the sichuan situation

Jintang, Chengdu, Sichuan Province (02/09/2013)

Location: A 28 hour train ride from Beijing to the very West of China.

Population: 12.5 million.

Famed For: Being the home of China's Pandas and the gateway to Tibet.

 

 

For twenty eight hours, China rolls past the train windows in a myriad of forms and colours. Leaving behind Beijing and the light rain that has begun to fall, the train speeds through the endless suburbs of towering apartment blocks, passing by shabby restaurants, pebble-dashed schools and lines of washing. The sky changes, becoming clear and sunny, then darker, clouds gathering at the corners like school children waiting for a fight. The landscape morphs into watered fields of rice and old men bent in half, picking the tender shoots. Tall bamboo sways in the wind and the mist begins to roll in as the ground starts to rise and fall becoming lush, green and mountainous, dotted here and there with ramshackle farm buildings and shabbily dressed locals, skin sun darkened and wrinkled.

 

Stepping off the train at Chengdu train station, the air wraps round us in greeting, hot and wet as though we've walked into the bathroom after someone else has showered. Sweat slicks our skin, shines our hair and presses our clothes close against our spines. Walking even short distances leaves the napes of our necks damp, faces flushed. The sky is missing, as though someone has reached up and painted it out in big, blank strokes of dirty white smog. Unlike cloud it has no texture, no shape, nothing to define the edges of it. It simply hangs, featureless and heavy over the city.

We are, however, an hour out of the city by car and as my flatmate G and I drive along the motorway in a taxi organised by our contact, Beata, the sky begins to reappear in patches of blue. We are living on campus at our placement at the Arts and Sciences College of Sichuan Normal University, and that turns out to be another pleasant surprise because the university is really rather impressive.

A large arched gateway manned by uniformed guards serves as the entrance. Beyond that is a tree lined avenue with a large bubbling fountain and rising behind it is the grand entrance building, made of light, skin coloured stone. A small lake with the glint of orange fish lies in the middle of the campus and everywhere is green and verdant and lovely. A black butterfly the size of a human hand flits over my head.

Our apartment is habitable enough, needing only a touch of TLC and some light cleaning. We are on the sixth floor though and there is no lift. No internet. No drinkable water. No air conditioning. No gas for our stove. We have only one key between us. Also, a colony of wasp-like insects inhabit the crack between the tiles and the window in our bathroom. Whilst they seem docile enough it does add a Fear Factor style element every time we need to use the shower or toilet.

I have decided I can never visit Australia.

Our neighbours, on the other-hand are lovely. On the floor below is Gregory, an American whose two great loves are coffee and guns. He's been here so long he knows all the tricks and tips and most importantly fixes our TV so that we have HBO movies, rather than just the ironically named Chinese state news channel - CCTV News - in English. He gives us hot chocolate and oatmeal cookies and speaks of a mythical shop called Metro, which stocks foreign foods including real cheese and Heinz baked beans. As proof of this he shows us his kitchen cupboards, containing an altar to the god of western foodstuffs- Coffee, Frosties, Pasta, Quaker Oats and Snickers.

 

Mark, who’s Dutch, smokes and who is generally tall and cool lives on the second floor with his Chinese girlfriend Elaine, (also a teacher and very excited about hotpot and teaching us to cook authentic Chinese food). After trying the canteen food, I too am very excited.

 

Finally there’s Joshua, a laid-back American, with dreadlocks, tattoos and his own rock band. He’s also the leader of our department.

 

They encourage us to tell Beata about the things that need fixing in our flat, especially the wasps. So we do.

 

Beata smiles blankly at us as if we are stupid for not realising that wasps are a design feature of every Chinese home. We explain we want them gone. She laughs at us.

 

'Aah, disgusting!' she giggles.

 

Friday morning there is a knock on the door. Outside is a tiny Chinese man who smiles, points at the paper in his hand, (which is all in mandarin) and then walks past me and into our bathroom. He flushes our toilet, grins and gives me a thumbs up. Then he leaves. The whole experience takes no more than a minute.

 

I am still not sure what has happened. I am, however, reassured that our toilet now has the approval of a stranger.

 

Beata comes to see us the next day. 'Is your toilet working now?'

 

'The toilet was always working,' I explain. 'It's the wasps that are the problem. Wasps.' I flap my arms and make the buzzing noise.

 

'Ah!' Beata nods. 'Wasps. I will sort this out for you.'

 

A week later the wasps are still here. On the upside, a man is now installing air-conditioning in my room.

 

I may have to work on my mime.