First published 6/13/2010 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.
While I was eating breakfast my roommate headed off to her friend’s room to use her computer, so I decided to go out and take a walk around the lotus pond. On the way down the stairs, however, I ran into Vivian, who was meeting up with a bunch of other UW students to go to breakfast. I went along with them, and we ate at a vendor just down the street. There were so many of us that she had to take us up to the upstairs seating area, which I would never have guessed existed from the outside. Most of us didn’t have a clue what the menu said, so we just asked the vendor to pick something and told her whether we wanted it spicy or not. I ended up with an excellent plate of rice noodles, which was not exactly what I expected to be eating for breakfast, haha. I also tried some fried dough called youtiao, which was quite good.
After that we meandered back to the little phone shop on campus, where several people bought phones. I just hung out outside with the people who didn’t need phones, and we talked a bit. The group then split up, and I decided to go take my delayed walk around the lotus pond. I think that the pictures describe it better than my words can. It’s pretty, although it seems forlorn and maybe a little dead surrounded by so much concrete. But it is still a nice change of scenery. I’ll have to remember to take some pictures of the paths and trees behind it too at some point, since it is a rather interesting looking area.
Finding myself alone for lunch, I went back to the same place that we’d eaten breakfast, much to the amusement of the vendor. She talked to me and about me in very fast Sichuanhua that I sometimes understood parts of, and I think she teased me for speaking slowly, but I did manage to order two baozi and a Fanta, which I carried home and ate in the dorm room. I was glad I got the Fanta because the baozi (which was like pot sticker meat wrapped in a white bun) was definitely not sweet at all.
I then watched TV for a while. There were some pretty interesting things on. The pattern was pretty much “drama, drama, something weird, drama, drama, news, drama, drama…” so I tended to stop on the something weirds. The first one was an animal show, which was some kind of contest at an aquarium. There were two dolphins who would put their noses against the diver’s two feet, then propel them up out of the water so the human could try to touch a ball suspended above the water. There were three different divers, and it seemed to be a competition to see who could touch the ball suspended the highest.
Next I came across an American movie dubbed in Chinese. Although it has kind of struck me before with Chinese movies how weird it is to hear them dubbed into English, hearing an English movie dubbed into Chinese was definitely odd. I watched it for a while before realizing it was the movie about the teenager who goes to Paris and is abducted, and her ex-undercover agent dad has to find her. Not really the stuff I want to be watching while in a foreign country.
I found a hypnotist show after that, which was weirder even than hypnotist shows usually are because it was a very American guy who could kind of speak Chinese, but mostly hypnotizing through an interpreter.
I turned the TV off after that and went to ask Anne for the package for her power strip. She gave it to me, and I went down the street to the vendor to buy one. My grammar was abysmal, but I managed to get across what I wanted and got my power strip. And so, finally, I was able to set up my computer for real.
Anne and Amelia came by at 5:30 and said they were going for a massage, so I went along with them. Anne did a bit of talking with the lady at the shop, since she only had two beds, and then Amelia and I went down the street to another lady’s place. The girl who did mine was either close to my age or younger, and she was really funny and kept trying to talk to me, though I mostly couldn’t understand. That definitely made me feel too tall – I barely fit on the bed. We only had half an hour while Anne had an hour, so after we were done we wandered through the nearby market for a while. It’s probably about three or four blocks from the school.
Once Anne was done, we went to a place that was called something along the lines of “Home Style Food” and ordered tea fried duck and eggplant. The eggplant was sweet, and really good, although the texture was a bit strange. The duck tasted like really rich bacon, and I didn’t really like it.
I spent the evening pretty much on the computer. Satomi arrived at just before midnight, and so I got to switch out roommates again. But Satomi is really nice (she’s the person I was supposed to fly with originally) and we seem to be getting along well, so I think it’s going to be great.
