The Point

Monday, May 12, 2008

Soliciting any and all news

I was pulling a granola bar out of my backpack or something equally meaningless this morning in class when I heard somebody say the word 'Chengdu.' And then the word '7.8.' And, having long since claimed ownership of all issues Sichuanese for myself, I asked what they were talking about. If you haven't heard about the earthquake yet, that's how I heard the news. The price I pay for sleeping through my the news on the radio this morning, I guess.

I called my friend Sun Im today - at about 3 in the morning Beijing time - to see if she was alright over there. It turned out she'd actually left the city to take a trip to Xi'an for the week. I think beyond being sort sort of bewildered about who would call at such an ungodly hour, she was a little surprised to hear a voice from halfway around the world that early (or late). I haven't been able to get a hold of anybody else in Chengdu yet. It makes something sink to the bottom of my stomach to think how many friends and loved ones are over there who I haven't spoken to for so long.

This picture's of a man in Dujiangyan, one of the towns that was hit by the earthquake. The title of this picture on my computer is "卖叶儿粑的 [Mai ye'erba de]," which roughly translates into 'dude selling the ye'er ba,' which are those delicious little greasy doughy things down there wrapped in... banana leaves, I think? He seemed bemused at being photographed - a pretty congenial guy, actually. My friend Jang Hu and I took a weekend trip to Dujiangyan as a sort of end of semester present to ourselves last July. It's kind of a weird town to take a trip to on a whim - its main attraction is the impressive ancient canal system, not exactly the sort of thrill you'd imagine would make for a wild weekend.

The Greyhoundesque bus we took that dropped us off literally in the middle of an intersection between two highways fifteen minutes away from anything recognisably town-like seemed like not a great omen. But once we got somebody to take us into the town proper in a tiny little autorickshaw, we spent the rest of the day taking pictures of each other making the Asian fingers in front of the roaring waterways - actually, stampeding would be more accurate than roaring, you could feel it going by just standing on the shore - and trying to make friends.

It didn't take long to find my favourite fixture of any town in Sichuan: teahouses. Side by side, they went on for blocks all along the side of the river. We stood and watched a group of people laughing and slamming their mah-jong tiles down on the table for a while. Eventually they invited us to play a round with them. Mah-jong over there, with a huge plastic thermos of hot water for your never-ending glass of tea beside you, is serious business. People love to gamble. What can I say. But they joked around with us and told us to sit down and play a hand with no buy-in, no expectations. They knew we were terrible at the game and spoke shoddy Mandarin, never mind more than a handful of words of Sichuanhua. We were just some random international students, not even from anywhere particularly exotic. But they let us play with them anyway. I broke even, thankfully.

I ran into my fair share of people who stared and shouted 'Hello!' when I walked down the street in Chengdu. But in every small town I went to in Sichuan, people seemed for some reason a hundred times more willing to accept me as I was. Tall, illiterate foreigner that I was, I met many a grandmother who would stop and talk with me and my friends about her life, about her village, about her work. Not too familiar, just a polite little country road chat and then we were on our way. I miss it. And I miss the ever-present whiff of hot chili and stomach-churning stinky tofu, of course.

Wenchuan, Anren, Dayi, Dujiangyan, Wolong... if you're thinking of Sichuan at all today, I hope some of these stories stick. With the riots in the Tibetan parts of the country, the Carrefour boycott, and now the Olympics coming up, this is kind of a historic year of mixed proportions over there. Here's to hoping everyone there makes it through okay, and to everyone who didn't, that their families get the peace and support they need.

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posted by Christopher at 6:03 p.m.

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