Fill Up, and Empty: Seven Days in Chengdu, China

What do you know about Chengdu, China?

What I knew about Chengdu, China, would not fill a teacup.

How could I know so little about a city of 21 million people?

David and I came to Chengdu because it was unknown to us, and we wanted a place in Southwestern China that would be a good stopover on our way back west after fifteen weeks in Asia (Sri Lanka, South Korea, Japan). We have been living on the road for nineteen months, as perpetual strangers, in a different country every month. I have been writing an essay about each place, with a historian’s eye and an internationalist lens, contemplating how societies deal with complex histories and wondering if/how memory can liberate the present.

Coming to China from Japan, and exiting it to Istanbul, Turkiye, I was reminded how much our comparative minds affect how we view places. Turkiye looked dirty compared to China. China seemed more anarchic compared to rule-following Japan.  Comparative observations are of questionable value. What is important is to be aware of the context you bring to new places. Our minds are not tabula rasa, even when we are ignorant of a place.

With few clothes, little knowledge, and plenty of cultural baggage, we hopped a plane from Osaka, without a visa, just an understanding that US passport holders without business here could stay for 10 days — 240 hours, to be exact—as long as they had a reservation, an exit plan, and stayed in a big city.

David turned 67 while standing in the wrong line at the immigration and customs in Chengdu.

Getting off the plane, we saw others filling out an immigration form, so we did likewise, then joined the foreigners’ line. When our turn came, they asked for our visa, then sent us across the airport to a booth for people without papers. There were three other people in that line. The European woman in front of us asked to use the bathroom, and they let her. The immigration officers were clear about the rules—we could not leave Chengdu proper, especially western Sichuan Province, without getting fined. They said, Welcome to China, stamped our passports, and sent us back to the foreigners’ line.

We stayed in a fancy hotel in central Chengdu we could never afford elsewhere. Its location allowed us to walk to many places we wanted to see. Our first task was to figure out how to survive as walkers. That has been the case everywhere. Each country has its rules and its practices.  In Chengdu, motor scooters drive on the sidewalks, turning cars zip through a just-changed red light, and bikes in their lane ignore the red light.  By the last day, I began to understand the informal rules people use to keep traffic flowing without hitting each other.

 Wenshu Yuan Monastery.

The Wenshu Yuan, a working monastery inhabited by Buddhist monks, was an easy L-shaped walk from the hotel. The area around it was full of restaurants and souvenir shops. The souvenirs made me laugh, because everywhere else we have gone, there are Chinese factory-made souvenirs, and everyone laments the loss of local crafts. Here were the same souvenirs, made locally. Mostly pandas. There were also local crafts. I admired hand-woven tapestries and bought a pair of artist-made earrings.

Chinese tourists were taking selfies at the monastery entrance. The Buddhist sanctuary dates back to the 6th century, but the most glorious structure within the monastery compound was built in 1999. It had signs asking you to be dressed appropriately (no shorts). This was the only place in China where I saw any regulation, de jure or de facto, on clothing. Having been in four countries that did have rules and customs, and fashion faux pas about clothing, Chengdu was surprising and refreshing in this way. We saw every kind of clothing, and all kinds of footwear, on all genders, and no one seemed to be side-eyeing anyone. Perhaps it is different in the countryside.

Back to the 1999 Monastery building. There were hundreds of prayer stools set up in rows on the second floor, and a grand empty room on the third floor, “Perfect for dancing, I said. Praying too.

The monastery serves a vegetarian lunch and a plethora of options for tea: tea with a bowl of peanuts where you can lounge like royalty and make a mess with shells, and tea with miniature tea cakes, each a different color, shape, and flavor, that must be eaten carefully and cleanly. My flower tea came in a glass bottle and was as beautiful to look at as it is soothing to drink. We went for the tea cakes, since it was still Dave’s birthday.

The People’s Park

The People’s Park was a more complex walk, but only 1.5 miles away. As we entered the lush green space on a Saturday, we saw a group singing. They had songbooks. Around them, other people stopped and joined in on choruses. The music, East-meets-West in style, appeared to be popular, but not universally known. A woman in her seventies was dancing with full gusto, like she was the queen.  We moved to another part of the park where women aged 40-70 were dancing with rackets and balls — their expert movements kept the ball from dropping even as they twisted and dove. I caught the eye of a woman in the back, and she kept smiling at me.

In another area, crowds huddled around a clothesline with sheets of pink and blue paper, moving down the row to read them all. The forms were strangely in English, filled out in Chinese. Each form asked for gender, age, height, and then two spaces to write paragraphs: your descriptions of yourself, and what you are looking for in a mate. In high-tech China, a no-tech dating service for people interested in getting married.

There are plenty of panda-themed souvenirs and treats, tea shops, and opportunities to eat hot pot in or around the People’s Park, but it was there that we learned that Chengdu is also famous for something else. In the 1890’s the industrial revolution and foreign economic intervention came to Chengdu, and with it the need for a railroad.  The photographs of railroad workers in the museum looked like those of Chinese railroad workers in the US Pacific Northwest during the same period. To pay for the railroad, the people were encouraged to buy shares, sold on the idea that this was a patriotic community project. In addition, taxes were levied on local governments and individual farmers. In 1911, the Qing Dynasty owed money to British, French, German, and US banks with names like Citibank and J.P. Morgan. To get out of debt, they planned to hand over the half-finished Sichuan Railroad to these banks. The Chengdu railroad workers formed the Sichuan Railway Protection Movement to fight for the project they were not only building, but also paying for. Thirty-two people were killed during their protest, leading many more to rise up. The Qing Dynasty diverted troops to Chengdu, weakening their forces trying to suppress the Wu Chang Uprising, which led to a defeat of the Qing Dynasty.

 

There was reverence and pride in the faces of the other museum visitors, who probably already knew the story. The railroad was finally completed in 1952, “the first miracle in the history of the construction of New China.”

We had lunch at the People’s Park in a section of the tea house where you could choose a sweets box and a tea performance, or a set meal and a very large pour-your-own carafe. We chose the latter.  The waiter spoke into her translation App (we lost access to Google everything, including Translate, when we entered China) and then handed it to me.

“Black tea, green tea, or flower tea?” the English read.

She handed me the phone to speak into it, but forgot to switch to English to Chinese.

I said into her phone: Green Tea.

The translation came back. Moisturizing Rabbit. 

We got a seat by the pond where we could watch families in rowboats. Children and parents waved at us. Our European faces were certainly a novelty in Chengdu. We got lots of stares, sometimes with a complete 180 turn, but most of these looks felt friendly. In the People’s Park, people waved at us like we were guests

In addition to tea and lunch, one could also get an ear cleaning — people walked around clinking metal rods, and occasionally someone would bite, and right there in the cafe, have their ears cleaned — a process guaranteed to keep you young, they said.

We went back to the People’s Park on a Thursday, wanting to know if it was any different on a weekday. It was just as crowded. There were just as many groups singing and dancing, including the same group of racket and ball dancers. The woman in the back recognized me, and we exchanged silent greetings. On that day, we decided to just go for tea. We did what we were supposed to do. Sit in one place for 90 minutes, drinking cup after cup after cup. (btw. Like Korea and Japan—and unlike all of Europe–public bathrooms in Chengdu were everywhere, and free. So we could spend all afternoon filling up, emptying, and filling up again.

We found part of the park we missed the first time, including an elevated jungle with benches and signs that say ” no singing or dancing here. This is too close to a residential area.” People were meditating and sleeping on benches in this segment.

The free Art  Museum in Chengdu was huge and gorgeous.

 

The History Museum in Chengdu (also free) began on the first of six floors with the Bronze Age, and was thorough in its narrative, up until the People’s Republic era. It celebrated the heritage of ancient medical wisdom and spiritual practice, including acupuncture, Taoism, and Buddhism. It told the story of why Sichuan food is so spicy. One woman and her brain-numbing stew started it. Her name was MaPo.  We got more of the story of the Railroad struggle, good coverage of the anti-Japanese fascist struggle of the 1930s. The city was not as devastated as nearby Chongqing (discussed in my Japan blog), but the city center, including the site which is now People’s Park, was leveled. There is some on World War II showing sympathetic panels with the United States and other allied forces. Like so many museums we have seen, in so many countries— like the Madrid one, which skips most of the 20th century, as though Franco did not exist— the current, or complicated history, controversial living history, was not covered, giving an impression that history ended with the rise of the People’s Republic in 1949.

 

The Chengdu Museum of Science and Technology

Formerly the site of King Shu’s mansion, in 1968, they built a grand building and filled it with the “Great Ideas of Mao Zedong.”  In 2006, they emptied the halls of Mao’s wisdom and filled them with gadgets. The statue of Mao still towers in front of the Chengdu Museum of Science and Technology.  The free museum has four floors of fun robots, video projections, 4D movies, and rockets. It’s a great place for kids and tech geeks. There was not much to hold our interest, except for a bicycle that rode in a concentric circle, taking its rider to an upside-down position. Dave got in line to ride it, despite my remonstrations.  I was relieved to discover that no one over 60 is allowed on the bike. We also loved watching a kid play Go with a robot.

 

We did go to the Panda Research Center, the most common tourist attraction in Chengdu. But it was 90 degrees (F) that day, and we and the pandas were both too hot to withstand the viewing. They hid and so did we — in a shaded rose garden. The Panda Center cost $8, but it was free for us because we are over 60.

While we were in Chengdu, the United States and China met in Switzerland to iron out a 90-day reprieve on Trump’s trade war. The news was cautiously celebrated on CGNN an international English-language Chinese government-sponsored station similar in style to CNN and BBC.

President Xi also met with Putin in Moscow. CGNN covered the meeting and military parade extensively. I have never seen news cameras make either man appear so amiable.

The Cannes Film Festival featured films on Tibet, pilloried by a commentator on a CGNN Opinion show. She showed photos of serfs in Tibet under the Dali Llama, before the Chinese Communist Period. She interviewed a young Tibetan woman, who explained how she learned Tibetan, English and Chinese in her public school; a Tibetan-American visitor to Tibet is wowed by how modern and clean everything is; and a  British expert on the CIA’s Tibet propaganda. “She ended the segment with: You won’t hear these perspectives anywhere in the Western Media. We will put this up on YouTube, and see how long it will stay up..

The biggest news, however, was that 33 Latin American and Caribbean leaders were in Beijing to meet with President Xi for the fourth China-CELAC Summit.  President Luiz Lula Da Silva of Brazil extended his stay, spending five days in Beijing. The Peruvian President announced their country was joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global Chinese economic campaign to invest in large infrastructure projects across the planet. I wondered at the enormity of all those leaders leaving the Western Hemisphere at once, to fill the halls of Beijing. I also wondered what they ate at the CELAC meeting. Chile Relleno? Hot pot?

Emptying

On our last day, we returned to the Wenshu Monastery to participate in a ritual of calligraphy. I didn’t know what we were getting into. I just saw people at small tables in a big room with tea cups and paint brushes, and wanted to try it. They gave us a scroll of Chinese characters. There was a booth to fill small plates with ink and brushes in a jar. We were required to buy tea. They had many varieties, hot and cold, and each person’s was delivered differently and beautifully. They put us at a long communal table. For more than three hours, we sat meticulously copying letters. I felt waves of stress come and go—weighty worries about the world and silly ones about the shape of my letters. Were they good enough?

It seemed like the brush was in charge; I just needed to keep moving. When I was done, I was exhausted.

Dave asked for a translation of what we had lettered.

The Boro Boramita Heart Sutra, a meditation on emptying.

Filling

Our favorite place in Chengdu was not on any tourist map. It was a small, unassuming neighborhood park surrounded by high-rises, near our hotel. It had a small pond, and both green and paved spaces for relaxation and recreation. We went at different times of day. It was always filled with people, many solo, some in big groups, doing Tai Chi, Chinese ballroom dancing, flying those long snake-shaped kites, spinning tops, and meditating. Some just walked around the pond several times, rolling their shoulders, stretching their arms. All ages. One morning, we stood apart from a group of Tai Chi practitioners and tried to follow their moves. They said Hello! and Good Morning! to us. That was my favorite moment in Chengdu.