Around town, October 11 - 18

There wasn't much to write home about for nearly a week, but things have started to get interesting again. Here's the highlights of the past week.

Saturday, October 11

This was our last day of having Chang as our temporary driver. We were in search of a couple of electonic adapters, which took us on a hunt through two computer areas. The first was a huge three-story building filled with small shops, each specializing in a brand or type of equipment. we didn't find what we wanted there, so we went on to a narrow street with had small shops on either side, a row of stalls down the middle of the street, and a single lane on either side. We got stuck for a while in the lane leading to the already full parking garage. While we were there, a motorcycle squeezed in beside us, and the man unloaded a hard drive and a screen and took them to the back of one of the shops. He then brought out a tower unit, placed it on the floor of his motorbike, then left it there while he disappeared for a few minutes. He came back with another tower unit, which he placed on top of the first. Then he straddled the bike and took off, slowly weaving his way in between cars and pedestrians. A lot of things are carried on motorbikes, which can get in and out of a lot more places than a car or truck.

Afterwards we went to a large area southeast of town where all shapes and sizes of potted plants are sold. I was looking for a kumquat tree; I settled for what is probably an ornamental orange - rather root-bound but bearing fruit. I bought a larger pot for it, which was filled with clayey dirt from a nearby pile. [So far it is doing fine on our balcony.] There is a large botanical garden with lots of walking paths adjacent to it. We'll definitely have to come back again.

In the late afternoon we had Cheng drop us off on Qintai Street, a broad divided street with old-style buildings on both sides. It is known for its jewelry shops and also has a lot of large, elegant-looking restaurants. There is a small plaza in the middle of the block which leads to a pedestrian bridge over the Jiao River to a large gateway to Wenhua Park. We had been to this park several weeks before on our river walk, but had not gotten into this part, which has lakes, large teahouses, and ornamental covered walkways. It was dusk, and there were many people around. On our way out, a young woman at a booth told us in English about the Sichuan Opera, which has performances in the park every evening, and gave us a brochure. We thanked her and put it on our mental list as something to do in the future.

This was our last day with Cheng; we thanked him and presented him with a letter of recommendation [in Englsh]. Although we speak very little of each other's language, we had managed to communicate fairly well.

Sunday, October 12

After a slow morning in the apartment, we went for a walk around the first ring road. On the way, we passed a bookstore, where we found some guidebooks in English and/or with some English. They tend to lack some of the information we expect in guidebooks, like how to get there, but they have some good historical information. By having the names both in English and Chinese, they also provide a means of communicating with our driver.

We passed an entrance gate to Sichuan University and went for a walk-through. The campus is a small city in itself, but seems like a park compared with the surrounding commercial areas - broad tree-lined streets with few cars, attractive buildings, a dormitory area, and then an older residential area with five-story brick apartment buildings - possibly housing for faculty.

We walked down Renmin Road - the main north-south thoroughfare - from the first ringroad south to the second ring road, looking at the businesses on one side, and then the other. The road is wide, but there are a lot of pedestrians and the cars tend to obey the traffic signals, so it was easier to cross than many other streets.

On the way back we walked through the university again, coming out the north gate, which faces the Jin Jiang River just opposite our apartment complex (I am overlooking it now as I type). We discovered that the large white building just outside the gate is a hotel connected with the university; it may also be used as housing for foreign students.

Monday, October 13

In the afternoon Mark and I had our "interview" with our permanent driver, Chao (pronounced Joe) Tao and an interpreter. Chao speaks no English; he's pleasant and he tries hard, but so far it has been much more difficult to communicate with him that it had been with Cheng. I think it will be easier once we get more into a routine, but so far I don't have one.

Getting Registered - or not, Tuesday and Thursday, October 14, 16

I already have the proper visa, but I still need my official residency permit. The first step in getting registered is to get a paper from the local police station. This took minimal effort on my part. Shirley [from a company contracted to handle these matters] took Mark's and my passports and returned them an hour later, along with an official paper which I assume gives our names and address. They only thing I could read on it was my name, which had been spelled "PUTH" instead of "RUTH". I pointed it out to Shirley. She decided shortly afterward that this needed to be changed before I could go to the immigration agency. I was on my way shopping; by the time I got home, the police station was closed for lunch. By the time it reopened at 2:30 and we got the name corrected, it was too late to go to immigration.

On Thursday afternoon, another woman, Lisa Lee, came to escort me to immigration, complete with a pile of papers already filled out for me. It went smoothly until the clerk pointed to a particular page; Mark's company is officially registered in Chongqing; I would have to go there to register - about 5 hours away. So I am still unregistered. However, everyone else from Mark's company has been able to register in Chengdu, so I am confident that it will be worked out somehow - for now I'm out of the loop.

Group Activities, Wednesday and Friday, October 15 and 17

The monthly potluck lunch for the Chengdu International Women's Club [CIWC] was held Wednesday noon. So far, I had cooked nothing which I wanted to share beyond Mark, so I had Chao take me to the local market, in hopes of inspiration. It is a large area with perhaps 100 fruit and vegetable stands, meat and fish stalls, with small, slighly more permanent stall around the edge selling rice and dry goods. Chao proved to be very helpful there; I pointed to or selected potatoes, sweet potatoes, capsicum, and onions, which he then bargained for and paid for with small bills that I had given him. (I stopped when I ran out of small bills - a 50 yuan bill - about $8 - can't be used there.) I'm saving up my change for my next market visit.

I hurried home to cut up vegetables, which I roasted in the oven and mixed with small chunks of chicken breast to make a fairly presentable dish. We then drove over to China Gardens to the home of Kim Dallas, who was hosting this month's luncheon. I was one of the first to arrive. By the time we ate, there were close to 40 women there, and the table was packed with an interesting array of food, some home-cooked, others purchased. I enjoyed seeing some of the women I had met before from book club, cooking class, or Mark's company; there were many I met for the first time, but they were friendly, and there were name tags, which helped. There was one young man there - an out-of-uniform marine - selling tickets to the Marines Ball on October 25. (Did this qualify as combat duty, I wondered.)

One of the CIWC women had organized a night at the Sichuan opera for Friday, so I signed Mark and me up to go. It was for the opera at Wenhua Park, at a considerable discount from the prices we had been quoted at the entrance (120 yuan instead of 220 front, 180 back). It was a place that Chao already knew, so we had no problems getting there. There were 27 of us altogether who attended. I hadn't brought a jacket, but it was warm enough that we were comfortable, even though the opera was held out of doors (roofed, but no walls for the seating area. Our friends Jane and Jerome were there, as were Robyn and Peter and their three kids. We all sat in the second row of seat, in bamboo chairs with individual armrests. There was a long low table in front of us with tea cups - tea was included in the price. A woman came along with a long-spouted pot of hot water and kept refilling our cups for us. We could have also paid for a back massage. In the row behind us, six people were having their backs rubbed simultaneously.

The opera was held in a courtyard surrounded by the stage in front and low buildings to the sides and back. One of them was brightly lit and had a series of ornate costumes on manikins. We found out that this is the changing and make-up room. Jane and I wandered over in time to see the last of the performers leaving for the stage area, with ornate brocade robes, headdresses and heavy eye makeup.

The opera itself was a selection of short examples of different types of opera presented. First there was the overture, performed by a motley assortment of Chinese instruments. Later in the program we heard solos from two of them - a metal horn that is sort of a cross between a trumpet and a kazoo, and a string instrument which lacks the sound box of the Western violin or cello, but makes a surprizingly full sound anyway.

The first number was more what I would expect from opera - a stageful of people in elaborate robes and headdresses, with a woman singing in a strong soprano. There was an elaborate stick puppet - a 3'foot woman with a long dress and a headress with two 5-foot long feathers. She twirled a kerchief around like a parasol, then tossed it off, picked a flower from a bouquet, all the while "dancing" along with the man who was operating her. It was skillfully done. Then a young man made shadow figures of birds, bunnies, and other animals, also very well done. There was a long comedy sequence which needed no translation - an angry wife punished her husband by making him wear a bowl with a lighted wick on his bald head. He proceeded to crawl under two benches and and do other activities still keeping the candle on top of his head. He finally revolved it to a position where he could blow it out himself. All in all, it was an enjoyable evening.

Science and Technology Museum, Saturday, October 18

Chengdu's Science and Technology Musuem is housed in the former Sichuan Exhibition Hall, whose tall-columned facade makes a grandiose backdrop for the large statue of Chairman Mao on the north side of the plaza at the center of the city. The high-roofed center of the building houses several full-sized airplanes, many model planes, and a model of a Chinese rocket ship; backed by a film of the actual take-off. In the courtyard on either side are large-scale models of the ancient Dujiangyan irrigation works and of Erfan(?)hydro-electric power plant with its dam.

The other three floors contain exhibits of energy generation, physics, sound, optical illusions, the human body, many of them geared towards kids. Many, but not all exhibits had English as well as Chinese explanations. Mark and I spent over two hours there and enjoyed ourselves, but I was surprised by the number of exhibits that were not well maintained. My guess is that the museum's main function is for showing it to large groups of school kids. The individual hands-on exhibits, which are not crowd-friendly, were loved to death, and then not fixed because they aren't part of the general tour. There were other exhibits, which need a staff member to operate, which operated for limited hours on Saturdays. We didn't get to see them in action, but we did get to enjoy the musuem with very few other people there. The view of the central plaza (and the back of Mao saluting the city) was excellent from the upper floors.

We stayed until the museum closed at 4:30. We then spent some time in the plaza at the back, where an older man was coaching three kids on roller blades. Each has a row of 20 small cones spaced about 2 feet apart. They skated in between the cones, frontways and backwards, doing circles around some of them. The older girl, about 12, was superb. We wondered what sort of competition she might be training for.