Bizzaro Day

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my oddest day in China thus far began early in the morning with a trip to the bank to get cash to pay my hotel bill. So I already mentioned there are crossing guards at all the major intersections with orange vests and unecessary whistles. Anyways, I get lucky enough to come across one lady who takes her job way to seriously. I'm sitting at the crosswalk waiting and then i hear the damn annoying "whirrrrrrrreeeeeee". I look up and she's walking toward me waving her big red flag. What? I'm not going anywhere, she must be whistling at someone behind me. She keeps blowing and blowing, walking closer and closer. I look down to see that, and I'm not kidding, my toe was on the white crosswalk line. You've gotta be joking, she can't be whistling at me for that. Even if she is blowing at me, out of principle I'm not moving my big toe 2 inches to appease this crosswalk nazi. Then she freaking swings her flag and hits me! Not hard mind you, but what the f? This is now a battle of will and had the light not changed I was prepared to sit there all damn day until she got blue in the face. What lady? You didn't see the guy on the bike with 200 pounds of green onions strapped to his fender who just peddalled into oncoming traffic? Let's keep an eye on the bigger picture, ay?This little piggy isn't going to cause any fatal collisions and I accept full responsibility if some car decides to swerve and exactly trace all of the white lines on the side of the road.

So I get to the bank, only to be lucky enough to get stuck behind an entire reunion tour group for Sigma Chi who were all cashing in 20 dollar travellers checks and must have had signatures 5 inches long cause I was stuck there freaking forever. Man, Sigma Chi is coming to China for reunion get-togethers? What the f? I'm pretty sure the Pi Kappa Alpha reunion will likely involve a Cracker Barrell and a BYOB "gentleman's club" somewhere off of I-95. Let's at least keep it north of the Mason Dixon line, eh?

When I finally do get to cash my checks, I'm stuck with a fatty gangster wad about an inch thick. Picture a thousand dollars in 10 dollar bills. I had to fold and cram them in my back pocket so it was like I crapped a brick in my drawers. Then I'm all nervous carrying around that much cash so I start walking briskly out of the bank only to be harassed by the unauthorized money exchangers who I guess aren't thinking too much about the revaluation of the Yuan. This one lady is hella persistant even though I gave her the polite head shake and then ingnored her existence. Anways, I have my headphones on and once i get past the hoard of money exchangers I start walking up the sidewalk when all of a sudden someone grabs my left arm. Out of reflex, I cock my right arm and spin around only too see that I almost took a swing at the now frightened, 50 year old money exchange lady. Sheesh you gotta watch grabbing people lady. How do you translate "you best check yourself before you wreck yourself" into chinese?

July must be tourist month here in Chengdu, cause in the past week I have seen more western tourists than the entire 7 weeks prior. This of course has made for some interesting observations since I am an undercover western tourists of sorts. I think most people will inevitably lose weight on a vacation here. If my conversion calculations are correct I'll be coming home 15 pounds lighter. That being said, I'm sitting in a western restaurant when I overhear a table of chicks saying how they have all managed to gain weight while being here and they can't seem to understand why. Now this wouldn't seem that unusual except for the fact that they had just ordered a brownie sundae with "extra chocolate sauce". You just can't make stuff up like this. Did I miss a page in the Lonely Planet Guide? Have the Chinese found a way to include calorie conversions on the metric scale? Is an oreo in China different than an oreo in the US? It's times like this that I wish I could have Bah-book the sensitive truthteller on speedial so I could just hit dial and hand over the phone.

um, excuse me but you have a phone call...

Yes this is Bah-book, what is in front of you right now?

uhhh..a chocolate sundae with brownies

Yes, this is what I am saying then. You...you are fat.

click.

So then I'm walking home, and despite my lucky 7 weeks of avoiding a collision from the millions of bikes swerving around today I finally got plunked in the right butt as I duped right and went left as the scooter facing me did the exact opposite. I took this as a sign that I should just jump in a cab. So I get in and point to the handy map where I need to go. The cabdriver had to have known that I didn't speak chinese, if anything for the 2 times that I actually told him so. Nonetheless we had probably 20 minutes of Chinese conversation. By 'conversation' I mean he would talk then I would either nod, grunt or offer an awkward silence in response. For all I know the conversation is playing out like...

"man, the boss has me working some crazy hours"

me: tell me about it

"and my wife just won't get off my back

me: I hear that

"and to top it off my kid won' t listen to me"

me: I feel you

It will probably go down as the longest, deepest conversation I have ever had or ever will have in Chinese and I have no idea what we were talking about.


beware, what follows is your typical travellers reflection on a journey coming to an end. As there are already enough preachers and lectures out there, it's more for my own sake than for addressing others. At the risk of sounding sappy and introspective here goes...

China has come a long way in bettering the lives of a substantial portion of it's huge population, but it still has a long way to go. It's something when you meet people who's aspiration is to be just poor rather than in extreme poverty. I seem to recall reserving the word "peasant" for use in grade school bookreports, yet that is truly how a portion of the population here lives. The hospital I was at is the main hospital for most of Western China, meaning that i got to see a lot of patients from rural areas. That is, the ones that had enough money to actually get to Chengdu. Even for those fortunate enough to get to the hospital, the 5 dollar a day bed fee is often prohibitive enough that they go home to die. From a chronic disease perspective, try to imagine how much you would be willing to pay to cure yourself of cancer. For more than one leukemia patient here, an entire course of chemotherapy, with a favorable prognosis if administered, was refused because $120 was too much. Then there is the black market for things like blood. I read a story of an orphan who's parents both died of AIDS after becoming infected selling their blood plasma. For those scraping by in the countryside, the construction boom in large cities is a tremendous draw. Just outside the campus wall there are dozens of workers who work from sun-up to past sundown and sleep head to toe in shacks they make in the bushes next to the site. No backhoes or jackhammers either. They work with pickaxes and carry loads of bricks strapped to their back. I was getting my ESPN fix on when I came across this cool article.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=bucher_ric&id=2110480

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