So Long, China

We wanted to get away from the mayhem of New York, just for a little while on this trip, but somehow flashes of it continue to appear. Is it the harrowing traffic or the guy taking a dump on the street? (I've SEEN it under the Willliamsburg bridge). No, it's the rat-bastard who preys on naive marks like us who swipes your personal property the minute you turn your head. In the 24 cities we've covered in China, we've rented bikes in nearly all of them- the Sanford & Son class, rusty chain, springs piercing through the seat, stop with your heels quality-- which usually only runs us 10 yuan a day (about a buck fifty). You can leave them outside a restaurant with a sign that reads "Take Me" and no one would consider taking on the burden. But in Chengdu, we splurged and found a proper bike shop renting out high-grade models-- with working brakes, and actual gears. These are the bikes that someone would go out of their way to steal, and in our case, did, giving us a final kick-in-the-ass upon leaving China.

We took our cadillac bikes out for the day and roamed around the city to take in the daily buzz. Not such an impressive place. Just another big city without any distinguishing traits. They do have an internationally-renowned Panda Breeding/Research Laboratory an hour north of the city so we thought we'd check that out. The brochures and guide books reminded us that Pandas are private animals-- so we hoped we'd be lucky enough to just catch a glimpse of an ass or an arm or something. On the contrary, they were everywhere-- I think the place has like 25 giant pandas and they were all out-- might as well have been line-dancing.

So after taking picture after picture of Pandas, we finally got over it and went back to the city. It was around lunchtime and though we've been pretty good at avoiding Western food, we gave in and had sandwiches from Starbucks. We should have known patronizing Starbucks in and of itself, let alone in a foreign land, would have led to some bad karma. We step outside to a sorrowful scene straight out of Pee Wee's Big Adventure, with the bike-lock still dangling mockingly on-site. Though we were gutted, we went through the procedure of calling the cops and filing a report (complete waste of time- we would have gotten the same response had we notified the street sweeper). We spent 20 minutes giving a detailed account of the events to the policeman (he did speak english), but for all we know he was doodling naked boobies on his report sheet as he refuse to give us a copy. (what the hell were we going to do with it anyway). So in the end, we were out our bike deposit of $250 US!!! Which is the equivalent of 8 days expenses in China on our budget. I'm still pissed.

But we tried our best to get over it and tried to spend our last days in China effectively. (We head to Tibet, which is still formally part of China but I, at the risk of this message running past the Chinese government branch of Internet monitoring, say it's a different country). We took a day trip to Leshan which holds the largest stone-carved sitting Buddha in the World. 71 meters and yeah, I guess it's worth a look. But I can say we definitely left China without a bang.

---

---