all kinds of tall

Visiting LeShan’s giant Buddha is all well and good until you have to climb down the steps.

I know what you’re thinking, what sort of bozo complains about going down steps? Especially when there’s so much to complain about when it comes to the going up part? I would usually agree but I’m increasingly finding that the worldview we use in other places often hits some snags here in China. And thus we reach the part of the story in which I complain about going down the steps at the world’s largest Buddha.

We waited a fair amount of time before it was our turn to enjoy the Stairway of Nine Turns. This one-way staircase is cut into the same cliffs as the Buddha and offers fantastic views as you wind your way down to his toes. It's the only way down the cliffs and as we waited in an amusement park-style line we played boredom-cure for the rest of the crowd who seemed mystified and delighted by the fact that we weren't from around there. Note the little girl who can't take her eyes off of the tan-sweatered Shi-wen.  

Before getting in line for the stairs we'd explored other parts of the park and Shi-wen was asked by several young Chinese if they could have their photos taken with him. I asked one of the girls why she chose Shi-wen out of our group of three (we were there with a friend) and she said it was because she thought he was very tall. But then etiquette took hold and she extended her invitation to the two of us as well. This was after our friend had used a hotdog on a stick to singe the roof of his mouth but I don’t think it affected his smile for the photo.

But back to waiting for the steps… once it's your turn you realize there's no shade and since this is the one day the sun decided to make an appearance you're now roasting hot and burning off your first layer of skin. But thanks to a fairly widespread aversion to tanning in China there is no shame in using an umbrella or anything else to protect you from the fiery rays. 

All I had were the clothes on my back so I opted to hang my sweater off of my head. It sounded like a fine idea at the time and I was further buoyed up by people catching my eye with an “I hate the sun too” kind of look. Then again it could have been a “you foreigners are messy and weird” kind of look, but I was peering out from under a sweater so it's hard to know for sure.

Just when we were finally heading down the numerous flights of uneven steps (one of us with a sweater on their head) and feeling like at any moment we might pick up speed, we were forced to remember that China is the world’s most populous country and going anywhere, let alone a tourist attraction, can be a slow-moving process.

It wasn't that we were moving down the stairs so much as we were clumping down them. It was one step, wait a while, another step, dead stop. And although each step brought with it a little bit of joy, it also carried a lump of frustration because the people swarming behind us seemed quite focused on climbing up and over our backs. The main offenders were an insistent elderly man with a cane, his wife and her knack for full-body shoving, and an unrelated kid who brought an oversized wooden sword to the park.

It was like pouring people through a funnel except the funnel was already clogged with sunblind tourists trying to protect themselves from aggressive elders and medieval weapons. On the plus side the slow pace gave us a lot of time to look at the Buddha. And it was awesome.

At 233 feet high Le Shan’s Dafo is literally the world’s largest Buddhist sculpture and it just happens to be two hours from our house by bus. Taking a car would probably be quicker, but driving doesn’t give as great a view of the yellow rapeseed flowers that take over the Chinese countryside this time of year. Plus, to drive somewhere you kind of need a car, which we don't have. What we did have was the new issue of Vanity Fair, which our friend brought from New York, and that in itself is pretty special for Chengdu.

When we were taking the bus I tried not to think about how it makes my legs feel trapped and crushed at the same time, and instead focused on how the world’s largest Buddha was waiting at the end of the line. Or more accurately, at the end of the line there is a city bus that takes you to the world’s largest Buddha. But after having seen the giant Buddha you should not take that city bus again. You should take a cab to the bus station because it will be a lot quicker and it will also result in fewer passengers falling on the floor when the driver stops short.

The cabbie you find in front of the park will likely refuse to use the meter and he'll try to get you to pay double or triple the fare, so after you get in his cab just keep saying a number that is less than the number he says. No matter what he says, just repeat your number.

It’s a good strategy especially when you don't quite know what he's saying. Bargaining aside, when he asked where we were from we could understand him, so we said we were from America. He said we were all very tall, and that Americans are tall in general, which was the second time that day someone had commented on our height.

The day's most joyful moment came after we'd visited the Buddha and boarded the bus back to Chengdu. It was so hot on the bus that passengers started to remove layers of clothing as soon as they stepped on, which is a serious heat indicator because Chinese people are a lot like Italians in terms of their willingness to bear extreme temps. So if they're taking off their clothes you know it's hot. I also knew I couldn’t sit on that bus for two hours.

But it was too late. The bus had already pulled out of the station and begun its slow crawl for Chengdu. Except that then in a beautiful and wholly unexpected turn of events the air conditioning switched on and cold air was blowing all around us. It was pure magic and that bus ride was worth every yuan that we paid for the tickets.

The same can be said for the world’s largest Buddha… which, even when compared to a bunch of Americans, was pretty damn tall.

quail eggs and cash

In China you can buy lots of stuff off the backs of bikes. Like sweet potatoes. And mops. And even the labor of the guy sitting on the bike.

But the motorbike marketplace doesn't stop there.

Chinese entrepreneurs don't succumb to the tunnel vision that sees motorbikes and bicycles only as portable shops. Instead they go much further, envisioning them as ride-able versions of traditionally large-scale operations, like restaurants. 

As a result, you get a lot of people riding around on vehicles that look as if they’ve been driven straight out of the most fantastically illustrated children’s books. Except that in China these magical jalopies are very real and they can perform miracles. Or at least miracles that are contingent on large tanks of propane being driven around on two wheels, or maybe three.

Crossing streets in China is hard, and threading a Chinese traffic circle could make a big city American cry, but you will never truly appreciate Chinese traffic until you’ve played chicken with an oncoming propane tank that knows this country has no traffic cops. On the spectrum of Chengdu traffic challenges, these tanks even trump the pardon-me-but-it-seems-that-a-hog-carcass-just-fell-off-the-back-of-your-bike-in-the-middle-of-rush-hour sort of hiccups you sometimes run into here.

The truth is, despite the more risky elements of the portable kitchen system, we need these guys. They make some of the tastiest fast food in the city. Our favorite stir-fry guy has a finely tuned wok, prep space, and pantry that he likes to park by a convenience store in our neighborhood. There’s also the young guy who sells breakfast tofu with all the fixings from what looks like an oil drum on the back of his bike. And there's a lady who roasts sweet potatoes in a large earthen oven directly behind her bicycle seat during evening rush.

But before you start thinking the sidewalk is your food court, I’d recommend you not eat from every food scooter fit to hit the road. Some people are pretty carefree about what/where they'll eat, but for me there’s a litmus test these little operations have to pass. Although, to be fair, it’s more like a gut check or a ring of truth because I don't have any hard and fast rules. It's basically one of those exasperating “I know it when I see it” kind of standards.

My system admittedly leaves the should-you/shouldn’t-you up for interpretation. And that’s where Shi-wen and I diverge. One of us is fairly conservative, believing that the best moveable restaurants are those we’ve seen in the same location over and over. This person believes that a semi-regular location ensures a certain level of quality or at least a measure of find-ability should something go wrong. They also think the whole operation should be in the neighborhood of “clean.”

The other of us believes you should eat things that look good.

Take these quail egg omelet orbs. One of us ate them and the other did not. I’ll let you guess who’s who, but what we could both agree on was that this guy's set-up is awesome, as is the idea of making egg ball kabobs.

But that’s China, walk down almost any street and you’ll have an opportunity to eat something for the very first time. You’ll also have the chance to see things you’d never imagined – or more likely never wanted to imagine but now can’t get out of your head. And the smells… there are lots of smells too.

The great news is that food scooters usually smell pretty good. So even if I’m not always buying what they’re selling, I’m still a big fan of the folks who bungee cord a tank of propane to the back of their bikes and ride around town making snacks.

Without them, the sidewalks here would have no hope of smelling good.

playing with sticks

Whenever I get super-fixated on the excessive pollution or the food safety problems or the fact that cabs in Chengdu don't have seat belts in their back seats, there's a useful thought that helps me regain my sanity. It's goes something like this: It's safe enough here for 1.3 billion people to have been born and survived, so it's safe enough for you. Get over it.

It works for those days when you can't see clearly because of the "fog." It works when you're eating hot pot despite the scandals about "recycled" hot pot oil. It also works when you have to select your chopsticks from a slew that have been sitting in the reach of the public for who knows how long.

And it also comes in handy when you see kids navigating some fairly challenging street food delivery systems.

Kids here seem to have the ability to bite hunks of meat and fruit from very sharp sticks without incurring any self-inflicted wounds, even while on the move. These are kids so young that if they threw a basketball and hit the backboard people would be impressed, yet here they're already walking down the street using their teeth to pull grapes from a sharpened bamboo spear.

I remember when I was a kid, my parents would bend the ends of lollipop sticks to keep them from stabbing me in the throat. They'd also add water to my soda and refused to let me watch Three's Company, but that's got nothing to do with sharp sticks.

But now that I think about it, that might be just the kind of coddling that makes me crave seat belts and clean air... As I was saying, I'd better get over it.

the chengdu commute

A lot of us commute. We start at Point A and we move to Point B, and at the end of the day we head back. But there are lots of ways to get there from here -- some methods requiring more balance than others. And here in Chengdu a lot of commuters need a whole lot of balance.

Most grandparents tote their grandkids to school on the backs of bicycles. My personal faves are the self-contained caravans that ferry their passenger around in a protective mini-tent.

There are motor scooter cabbies who share their seats with paying strangers and friends balancing a buddy on their bike racks. The bike rack method is way harder than it looks – we've tried.

Commuters also embrace a very functional approach to fashion. By now I'm used to seeing moped riders wearing an extra coat (on backwards), but the first time one of these whizzed past it was fairly disorienting. When they're going at a good clip it's hard to tell which is facing the wrong way – the coat or the driver.

As for the kid balled up in winter gear on the back of Dad’s scooter… it could be that it's still cold here  or it might be a way to help keep the pollution out. But the most unusual aspect of her outfit isn't the multiple coats, it's the helmet – a flat-out rarity here.

When it’s especially frigid, drivers wrap themselves in so many scarves and hats that all you can see is a narrow slice of face. These wrappings also include the most popular facial accessory of all: the face mask.

Chengdu is also teeming with pedestrians. Some are walking with a purpose, others are dawdling through their grey mornings. 

Some are trying to hail a cab and a good many are downing a steamed bun and warm soymilk for breakfast.

Lots of people are waiting for buses and still others are waiting for the market to open so they can get first crack at the vegetables.

I’m usually out there too.

I’m the one thumbing through Chinese flashcards, trying to find a way to remember the tones of Chinese characters without losing my mind. This is a different kind of balance – one that makes riding a bike, even with multiple passengers, seem easy. 

quiet new year

I’d hate to leave you thinking that Chinese New Year is only the loud and rowdy kind. There are quiet moments too, the bits of calm in the fireworks storm. But you have to seek them out because they're tucked away behind closed doors and waiting for you to find them.

The best place to look is the temples where throngs of Chinese go to start the New Year. Families and individuals, couples and small groups, they're all moving through the spaces, lighting incense and candles, and following traditions that have drawn them in, away from the noise and commotion.

Even if you're unfamiliar with the intricacies of the beliefs (as we are) you should still visit a temple during the New Year holiday. There’s a beautiful flow to the believers and their movements, and a lush incense cloud hovers in the space.

The fragrant wisps that rise from incense are a special kind of smoke, and they gently insist that it's not just fireworks, but also this sort of serenity, that can be brought alive with the lick of a flame.