Chengdu Living

I've been Chengdu for a little over a week now.

I'm staying in a nice little third-floor apartment in the Yulin neighborhood, known for being nice with good stores, restaurants, and a few bars. It is really densely populated. There are thousands of people living within just a few blocks here. My apartment complex alone, made up of several 12-story buildings, is massive. I've made good use of a website called, Chengdu Living, that has been really handy in pointing out good places to go. It has a section about the Yulin neighborhood and  has a page about my apartment complex, the Wangfu Garden Apartments:
http://www.chengduplaces.com/listing/wangfu-garden/

My lack of Chinese is pretty daunting. It was easier in Beijing which is more of an international city than Chengdu. This is not to say that Chengdu is a quiet backwater. Not so at all. it has 14 million people! The world's largest building just recently opened in suburban Chengdu, The New Century Global Center.

But I have a lot of difficulty ordering food. My colleague Sue Sipple experienced the same kind of issues when she visited Xian last year. I like Chinese dumplings and I discovered, according to Chengdu Living, that one of the best places in the city was just a couple blocks away. So, off I went. I walked in and sat down, disappointed that there were not pictures or any English anywhere to be seen. The older woman who seemed to be the matriarch of the family had pointed me to a table and came to talk to me. I had hoped she had just a couple of words of English but no such luck. She soon retreated to the kitchen where she sent a young man out, apparently the cook and her son, to talk to me.

He proceeded to pretend to speak English and  I pretended to understand. I didn't want him to lose face in front of his family. So, we both smiled in agreement and he disappeared into the kitchen again. I had no idea what I was going to get to eat. Soon, however, he brought me a big plate of dumplings that were very good. Every meal is something like this.

The other day, for example, a similar episode occurred at a little place across the street. I had a little card with me that had the characters that meant pork with noodles. But they didn't have any noodles, just rice dishes. I pointed at something on the menu that looked like kung pao chicken but they talked a lot and shook their heads so I just agreed and sat down.

Soon, they brought me out this earthenware pot in which had been cooked, rice, some vegetables, and some bony meat (I wasn't sure what the meat was, small bony short-ribs?). It was very tasty and there were hot spices on the table that got me sweating. This is Sichuan province after all. So, I'm not sure what I had and would not be able to order it again but it was good.

I have found a place on my block called "Ant" which puts out a pretty good ham and egg sandwich on toast and they have a menu with pictures and some English. I'll be going back there because I can read the menu.

Have I mentioned the heat? It has been very hot and humid here. I'm not exactly sure whether it is any worse that Cincinnati but here I don't have a car to go from place to place, I'm walking everywhere. This afternoon when I came home from a walk back from the university, about a 20-minute walk, I was just drenched in sweat. It has been mostly overcast and raining quite a bit, not the bright sunshine we had in Beijing. They call this area the Sichuan bowl as it is quite low in altitude and surrounded by mountains on two sides. If you look at a topographic map of China the depression is quite obvious. The heat, humidity, and rainfall, make it a rich area agriculturally but, in the summer, it feels like a sauna.