By the time we had left Toronto and landed in Shanghai I was torn. Shanghai seemed like an infinite sprawl of apartment buildings, and there was this thick smog that rolled over the city emulating a type of 40s America noir. Neon lights and brightly lit advertisements reflected off the rain-slicked, cramped streets. Claustrophobia opened up into one wide expanse.
Here, Shanghai’s skyline fully visible in the night sky. Shanghai, with all it’s gaudiness, felt like a Hollywood set. The river that cuts through the center serves as a metaphor of modern China: it separates the old Shanghai from the new Shanghai. The latter lit up like a Light Bright, and the older resembling a country who took inspiration from its Eastern Bloc cousin.
The skyline: an intimidating lineup of man’s ambition. The tallest of the bunch disappears into the clouds, and like everything in China, construction of these steel giants has yet to be completed. Another skyscraper flashes the quote “I 3 SH” across thousands of its glass windows. China was shattering my expectations with Shanghai. This isn't what I expected, and honestly, it wasn't what I wanted. We spent a day there and left the next evening. We were all overwhelmed.
We had arrived to Chengdu by plane sometime around ten o’ clock that night. This was our first real night in China, at least, our first night without hand holding. A few of us attempted to catch a late dinner, but we soon discovered our Chinese was not only lacking but incapable of landing us any food at all -- we were saved by the graces of a translator. I’ll never forget that night. The main street just outside the campus was lined with, what seemed countless, food vendors and small restaurants. At first it’s too much. Stray dogs are everywhere; the streets are packed; the smells both attract and repulse. This is when you realize America is really 7,000 miles away. But there’s an awkward moment between starvation and hunger, and this time, at least, hunger won out. It takes adjusting to, but the real China is nothing like Shanghai promised.
It doesn't feel like you’re really somewhere else in the world until you've purchased pineapple-on-a-stick out a jug of water from a food vendor, or buy a SIM card from a storefront whose register is perched on top of small freezer selling popsicles. This China, on second thought, is so much better.
The next two weeks flew by. Our days were jam packed for us, for better or worse, and the first week was exhausting because of it. Class in the mornings, excursions in the afternoon, and then usually free time in the evening.
The excursions took us to a few places that all seemed to contain some sort of amusement park feel — like traveling through Disney World— and often felt too touristy for own their good.
One particular highlight was a hike to the top of Mount Qingcheng. Perched on top sat a Taoist temple. For those seeking a religious experience: one could do worse. Others were mixed: The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding — which may sound like a military complex specializing in Panda combatants — reminds of us of the strange crossroads to which modern China has arrived: preserving its past by making it a tourist destination.
Free time sees to it that our time is never wasted. We could wander through the city, visit the shops, attempt to bargain with their owners, take a bus ride or subway into downtown Chengdu, or rent scooters and ride them through the back roads. Oh, the scooters! Those back roads! These are the places China rather you not see. You won’t find them in any travelogues. Rice paddies in the shade of a passing bullet trains overhead; dozen of construction cranes loom over lotus fields like a steel sky; shells of hollowed out homes that speak of China’s last hundred years. Our scooters prove versatile. Easily overcoming the dirt roads and bricks stuck in the pathways.
We pass by a small pond where villagers have gathered to fish. We pass a few of these on our adventure. They seem like oases in a desert. Everyone of them has attracted a crowd of Chinese; all armed with rice hats and fishing poles. None of this seems real anymore. Small farms sitting in the shadows of a Chengdu skyline.
For all it’s carefully constructed theatrics, Shanghai pales in comparison to Chengdu’s reality. It’s a collision of East and West that results in a landscape that feels like it had been vomited up by some malevolent corporation. There’s really nothing quite like it. We headed north to Xi’an.
***
Kyle Charrette is a senior in communication arts and is is studying abroad in Chengdu, China during the summer of 2014.
A note from Kyle:
My name is Kyle Charrette, and I’m a senior enrolled in UNH’s Communication Arts Program. I graduated high school from Calvary Christian School, and I’m schedule to graduate from UNH in December 2014. For the summer I’ll be studying abroad in China through UNH Manchester’s Study Abroad program. The focus of my major and my passions are both writing and media, and this blog is a journey of my time in China communicated through the mediums I know best.
