Realocation: Chengdu

“You have chicken nuggets?” the check-in-counter lady asked.

“What?!” I said, wondering what brought up this sudden craving. Maybe she is expecting?

“You have chicken nuggets?” she asked again, a little annoyed this time.

“Yes, one nugget to chicken”, I said when I finally understood what she meant, pointing to my luggage, which I wanted to check-in.

That concluded my time in Chengdu, China, a mid-size city of 14 million people.

It started with a flight from Beijing to Chengdu, in which I was the only non-Chinese passenger and also, coincidently, the tallest person there, by far. As we walked out of the plane, everyone pulled out their cigarettes, and lit them up. Everyone smokes in Chengdu, everywhere. It was weird seeing people smoking at their breakfast table in the hotel, and it was a very fancy 5 stars hotel. There’s also a slight smell of cigarettes everywhere you go.

The second thing I noticed was that Chinese speak really loud on their cell phones, and they always sound angry. I mentioned that to one of my local companions when someone was talking on the phone near us and he said it’s just their dialect. A second after he “well, actually, he is a little angry.

The third thing that struck me was how strange Chinese Communism is. My hotel was largely occupied by an Audi convention – hardly a ‘people’s’ car. Also, the biggest mall in the world, I’m told, with an in-door water park, full the Gap, H&M, and other western brands, was located 15 minutes walk from my hotel. Pictures don’t do it justice, it is absolutely massive.

Ok, I said, there are rich people in China, but that doesn’t mean the poor don’t get benefits, like free education or free healthcare. My Chinese friends laughed when I asked. Nope, none of that. What they do get is an awesome firewall –the great firewall of China, that prevents locals from using almost any global internet service (all except Yahoo. There’s a punch there somewhere, I know). The result is that there’s a Chinese version of almost every service out there – the Chinese Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Amazon, and in many cases, it’s better than the western one. But as a foreigner, you need to be a world-class hacker just to get access to Facebook. Luckily, I have friends.

Chinese use an English qwerty keyboard to text in Chinese. Mandarin doesn’t have letters (or spaces for that matter), and to write in Mandarin you need to draw the words, line by line, which takes lot of time. So instead, they use English letters to pronounce the words phonetically and the keyboard autosuggest the words. This works for millennials, but their parents can’t learn that, so they don’t text. Actually, maybe that doesn’t mean much , because neither do my parents, Shen-lin and Mao Tze-Tong.

A week before I came the Chinese government changed the 35 years one-child law and it now permits having 2 children. The penalty for having a second child before was 200,000 RNB, or Yuen, which is something like $100K if it was in the US (well, maybe not exactly, but it’s a lot of money in Chinese terms). That was enforced in cities more than in villages, and the result of 35 years is not only that parents didn’t have 2 children, but also that children didn’t have uncles and aunts or cousins and nieces. All they have is their parents and grand parents. Crazy.

I also felt they look at foreigners with a mix of awe and contempt. When I arrived to Chengdu there was supposed to be a driver waiting for me but die to some miscommunication, no one was there, so I took a taxi to the hotel. People in my office were amazed I did that – they couldn’t believe I could accomplish such a difficult task. Everywhere I went I had someone coming with me, translating, negotiating and making sure everything was ok. It’s a mix of wanting to make sure I’m having a good time and a profound belief that I’m useless.

My hotel had a winter celebration one night – there was free food, drinks, an over-the-top magician/dancer (OMG, he’s going to split her in two! How does he do that?! Seriously, how do they do that?) , a male pole dancer (not what you think, unless you it’s an Olympic gymnastics athlete doing all kinds of exercises around a pole, in full clothes. Sure, that’s what you were thinking, of course) and a speech by the hotel general manager. The exec gave the speech in English, but it was clear the speech was originally written in Chinese. Next to him stood a very lovely lady that translated his speech to Mandarin, which was actually the original speech, so in fact, the exec was translating the translator. And then the universe collapsed into itself.

The weather was smoggy, all the time. They told me they the saw the sun for one week during the summer this year. I’m exaggerating, of course, it was 10 days. It’s half natural climate and half pollution, but they prefer is that way. The Chinese notion of beauty is the paler the prettier, and when it’s sunny, they need to apply layers and layers of sunscreen, so they actually prefer the smog. I found it depressing. It was like this the whole time:

The food was great. Even the pig brain. Actually, the pig brain wasn’t that great, it tastes like tofu that was once inside a pig’s head. Pig brain on toast:

They eat a lot, btw. Each meal I had had like 8 courses. I thought this was just when you go out, but actually on family dinners they also have like 8 different dishes, and if there should be at least 30% leftovers, otherwise it means not enough food was prepared. Jewish mothers and guilt trips are everywhere, even in China.

Some hardcore stats I may or may not have made up:

· After lunch 40% of the people in the office take a nap on their desk