a commercial for the city of Chengdu, advertising it as a city of vibrant culture. To demonstrate this vibrancy, the local pop-rock band Mosaic would play a song, and we would be the enthusiastic (international) audience.
Everywhere there were lights--pointing at us, at the stage, and even at the bridge over the river nearby--and the brightness during dusk gave everything an unreal color. The members of Mosaic were sitting around too, and we talked to them for a little while. The singer's permed hair reached down to his shoulders. After learning the Chinese names for all the instruments and stretching our own Chinese vocabulary to the limit, we turned to the big screen across the street, where Portugal was now beating North Korea 4-0 (they would score three more goals that night, to the extreme dismay of the North Korean team, who had lost to Portugal the only other time they made it into the World Cup).
We stood there a long time before the music finally started. Only a few more people had arrived after us, and the crew pressed us into a tight square in front of the stage to make it look more crowded. Excited to have something to do, we danced with verve as Mosaic lip-synced through their song (the lyrics of the chorus went like "M-O-S-A-I-C"). Then it was over and the long quiet resumed. Portugal scored its last goals. Someone handed out some battery-powered wand things, which we were supposed to wave in the air. We started mock-fighting with them, and by the time the music started again, half of them were broken.
Someone noticed a small boat coming down the river with a panda on it. A couple of men paddled the boat up to the shore, helped the panda out, and led it inside the enclosure with us. They started the song again, with the panda tottering slowly in the middle of the square of people. When the song ended, three people rushed in to remove the panda's head. Inside was a little boy of maybe ten, face and hair saturated with sweat. They wiped his face with a cloth and gave him some water through a straw. Then the head went back on. I hope they were paying him more than they were paying us, but somehow I doubt it.
We did the same song about eight times. The last several times, they used a big camera on a long-necked crane, which a few crewmen pushed through the crowd. While we danced we had to keep one eye on the camera, because whenever it passed we had to jump over the cables and dodge out of the way. And we had to do this without ever looking directly at the camera.
Around 11:30, as we were getting ready for yet another round of the song, the producers suddenly announced that the filming was over and everyone quickly left. The handler and another crew member walked us across the bridge to a van on the other side and drove us all home.
