the conversation starter: 栀子

My teacher came to class carrying two bouquets, one for herself and another meant for me. Each was a small roughshod bouquet of white gardenias. They were jacketed in their own leaves and wrapped with grey plastic twine at the stems. The blossoms smelled of vanilla and rain and nighttime, and for an afternoon our classroom breathed that heady air.

When I left school I held the bouquet close so I could smell it as I walked. Only two of the blossoms were open: one wide and falling, the other fresh and strong. That night two more flowers unraveled from their buds, their petals at first twisted and spiraled, then later full and flat.

But before the flowers took up residence in their vase, Chengdu noticed me carrying them. I walked into a bakery for a loaf of anise bread and the women working there quickly noted their fragrance. Security guards nodded to the bouquet as I walked past. And the pair of parking lot attendants I see on my daily walk to and from school went out of their way to say something new.

In the a.m. they usually say, 上班了, “You’re going to work.” In the p.m. they say, 下班了, “You’re going home.” It’s the standard greeting and there’s not much more you can say in those brief moments. But on this day they switched it up and said something different. 

They said, “You have flowers.”

Yes, I responded, I have flowers. Then we all smiled and I kept walking.

And in the way that Chinese people believe greeting someone by stating the obvious is meant to make you feel closer, it seems for once it actually did. 

is that something you eat?

My teacher and I spent Thursday morning exploring a park that celebrates one of China’s greatest poets. Chengdu is very proud that a peaceful patch of bamboo and flowers once played host to Du Fu’s grass-thatched hut. His was a five-year stay – less than a blip in the face of 5,000 years of history – but facts and figures haven’t dimmed Chengdu’s passion for embracing this Tang dynasty superstar as their own.

The brevity of his residence is dismissed by a stone marker posted near the ruins. The inscription, which you read from right to left – because if I’ve learned anything over the past two years it’s that Chinese delights in making itself difficult – proposes that when mentioning Du Fu, one can overlook the place of his birth and the place of his death, but one cannot forget his thatched cottage in Chengdu. Not that they're biased or anything.

The park is a popular tourist site but it’s also a place where regular people go about their days. Groups of older men come together to “walk their birds.” Each lugs his own birdcages to the park, peels back the red fabric covers shielding the delicate inhabitants and hangs them in the trees for a spell while chatting with his buddies.

I crossed the lawn for a closer look into one of the cages and the bird inside was the same kind as those flying around the park. I couldn't tell if the outing was an invigorating out-of-doors experience for the creature or a crushing reminder of what life was like before being relocated to its current quarters.

Newspaper readers and knitters placed thermoses of tea off to the side and went about their efforts, while letter writers and musicians practiced their arts in the shade of tall and sleepy bamboo. Kids under the care of their grandparents fed crackers to fish so fleshy and active that they seemed on the cusp of making the evolutionary leap into the lives of legged beasts. 

In a newer park located just outside of Dufu’s we found small bands of men and women playing instruments and singing, while more organized choruses carrying sheet music cowed to the demands of musical directors who urged, 再来一次！One more time! 

There was also a bride doing her best to ignore the sticky threat of an ice cream wielding tag-along as she posed for wedding photos. Her steely calm is most likely grounded in the fact that this is not a dress she has purchased herself, but rather a rental provided as part of the photography package.

Dufu’s park is a nice place to be. The paths are cool and shady, and the doors are different shapes. There are lanterns in the eaves and ponds in the distance. A giant bell hangs at the top of a tower and from that height you can see the rest of the city in the grey scrubby distance.

But a morning like this begs the question, how do you keep a good day going?

With a leisurely lunch, of course.

My teacher invited me to try a favorite dish of hers at a favorite place. So we drove to the restaurant and joined two lone diners and a team of bored staff milling around the empty dining room. My teacher explained that most people come there for dinner and she also mentioned that the women next to us were from Shanghai. She could tell by the dialect they spoke. 

Then she asked if there was anything I wouldn’t eat. I said I would eat whatever she ordered except for offal. She said ok and ordered two dishes. They were not offal. They were pig ears and mudfish.

Pig ears and mudfish.

Were I not sitting down to a meal in China I would not have associated these two items with anything I'd purposefully put in my mouth and chew. But if you’re willing to go with the flow and not look back then this path is inevitable.

The "path" is a stream of moments that strike as strange to western eyes. And as they crash into your space you have a thousand opportunities to ask yourself why you think the way you do and why you see the world a certain way.

If you decide to grab hold of your notions and flee the scene no one will be surprised. You’re not from here and the people who are from here will be the first ones to suggest this as your excuse. 

But if you don’t accept that notion, and if you don’t want them to either, than you can belly up and dig in. So we washed our chopsticks in our tea – cleaning them with tea is better than not cleaning them at all – and dug in.

The ears came to the table first. They were room temperature slices that demanded very active chewing due to the disconcertingly crunchy layer of cartilage sandwiched in the middle. This is a perfect example of how the Chinese palette appreciates a food’s texture as much as its taste. No one minds having to work for the pleasure of a good dish and the work itself is part of that pleasure. 

Once you discover that after all of the chewing there's a real taste to what you're eating, and that it’s a salty smoky taste, you’re willing to keep up with the work of it. I'd also suggest you take advantage of the pile of chili pepper sitting next to the ears on the plate.

"Sitting next to the ears on the plate..." That's certainly the first time I've used those words in describing a meal. 

But as long as we're getting into descriptions, I'll say that pig ears taste about as close to bacon as something that's not bacon can get. And really, couldn't we just consider them as bacon from a different neighborhood of the pig?

The second dish was a fragrant vat of spices and oil that held a mess of small ugly fish. Their heads, which had been disengaged from their bodies, were lurking alongside the garlic and celery vines. The lack of heads is supposed to make the fish easier to eat although I doubt anyone mistakes this dish as something easy to consume.

Each slip of a fish holds a string of petite bones at its core. Eating the flesh without snagging a mouthful of tiny daggers is an art. Thankfully I received instruction from my teacher and learned that one is to start at the tail and gently use their lips to urge the flesh from the bones.

In this way you play to the direction of the spine and hopefully avoid taking in any more bones than is absolutely necessary. It’s careful work and the flesh is maddeningly fragile. But when you can steal away with a chunk of the complexly spiced fish it is absolutely worth it.

The eating was deliberate and slow-going and where on my teacher’s plate there was a calm stack of perfectly clean, silvery spines, mine held the site of a ham-fisted massacre. There was no doubt as to who was the beginner here. My "clean" bones lugged nearly as much meat as the amount I’d managed to extract and eat.

A large chunk of the refuse was due to a change I’d made mid-meal. It turns out that fish heads are easier to plunder than their bodies, so I started hunting for them instead. And if I hadn't already realized that this was something I’d never done before, my teacher took care to mention that she’d always thought westerners didn’t eat fish heads.

Later in the day Shi-wen found it necessary to first point out that dogs are the biggest fans of pig ears in the U.S., and second, that any fish drudging around in a Chinese river can’t possibly be all that good for you to eat. That’s fine, I said, but I’m still happy I put these things in my mouth. I’m also pretty pleased with myself for holding a set of chopsticks (and a tiny fish spine) with my right hand while taking a photo with my left.

And by the way, Shi-wen ate this stuff too.

My teacher is very considerate and before we’d even dug into our meal she’d had the waitresses separate out hearty portions for me to take home for Shi-wen to try. They were ladled into clear plastic bags, the standard way leftovers are packaged here.

That night I warmed the fish in the microwave and set the ears on a plate. Shi-wen and I sat down at the table and I tried to teach him how to avoid the mudfish bones. I recommended dipping the pig ears in the spice. 

He would flinch and I would try to convince.

Clearly something had shifted. 

Now I was the one selling pig ears and mudfish as perfectly normal to eat.

get thee to bangkok

Move anywhere new and I promise there will be hate, at least at the start. The feeling eventually passes but in the beginning it’s a gut reaction that’s hard to avoid. We have lived in four countries over the past six years and I have hated: the paper-thin walls of apartments in Washington, DC, the emptiness of Milan in August, and the soju-kimchi haze of late night subway rides in Seoul. I am currently busy hating the sidewalks in Chengdu – or more specifically, the use of Chengdu's sidewalks as toilets.

But we don’t live in Bangkok so I didn’t have to hate anything there. We wanted to lounge around in a place that wasn’t China and this city fit the bill. People sometimes use the word “international” to describe a city, meaning that it has everything you're looking for from the modern world, but I’m starting to think that what we really mean is that it has all of the things a westerner expects. International or not, this westerner couldn’t have been happier.

The meals we had were a confluence of freshness, complexity, and bright flavors, and the hotel breakfast was so sprawling and overwhelming that we were tempted to stay there to eat away the day rather than go outside. But the best part is that you can eat the food without worrying that someone used shoe leather to thicken your yogurt or dredged cooking oil from the sewers and added it to your noodles. And yes, those things actually happen in China.

Our hotel had a chocolate boutique that sold painted chocolates with decadent fillings, boxes of rainbow-colored macaroons, and cake by the slice. Outside there was a palm tree ringed pool with British retirees drinking watermelon juice, Italian families nibbling on French fries, and this American couple reading magazines (Shi-wen) and studying Chinese (me) in the shade.

Being free to enjoy what we were eating was a welcome detour from the underlying anxiety that accompanies every meal in China. So we ate and ate and ate. We downed volcanic oysters and prawn curries and durian sticky rice. Jack fruit and pomelo salad and wildflowers dredged through green curry. Bangkok made it easy.

And even with all the eating Shi-wen was still able to fit into the tux he’d been fitted for on our first day there. This was due in large part to the hotel’s gym, which overlooked the pool and had working machines. I was stunned – probably because the last hotel gym I'd visited was a small room nudged behind the swimming pool, where a 1980’s era treadmill, a few hand weights, and a stationary bike that was listing to one side were all collecting dust in the dark. What can I say... live somewhere long enough and you adjust your expectations.

In other news, we went shopping in Bangkok and they had shoes in my size.

Coming back to Chengdu was a little like falling out of bed and hitting the floor with your face. Getting off the plane was the cue to start the fight. The fight to get your bag, the fight to get a cab, the fight to find the food you think is safe enough to eat. But once you live here long enough you forget about the extra energy you have to expend and it’s just the way that life is lived. This is good and necessary, but step away from it for any length of time and coming back is a thud.

I stay flexible. I weave around the spitting and the squatting and the children with no pants. I never upbraid the drivers who come alarmingly close to running me down on the sidewalks. I follow the food scandals and adjust accordingly.

In this way I live the life that China gives me. I am thrilled to have an opportunity to know this place and to live its life, and I genuinely like it here. But I still love a grocery store selling food you don't hear about on the nightly news and I never thought I’d be so giddy about kids wearing full coverage pants.

They have these things in Bangkok. They also have the feeling that you may not be so alone after all – that there might be other people out there who have the same expectations as you do about what city life might entail.

It’s just that they live three hours away. In Bangkok.

harbin was my teacher

A snippet of what I learned in Harbin the week before last.

Winter stays for a while

Per the advice of my instructors I’d begrudgingly dragged a winter coat and a scarf, some gloves and a hat on this trip. The bulk of it felt out of place in balmy Chengdu but turns out that in Harbin this kind of gear is still really necessary. One morning’s dismal rain even turned into big fluffy snow. My teacher and I paused our discussion to look out the window, both saying how much we love snow. Just not necessarily in April.

Central heating is not year-round

The radiator in my classroom was as cold as the curb outside. But I know from my time in Chengdu (which has zero central heating) that China’s air conditioners, often mounted high on the wall, are also heaters. The problem with my classroom’s unit was that the plug was too short to reach the outlet below. So I buried myself in my coat and scarf and took breaks from intensive Chinese immersion to wish the distance between the cord and plug might spontaneously shrink. When I didn't eat lunch (due to an unrelated stomach issue) and I wore a coat and scarf all day I think my teachers got worried. The next morning I walked into a toasty classroom to discover that a magical item had arrived overnight – an extension cord.

There’s bad air quality and there’s BAD air quality

Sometimes when it’s sunny in Chengdu the air glows, but in Harbin the air actually gets in your eyes. One morning I walked the half-hour to school and then spent a full day trying to rub particulate matter out of my head. It must have been 10pm before my eyeballs felt smooth again.

Just because it looks like a nuclear reactor doesn’t mean it is one

A few years ago when Shi-wen and I first visited Harbin we caught a glimpse of a cooling tower and thought that China had plopped a nuclear plant in the middle of a major metropolitan city. Better yet, on this most recent visit the view from my hotel room featured two of these beauties. An instructor told me that they’re part of a coal-burning plant and laughed at the idea that something so dangerous as a nuclear reactor might be used in the center of a major Chinese city. To avoid possible notes of irony, we did not discuss the effects of placing a coal-burning plant in the center of a major Chinese city.

Harbin is close to Shenyang

I knew Shenyang was up north but I became more familiar with the nuances of Chinese geography when our plane landed there instead of Harbin. We were diverted to Shenyang because our destination was in the throes of a sandstorm and happily no was was insisting we land in zero visibility conditions. Instead we spent four hours in the Shenyang airport killing time, but not before I got to count cooling towers as we came in for a landing. I think I got to nine before we touched down.

Harbin kind of knows its Russians

In Chengdu I’m regularly asked if I’m from Russia. But in Harbin where they have a historically and physically close relationship with Russia, and have actual Russians living there, there wasn’t this kind of confusion. Although waiting in line for security at the airport, there was a group of Chinese guys who asked where I was from. Before I said anything I asked if they thought I looked Russian. The guy closest to me said, “I don’t know, you all look alike.”

You will never win against a tiger

The tiger preserve in the shadows of this big city is one of the more surreal places I’ve visited. It’s grey, dismal, and teeming with tigers and their feline relations. But in a vibrant twist, visitors can buy live animals to feed to the inhabitants. It goes something like this: your bus drives out to the big open plain and stops. A large SUV with bars covering the windows and tires rolls up. The SUV’s driver rolls down the window just long enough to quickly shove a chicken onto the roof. Before you can look away a tiger is standing on the roof with the chicken in its mouth. If you're of the mindset that in the event of a tiger chase all you'd have to do is run faster than the slowest member of your group and you'd be just fine, it might be time for a re-think. 

 

Telephone Chinese is the hardest

My first night in the hotel I called the front desk to request a wake up call for the next morning. Because I didn’t know how to say "wake-up call" our Chinese conversation went something like this:

Me:  Hello, can you please call me tomorrow at 6am to wake me up?

Front Desk:  You want to make a phone call?

Me:  No, I would like you to call me.

Front Desk:  Why do you want me to call you?

Me:  So that I wake up.

Front Desk:  To make a phone call from your room, first you dial …

Me:  I don’t want to make a phone call.

Front Desk:  What do you want?

Me:  I want you to call me.

Front Desk:  Why do you want me to call you?

We went around like this for several minutes before she finally asked if I wanted a “morning” call? Using English felt like cheating but I said yes, go ahead and give me a morning call. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised when the phone rang at 6 the next morning.


“No smoking” means “take off your shirt before smoking”  

Based on signage, I was staying on a no smoking floor. However, each night when I’d return to my room, or leave it to head out for a bit, I’d have to pass a stretch of hallway that was thick and hazy with smoke. Several rooms would be loud and hopping, their doors propped open and their insides stuffed with topless Chinese men. The guys were milling around, or lounging on the beds, all drinking and smoking and wearing the slippers we all got with our rooms. I couldn’t decide if I was staying at a bar or at the beach but I clearly needed to buy some cigarettes.

The hotel is not a Bed, Bath and Beyond

The checkout process where I stayed was fairly standard except that before the front desk would let you leave they sent someone to your room to take inventory. As you waited, and as all the people behind you waited, there was someone scurrying around your room counting the towels. Except I don't think the person was doing any scurrying because it took a good 7-10 minutes for them to call the front desk with their report. Then when the woman at the front desk finally got off the phone she dead-seriously informed me that a cup and a spoon were missing from my room. I thought she was kidding but then I actually had to say: I do not have your cup and I do not have your spoon. What should we do about this? In the end she let me leave but I heard that later she’d demanded a classmate of mine explain a missing face towel. Whoever's using this hotel to stock up on basic household items had better quit it. You're ruining it for the rest of us.

Mahjong is never the same

Playing mahjong in Chengdu is hard enough but then I had to go and learn how to play it in Harbin. No one told me the rules would be completely different. Except they were, and the only record that I have of these new rules is a set of notes in Chinese scrawled across a chalkboard. Nothing like taking something hard and making it harder.

It’s the music, not the words

We were heading to Harbin’s airport when the cabbie plugged in his MP3 player. After some fiddling with the player the car was suddenly full of Celine Dion belting out that swelling Titanic song. Then a song by Bob Marley. He told me these were his favorites. Several more played and he chewed his cantaloupe gum and the outskirts of Harbin kept going past in a big grey blur. I recognized all of the songs and he recognized them too, just in a different way: he’d already asked me if one of them was in English.

on relaxing

Last Sunday we spent part of the afternoon in the courtyard of a teahouse close to home. The sky was blue, the air was clear, and we had a couple of half-birthdays to celebrate. It was all verging on perfect until we had to go and botch the simplest of tasks: we dribbled tea down our fronts and I hurt a finger trying to open sunflower seeds. Turns out that the famously relaxed Chengdu lifestyle isn’t as easy to live as you might think.

It’s my yoga troubles all over again. Other people in my yoga class used the quiet time to meditate and reflect, but I used it to draft long form to-do lists in my head. Instead of finding an inner calm, I was trying not to forget all of the things I needed to do as soon as they let me leave. Unable to appreciate the quiet, I was a yoga failure.

In Chengdu the stakes are higher. This is our town, at least for a few years, and we'd like to be able to fit in. In fact, we'd like to fit in so well that we get to keep our teacups at the teahouse just like the regulars do. Their collection of mismatched randoms is stored in a cabinet, each with the name of its owner taped to the bottom of the cup. Getting to keep a teacup in this cabinet would be the ultimate badge of Chengdu success.

But for now this city seems to doubt our relaxation credentials. So it dribbled tea down our shirts to point out that we'd neglected to appreciate the leaves inside before lifting our cups. It knew we'd forgotten to bring snacks so it paraded a girl with oranges and cotton candy past just to make us jealous. And it inflicted a sunflower seed injury so I'd remember that cracking open the seeds is a nuanced art and not blunt warfare. 

But I think it’s ok if our relaxation skills need some work. Our neighbors have been at this for a while and we'll need time to catch up. But I do suspect that the city at large would appreciate us trying just a little harder to get the tea into our mouths and not on our shirts. This could be a good first step.

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.