First published 6/12/2010 during Elizabeth’s first trip to Chengdu for a two-month study abroad program. Unfortunately that blog site folded a long time ago so I am reposting it here.
When I woke up, Krista told me that there had been a mix-up last night and that she was not my actual roommate, so she was going to need to get that straightened out later today. Anne had slipped a note under our door saying that she was going to leave to get the computer stuff at 9:30, so after I ate some breakfast (a granola bar) we headed out together. I totally forgot to take my camera, which turned out to be quite unfortunate, but hopefully I’ll make it back to most of those places again.
We left the campus and walked about four blocks to a row of vendors, where we found the power strips we needed. The man who we bought ours from was really nice and told us where we could find the Ethernet cables. We continued down the road about another two blocks to a giant electronics store. I really, really need to get some pictures of it. It was six stories tall, with escalators going up the outside, so you could look down at the middle of the store. There was every kind and brand of electronic that you could think of, and many I’d never heard of. They had glass display cases of a specific brand of an item, and at least three salespeople there to help you. We went up to the third floor, where they cut our two meter cord right off a spool and stuck the connecting ends on it, tested it, and sold it to us for 2 yuan. That’s less than 40 cents. Then some girls came up to us and wanted us to look at DVDs, so we went up to the top floor and flipped through quite the selection of DVDs, several of which were definitely not yet released in the US, though none of us bought any.
Next we caught a cab and headed to the cell phone market. It was kind of similar to the electronics store in design, with display cases for each brand and far more sales people than customers. Anne picked out her phone, and at least three young guys came over to make sure it got set up properly. It was pretty funny.
After that we went to lunch at a vendor across the street from the cell phone market. I got a bowl of wheat noodles with beef and a Fanta. They were good, but way too much and there was no way I could even come close to finishing them.
Our map made it seem like we were somewhere somewhat close to the big bookstore, so we started walking in search of that. And we walked, and we walked, and we walked. We went through a downtown commercial area with a lot of banks and fancy clothing stores. There were fruit vendors here and there, with many kinds of unusual-to-us fruit such as lychees and mangosteens.
And we kept walking. We passed a beggar who was standing on his head, which apparently worked because he had quite a bit more money in his basket than any of the others we’d passed. We stopped in a drug store that had things like shampoo, cosmetics, and snacks. I was looking through the candy rack while Anne and Krista shopped, and found a rack with Almond Roca in it – two different kinds. They had some American candy, but also Yan-yan, Meiji, and some Chinese brands I hadn’t seen before.
Eventually we gave up walking, and got a cab back to campus. We actually ended up on the campus across the street from our campus, though, which was quite confusing and we had to ask for directions. When I got back to the dorm I discovered that my power strip wasn’t compatible with my laptop plug, so I was still stuck without a laptop. I ended up spending the afternoon mostly reading. Krista moved out and my actual roommate, a girl from ASU who is also in second year, moved it. Or at least, I thought. She then said that she and her friend had decided to share computer things, so I’d be trading roommates again once Satomi arrived. I just shrugged. It didn’t really matter to me. Anne, her roommate Amelia, and Krista came by around 6 and we all went out to dinner together. Both of the dishes turned out to be a bit spicy so I mostly ate rice and lettuce and tomato soup. I totally crashed after dinner without meaning to for about an hour, then went to bed for real early.