Love and Loss in SiChuan (Rated G)

See Chengdu Pictures

Part 2

C. and I made our travel plans over dinner. I had no idea what places to go, so I relied on her to tell me the main places of interest. She told me that we should go to a place called E Mei Shan because it is a very famous and beautiful mountain. She also said that we must go to a place called Le Shan, which has a giant Buddha carved into the side of the mountain. But, on our first day we decided to stay in Chengdu, to soak in the city’s atmosphere. I did not object to the idea of staying in Chengdu, it would give us the opportunity to ask Yo-Yo to show us around.

 “Hey, C., yesterday I met a girl that lives in Chengdu, not far from here, maybe she could show us around.”

 Without batting an eye, C. agreed with a definitive, “Sure.”

 In one motion, I had my phone out of my pocket and had the text message written and sent.
“Would you like to spend the day with my friend and me? Can you come to our hotel?”

 Rather quickly she returned a message. I checked with anticipation.
“Yes, I can come to the hotel. When?”

 I conferred with C. and sent her a message, “Meet us at the gate at about 9:30.”

 Her “Ok” was quick to come back to me, and I jumped into the shower nervous and giddy.

 The day was drizzly for the most part and pouring down buckets for the other parts. We arrived outside at around 9:50 and waited under an overhang as the humidity rose to a point that made me drip sweat from my nose, followed by an explosion of rain which cooled the temperature. Yo-Yo sauntered through the gate shortly after the downpour and we took her into the restaurant attached to the hotel for a small breakfast, C. and I ate free cause we were guests, and I bought Yo-Yo the ticket for the food.

 Over breakfast, C. and Yo-Yo discussed our options for sight seeing. Of course, I was the man so I was left out of the situation; I just heard Chinese flying past my ears and starred emptily into my cooling cup of tea.

The ladies decided that we would go to “Du Fu’s Cottage.” Du Fu was a famous Chinese traveler poet sort, and the place where he wrote his poems was in the city of ChengDu. “What luck!” I thought to myself, “I can see the replication of a former Chinese poets house.” As it was, we finished our breakfast and headed to the bus station to see Du Fu’s house. But, as we became ever more saturated, the less I felt inclined to squeeze onto one of the sardine-can buses that were passing.

I took action, Chinese girls dig men of action, and I grabbed us a taxi despite the complaints of cost. “I’ll pay, don’t worry about it!!!” 

We drove through the quiet streets of ChengDu, our pace was slow. I was seated in the front, but my heart was sitting next to Yo-Yo. I watched the streets as we sopped from puddle to puddle, passing the apartment buildings and working our way farther away from the city center. We finally came to a large complex which was built in traditional Chinese style, with a modern touch, and it was filled with restaurants. Directly down the street was Du Fu’s cottage. 

Once inside the park, I followed C. and Yo-Yo as they walked hand-in-hand through the bamboo maze to this-and-that “point of interest.” The only notable section of the park was the old pagoda that you could actually ascend. Once inside the tinderbox building, you could see many Chinese venders smoking to their hearts content while attempting to sell scrolls with traditional pictures and, you guessed it, Du Fu’s poems written ever so delicately by the printing press. 

We descended and continued our wondering. We stopped numerous times at this and that picture spot so that C. could have her picture taken by everything. After about an hour of this, we all decided to go and have some lunch before heading back into the city. We wandered across the street and into a small restaurant. The humidity was rising again, my hair began to grow very moist and sweat trickled down my neck. We took a seat and I left the ordering up to the girls. As they were discussing the potential meal, they were giggling and pointing at the menu. 

“What are you laughing at?” I asked, locking my eyes with Yo-Yo. 

“Do you like eat frog?” Yo-Yo responded, slightly shying away from my glance. 

This was not the response I was expecting, “Never tried, but we can try now.” I shot back. I did not want her to think that I was not open to try new things, I was here to enjoy and learn, I hoped she could be my teacher.

 C. piped in, sensing that I was going to focus on Yo-Yo. “Do you want to drink beer?”

 “Okay!” I replied and C. ordered it straight away. She seemed to be growing a bit jealous of my passion towards Yo-Yo. In the park, she had quickly grabbed her hand and they rushed off together. It is good that C. can have some other girl to enjoy time with, maybe they have more in common that C. and I do.

 The waitress brought the beer to the table as I shared another look with Yo-Yo and grabbed the freshly open bottle of, WARM BEER! “Oh no, this beer is warm.” Yo-Yo looked at me slightly confused and C. started to giggle a little. It was then I learned that the Chinese do not make a big deal out of warm beer. C. understood the American perspective on beer temperature, but Yo-Yo was now experiencing it for the first time, not to mention the waitress. At this clash of cultures, it was I who lost because there is no instant-freeze for cooling beer. Luckily, I was able to enjoy the hot red tea which made the beer seem cooler.

 Shortly after the boiled beer incident, the courses arrived; a bowl of spicy tofu, a steaming soup, a massive bowl of rice and the diced frog. All of it was delicious, albeit the small bits of frog meat attached to bones were rather annoying. It was much too hard to get to the meat on those bones. The massive bowl of rice was fantastic; it was the size of a Chinese soup bowl with a huge serving spoon alone with it; a person could refill the small rice bowls 15 times before cleaning that big bowl.

 Half way through the meal, the humidity began to rise even higher and sweat was running down my face and straight into my warm beer. Eventually the clouds burst and rain poured for 15 minutes and then stopped. The humidity had calmed and my warm beer was now salty.

 It is a good thing that we ate all that rice, for the girls had decided to go for an afternoon of shopping on the walking street, so I had to go there too. We arrived at the walking street in the early afternoon. The early showers had lifted and the sun came out. This street was filled with shops and boutiques for buying cute outfits, shoes, name brand cloths and lots of bootlegged items as well.

 After the third dress shop, which are “famous for their beautiful dresses!” according to C., I decided to go my own way and let the girls play around and I would just explore. The walking street did not have much to offer a man without a big budget, but I examined it anyway. The highlight of course, was when I came to the store named, “Backstreet Boys.” I had to take a picture for the sheer idiocy of it.

 I must have been gone for 45 minutes, when my phone buzzed a message. It was Yo-Yo, “Where are you? Find another girl?”

 Now, finding girls as a foreigner in ChengDu would be very easy, just wait for the one to look too long and go up to her, but I was not on the chase at that time. She had just showed me that she was interested in me, and I liked it.