Fourth Day - Chengdu

Wednesday July 30, 2008
Yesterday I slept in, Sam and I got some lunch delivered to us (pseudo-mashed potatoes, kung pao chicken and fried rice) then he came with me to an interview at an English school for professionals called New Dynamic Institute. It was in the eighth floor of a mall, but it overlooked a beautiful rooftop garden with a square building set above a circular pool. The interview went fairly well, I learned a bit about how to answer the questions talking with Sam after the interview. It seemed like a good, formal place to teach professionals but it seemed like they were looking for more hours than I am ready to commit to right now.

Sam and I went home afterward, he met with the landlord to sign a new lease and I got ready for soccer, then met up with Rick to go play on the public field at Sichuan University. We took a bus from Yulin, it was really crowded, not too surprising as it was about six o'clock. The soccer field is surrounded by a track so we warmed up a bit while waiting for the other team members to show up. Once we had assembled a nine-man team we took the field against a team of Chinese university students. They gave us one of their players so we had even sides. Our team is made up of Westerners, mainly Scots, Aussies, English and Americans. Chinese players are fast, good on the ball but very selfish and flashy. They cannot create space or pass the ball effectively and they don't contest headers. So we won pretty handily, about 8 or nine goals for us to 2 for them. It was a lot of fun, very tiring and we all got super sweaty in the heat. Then we walked to the Leg and Whistle, a British pub. We walked across the campus of Sichuan University, about the size of a major US university campus like Texas or Wisconsin. When we got to the bar, Tony, the owner, gave us all a free beer (which I guess happens every week). Rick and I stayed around for another one, talked with Andy (a Scotsman who owns a bar called Dave's Oasis) and Dwayne (a Canadian English teacher). Then Rick and I got dinner and took a taxi back to Yulin, I took a shower and read a bit before bed.

Most transportation here in Chengdu is by taxi or bus, lots of people ride bikes but it's really hot and humid so it's a little more comfortable to take a taxi or bus, about half of them are air-conditioned, about the same proportion of restaurants and bars as well.

Things don't seem especially crowded, which is surprising. There are always people around but it's rare to be in a crush or a huge shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. Chinese people are very noisy, vendors walk through the neighborhood and into the courtyard yelling services (like knife sharpener was an example Sam gave). But overall, it's like a big city: traffic, rich food smells, etc. The streets themselves are very clean, they're washed every night, and businesses are in a constant state of cleaning.

Rick and Alex run an eco-tourism company, and Rick teaches a bit on the side. About half of the other ex-pats I've met are teachers, some work remotely.

I don't really have much of a take on the pollution because it is naturally cloudy here all the time. We're in the Sichuan basin, so we're basically surrounded by mountains and rivers. So Chengdu sits in the bowl of Sichuan, probably holding in the pollution. So far, traffic hasn't seemed very bad and while I've spent most of my time in Yulin and the other southern parts of the city, it seems very manageable.

The city largely consists of seven-story apartment buildings like mine, with shops on the outside and a courtyard on the inside. Buildings over seven stories are required to have an elevator so more modern buildings are quite a bit taller and have an elevator.