Still Waters Run Deep, But Shallow Waters Run Fast

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It's been a wonderful dozen days in Chengdu, and it's going to be a little sad to leave Wen Jun tomorrow and know we're not coming back. We have not yet left Sichuan province, but I already feel as though if I were to return to China, this would most definitely be the place I would want to be. I'm sure Xi'an and Beijing are wonderful, amazing places, but Sichuan, Chengdu especially, has been both eye-opening and incredibly enjoyable.
This afternoon, we visited a small community known as Ping Le Old Town, and I was more than a little shocked by how much its arrangement and the whole sense of the place felt familiar to me; the place didn't so much feel like home, but it was a lot like the town I'm from. Both places have an obvious divide in the middle of the town, a bridge in Ping Le and a stretch of highway in Katy; both places have a structured but crowded "old" section where most of the necessary commerce in the town happens and many of the citizens live, offset by a larger, sprawling "new" section full of larger, specialty shops and bigger homes; and each town is a bit out of the way, but serves as a "transition town" between two larger places with more going on, for Pin Le it's Sichuan and Tibet, and for Katy it's Houston and Austin. I enjoyed walking through the old town, having lunch there, and sitting down on the riverside for a little ma jiang and tea.
We've been here for only about two weeks and I honestly have the sincere urge to sit down for a game of ma jiang in much of my spare time, it's nice that we all picked up on the game fast enough that it's a kind of habit now. Having spent this much time in China is somewhere between no time and forever; I don't feel like I've seen everything yet, and I want to, but I also feel far from where I'm from because I miss creature comforts. Coming to Ping Le today reminded me of home and it was nice to feel comfortable in a place I've never been before, but it also made me think about how long I'd have to be in a place like China before I'd start to consider a place my home.

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