January 27th: Chengdu ho

Day 133

Woke well-rested, huzzah for the sleep mask! Had sandwiches and coffee. George Kerry showed to talk to us again, his suit hopelessly wrinkled. It was a little early for conversation, the coffee hadn't kicked in and somehow he started on religion.

"You are the Je...er, the Jesus Christ?"

"No. Not Christian. I'm not confirmed anything. I like the principles of Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism."

"When the person dies, their ghost comes back..."

"Where are we now?"

I pointed out the window where we had stopped, effectively ending the conversation before he mounted the pulpit. I'm not really fond of discussions on religion or beliefs. They tend to turn into campaigning instead of a chat of ideas. Why do silly humans continually try to explain the unexplainable? Whether it's science or whose god has the biggest dick, it's all just fingerpainting on plastic wrap, the more you try to control what image you want, the more it changes before your eyes. Let it be a mystery. Enjoy the movie, quit trying to guess the ending.

We checked into our hotel which online had read "recently renovated." It was actually still under renovation. The elevator ride was shared with a woman chiseling away at the steel walls with a putty knife, dropcloths like throwrugs at the foot of the hallways. Our doorknob gave us trouble, but this time it was our fault; we didn't stick the flat spoon key deep enough into the slot. The front desk girl let us in and we asigned her to inquire about train tickets back to Shanghai.

Next, we toured around Chengdu, which seemed like an Asian Vancouver. Overcast skies above, an endless string of shops below. Not particularly impressive, but then perhaps we had stumbled upon the ritzy district. We headed towards more Bohemian environs, traditional Chinese architecture,most of which were half-demolished behind cheap cinder block walls, skyscrapers looming like bullies admiring their pummeling handiwork. Culture rape in the name of progress.

Still, Sichuan province is legendary for its cuisine, and on an unassuming side street eatery we discovered the finest noodles known to humanity. Made inhouse, the freshness was unsurpassable. The spicy beef broth was different, more savory, a slower burn. There are some herbs exclusive to the area used in the recipes and I might have also detected a trace of cardamom or cinnamon.

Afterwards, we tried to take a cab to an outdoor freemarket and got dropped off at a butcher and vegetable place instead. We strolled the area, past stores and and still-inhabited partially-razed dwellings, like a Word War II movie set. Chengdu is a difficult city to get one's bearings. I theorize the extensive coal pollution is slightly magnetic and worked tothrow off my male gyro compass. The city is circular in design, a series of rings within rings too vast to fathom or navigate, a flat gerrymandered shoping wasteland with skyscrapers poking through in places like the first budding teenage whiskers. Chengdu itself seems to be in a state of puberty, overly eager to rid itself of decrepit traditional building baby teeth and flaunt its Westernized status with contrived cocksure bravado. Simultaneous buildings had been erected, yet none finished, like an awkward boy wearing too much of Dad's cologne on cheeks still stung with leftover babyfat.

With not a metropolitan bone in our body, Mike and I set out for one of the many parks on our map. Our cabbie took us to one which he immediately deemed"no good" and drove us around the corner to one more deserving of out-of-towner yuen: DuFu's Thatched Cottage park. Hardly worth the 40 kuai entrance fee, we were both disappointed. The poet DuFu's cottage, a tower, and some surrounding gardens were pastuerized and seemed incidental in the garland of intrusive gift shops all hawking the same cheap bookends, jade statues and rice wine.

A Russian tourist couple and their bogus Chinese guide made us want to leave imeediately. Some soldiers were doing sloppy exercises and their guide told them it was kung fu. If that shit was kung fu, I'm Billy Zane. But these tourists ate their steaming bowl of feces and sucked the spoon making yummy faces all the while. But who do I loathe more, the ignorant couple or their "field expert"? They even asked if they could take pictures with open-jawed awe. We left in disgust. When you travel, you're an ambassador for your country whether you want to be or not. Every cabbie who tries to charge too much, every hiked-up price for a market good, every attitude given is borne from the wellspring of bad ambassadorship.

We took a different exit and had to hike a wide arc around an Orlando-ish condo hell to get back to a main road. We caught a cab back to the hotel, asked where we could obtain some famed szechuan huo guo, and to our good fortune, one was two doors down from our lodgings. Mike ordered it and demanded it be "super spicy." Immediately a basket of tissues was brought to our table. When they brought the broth, it was redder than Satan's epidermis. Before the first item was dumped in, we knew we were in trouble. People walking by the table did a doubletake at our food instead of us. It was very tasty, very unique.The spice was a slow burn, getting exponentially hotter with each bite. Between sips of beer and noseblows, we were able to keep the furnace somewhat at bay. The wrong Willis brother as at this meal. Tom puts Tabasco on his corn flakes, he would have loved this.

A bowl of "cooling sauce" containing peanut oil, oyster sauce, vinegar, salt and other was provided, but the longer we ate and dipped, the more diluted our antidote became. As a coup de grace, we dared each other to eat a pepper, and we did it at the same time. At first, nothing, and then the temperature rose ten degrees a minute, a tingling heat that rose in such increments, you could almost see Hades grinning and working the bellows himself.

Afterwards we tried to get massage, which ended up being more trouble than it was worth. On the streets, periodic chaps hand out cards with girls' faces on it. We decided to try one, preparing ourselves for the possibility it might be a brothel, internally rehearsing our exit strategy should it be the case. When looking for our location, we ran into a weaselly gent with scabbed-over ears, who led us to a hotel and on the third floor, marched us into a "private room" KTV establishment. Not our scene. Not even massage. A brothel would have been closer to the mark.

We told him "massage" and "cheap." He nodded, and after we all rode a 6 kuai taxi (that we paid for) he took us to yet another KTV, and it was MORE expensive than the last one. We shook our heads, left. We caught a cab and asked the cabbie to take us to massage leaving Scabears on the curb remonstrating, probably insisting we give him one more chance. He's lucky we didn't beat the 6 kuai out of him. Perhaps that's how his ears got scabbed in the first place.

After massage we were in a better state of mind, although Mike's bowels were not agreeing with the huo guo. I went down to the KTV bar adjacent to the hotel to give him privacy. I killed time by drinking a beer and singing a couple songs ("Hello", and "Only You") which I didn't even have to pay for, but the coal-rich Chengdu oxygen had taken its toll on my voice. I returned to the room, fell asleep.