Spicy Food & Spicier Women

---

Chengdu is much more than a place to sit and wait for communist red tape to be cut (more on that later...). While the city is unimpressive in sights and grandeur - minus the obligatory stop to the Sexual Harassment Panda Breeding Center - it more than makes up for it in local flavor, random hilarity and being a microcosm of modern China. With roughly 1.4 gajillion people (in a city that strangely, never feels crowded by the way) it's fast becoming one of the "it" cities in China. Sichuan is renowned throughout the world (and when I say "world", I of course mean China, because to the Chinese, that IS the world) for it's hot food and even hotter women and Chengdu lives up to the hype for both. Natalie, Scott and I literally seem to be the only "laowai" in the city and the stares are overwhelming in a city where they've never laid eyes on a white person before. But everyone is so eager to practice the one word of English they know - "Ha-llo" - that wherever you go, you're an absolute rockstar. Spending July 4th in an expat bar actually hurt my self-esteem that I wasn't the most fascinating person in the place.

Steve-o, so far, is 2 for 2 on introducing me to his friends scattered around China. His buddy Goodman lives the kind of debaucherous, rockstar lifestyle that comes from speaking perfect Chinese - a feat as strange to the Chinese, considering he's a white kid from Illinois, as a dog walking up to you and reciting Shakespeare - money to burn and a certain, "je ne give a fuck pas" that let's him run this country. He was also able to give me an insight into the way the Chinese interact, do business and all the other little things you don't hear when reading about how "W" wants them to let the Yuan appreciate. Suddenly, that middle-aged Chinese man and my "new best friend" on the train made perfect sense. Chinese language is so f'ing complicated that I nearly gave up learning upon arrival in Chengdu, since the Sichuan dialect twists seemingly every word and every tone making my modest vocabulary hardly recognizable. T.I.C. But the extra time in Chengdu gave me the opportunity to take the World's Most Random Bus Ride (I think it won that distinction at the Chinese ESPY's last year) to Qingcheng Shan - the birthplace of Taoism - and again, since I'm SO DAMN POPULAR here, I got a free guided tour by a Chinese guy, who, again, just wanted to practice his English. Man! I love this country!

---