And We're Back...

Hello from Chengdu! I arrived last Saturday afternoon, and since then I've been pretty occupied with finding a new apartment (with Uncle Bob's invaluable, generous help), and recovering from a cold (which may have been related to the events described subsequently).

I am currently eating the first meal I've made since moving into my new apartment yesterday: tomato and (shiitake?) mushroom soup with noodles. The only part of it I didn't make were the mushrooms, which were a leftover from last night's dinner. They were previously dried and then stir-fried, and last night they were kind of stringy--I thought using them in a soup might help fix that. But so far no change. Still, the soup is good.

I bought the tomatoes and everything else at Trust-Mart, whose Chinese name literally means "Good and A Lot". It's basically one of the many Chinese analogs to Fred Meyer. Trust-Mart is special though: for whatever reason, most of the other Fred Meyers seem to be from France. When I was perusing the vegetable section, I noticed a bunch of people gathered around a bin of whole peanuts. People were sifting through them, looking for the ones that still contained peanuts; this was difficult because most of the peanut shells seemed to be broken and empty.

In U.S. grocery stores, the meat section (if I remember right) is usually a display of evenly sliced and carefully dressed dead muscle. In Trust-Mart, the rows of hollow-eyed ducks are hanging by their necks in the open air, next to the apples. A place called the Free Market--an open-air shelter where farmers can sell their produce--exhibits bloody pigs' legs hanging from meat hooks. And fish aren't even killed until they are about to be eaten. Trust-Mart has dozens of fish and crustacean tanks, plus one for frogs and another for turtles. Last night I was eating in the restaurant where I had the mushrooms when I heard a violent splash right behind me. The giant ceramic vase that I had assumed was for decorative purposes actually contained about 10 large grey fish. A waitress had just opened the lid and was scooping one out with a big net.

Border Crossing Saga: Part 1

Last Thursday night around 11:30PM I crossed the border between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Unlike the dress rehearsal on Tuesday afternoon, this time the border was practically empty. At the other side, a crowd of men waited. As I walked past them, down the deserted corridor of closed shops leading to the train station, several of them started following me, shouting "Hello! Hotel? Nice room!", "Hello! Where you go? Guangzhou? Nice hotel!", etc. At first I ignored them, and most of them went back to their posts.

I walked alone for a little while, until I got to the station. Dispersed around the entrance, however, were more people. Most of them were just standing, holding brochures. I passed one, and again he asked if I wanted a hotel. His slightly crumpled brochure was pine green and had four yellow pictures inside of beds from various angles. I tried telling him in Chinese that I didn't want a hotel because I already had a train ticket. This seemed to discourage him. The next moment a woman approached me. I looked at her brochure--it was the same one. I told her the same thing and she left. When I said the same thing to the third person, however (and his brochure was also the same--how could one hotel have sent so many people to advertise at the Shenzhen train station at midnight?), he started following me. I think that from that point until I left the train station about half an hour later, I had at least one person following me, trying to get me to stay at the most aggressively marketed hotel in Shenzhen.

I had planned to spend the night in the train station, and board my 6:35AM train as soon as it opened. I had not anticipated the indoor departure section of the station being closed. A Berliner I met who had just arrived from Guangzhou convinced me to look for another place to stay for the next six hours, telling me that spending the night outside would be too cold. I shrugged--it was already chilly, but for some reason I had the idea fixed in my head that southern China is always hot, so I didn't feel it yet--but I took his advice. He pointed me in the direction of a McDonald's, and I set out.

Since I had no intention of spending 6 hours of the night at McDonald's, I started asking restaurants that I passed where I might find a coffee shop or some place that was open all night. This line of inquiry eventually led me to the family-run diner Man Yi Tea Dining Room (despite the name, the tea was weak and lukewarm). They gave me an English menu, with which I ordered Sweet Sago with Taro and Grapefruit Tea. Having a little bit of time to kill, I found some diversion in reading the rest of the menu, which had dishes like Boiled Papaya with White Fungus, Braised Pig Feet with Peanut Butter, and Wash Leather with Hot Pepper. One of the pages was titled "Finely Dishes", and reading this filled me with sorrow. I'm not sure why.

Around 3:30AM I was the only diner left, and I noticed that I was hugging my sides and shivering. This was my introduction to a feature of the buildings in at least some regions of China (and it has followed me to Chengdu): no central heating. Lesson learned: next time I travel in China in November, I will remember to bring a sweater. Finally, at 6:00 I walked back to the station and got on the train.

...and that's all for now! Tune in tomorrow for the next episode of "Naive Travel by Train and Foot"