Fifth Day Chengdu

July 31, 2008
Yesterday I got up, went to the coffee shop, studied Chinese for a while and saw Alex for a minute, then walked back to the apartment. It was really hot so I put on Brazil (1985), which was pretty weird but good overall, a bit drawn-out. Sam and I ordered some food delivered, spicy Sichuan food. Then we went to the police station to register, got really sweaty in the process, waiting outside after a really hard rain, hot and humid and sunny. Then we went to a computer city on the first ring road.

“Computer city”, as these buildings are called, are multi-story electronic malls. They sell more high-cost goods on the lower floors (video cameras, digi cams, laptops, monitors, etc.) and these are all grouped by manufacturer, with their own little display area of glass cases and tons of advertisements. The upper floors sell videogame systems and other hardware, as well as bootleg games and dvds. We were eventually led into a room on the eighth floor and looked through some dvds, then we went out onto the first ring road and waited for a cab or bus for about 20 minutes, but it was rush hour (about 6 or 630), so we started walking back to the apartment, stopping in a fake-Nike store on the way and talking with the girls who worked there. Then we continued our walk back to Yulin and cooled off in the house.

We met up with Alex and Rick for dinner, walked somewhere in Yulin for more spicy Sichuan food. It was pretty good, I went home and took a shower then we went to Jah Bar. We talked for a while with the owner and a middle-aged Chinese couple about the changing face of China and the new generation of “little Emperors.” We hung out there for a while, listened to some James Brown and petted some dogs, then we went to Hemp House, which is in the second story of an apartment building overlooking one of the rivers. It's a sometimes more-Chinese, sometimes more-Westerner bar (apparently these things go in cycles). We met three Americans there, one of whom, Nate, played pool with us and is from northern Illinois. We talked with them for a while and then the bar closed so we went home. Sam and I watched Kill Bill 2 then went to bed.

For the first time I was able to understand an entire sentence I overheard – Alex asked for the bill – women yao maidan. The Chinese is coming along slowly, as is my internal map of the city. The ring road concept makes things hard sometimes because they curve, but the naming of streets is beginning to make sense, as middle roads become north and south or east and west at either end.

The process of learning Chinese is definitely a process of building by small increments, like assembling a wall of Legos. Once the first walls are put together they can be reassembled to create more and more sentences. I'm at the absolute low end of the spectrum but it is beginning to become easier and my ear is starting to begin to discern more and more.