14. Calls in the night

After a week of planning and playing video games in Five-foots apartment, we set off on another trip, this time to Sichuan, a province in the centre of the country.

Five-foot and I walked through the departure gate at Beijing Airport an hour after the original boarding time and were loaded onto the bus from the terminal to the plane. Squashed in like rush-hour commuter trains, people struggled for space for themselves and their twelve items of carry-on luggage. At the steps to the plane, the crowd formed the usual Chinese line in the shape of a mushroom, pushing their way up to the door.

We were flying Sichuan Airlines, the cheapest tickets available, saving us a day of train travel. Within a few minutes of sitting down, the plane began taxiing to the runway over a bumpy tarmac, like we were hitting turbulence before taking off.

The flight was bumpier than the taxiing and the lady sitting beside me dropped a cup of hot coffee on us both. She had placed the drink on her tray and didn’t bother holding it while the plane was rocking from side to side. When the cup eventually tipped, the coffee went all over the two of us. During my flights to China, I had a baby first kick a drink onto me and then literally spit his dummy at me. Later, I assaulted myself with a cup of orange juice, which wasn’t easy to forget due to wearing beige cargo shorts.

The plane landed at the airport at Chengdu, and I was surprised at how very modern the city was. The airport terminal and the roads and highways into the central city were very new. Green grass and trees lined the roads until KTV outlets and billboards lit the night. Traffic circled around the city’s central square, with Mao again represented in stone standing as a centrepiece, semi-waving, semi-hailing. We were taken to a hotel nearby, and Five-foot soon had us a room.

I was quite disappointed by how much of a Las Vegas-like sight the city was in what I expected to be a remote, isolated place in the middle of the country. Chengdu is the last stop before Tibet and I expected something a little more rural. Each city I had visited had been sprawling high-rise buildings with shopping and restaurants along each street, not the quaint village-life I thought would be more prevalent.

It was late, but before bed we went for a walk around the city, looking at a couple of night markets and not much else in the concrete jungle we were in. Men began approaching us to enquire our business in the city and ask if we’d like to do business with them.

“Ni yao xiaojie?” a man riding a bike asked me, enquiring as to whether I wanted female company for the night.

“Bu yao,” I said.

“You want girl?” asked another, offering us his card.

“No,” Five-foot said.

“You want girl, you call me,” he said. “I’m your man.”

Five-foot took his card but threw it away when we walked down the road. These offers continued and we got sick of them so went back to our room for sleepy time. Once we were ready for bed the phone rang.

Five-foot answered and replied in the negative.

“What was that about?” I asked as he hung up.

“You didn’t want a massage, did you?” he asked with a smirk.

“Um, no.”

“Well, they’re available here.”

The hotel provided a complementary breakfast, which, the next morning, I chose to partake in while Five-foot slept-in. The restaurant on the ground floor wasn’t busy but there were enough people there for me to notice the room become silent as I entered. Ignoring them I went to the buffet, got myself one of everything because I didn’t know what any of it would taste like and sat at a large dining table by myself. The long bean and potato dish was as spicy as anything I had eaten in China, although the doughy buns were easily consumable. I couldn’t work out how I was going to eat the weird looking soup as the only utensils I could find were chopsticks. It was so spicy my nose was running just from sniffing the bowl. I left much of the food uneaten and ran to the shop for a bottle of water.

A small market operated in a quiet street surrounded by downed power cables from the poles overhead near the hotel. Five-foot and I braved the less-travelled path, my eyes following my footsteps while I avoided any possible live electrical current. The people in the street directed their attention at me as we headed to another large road. We walked past large shopping malls and high-rise buildings and arrived in the square in the city centre at midday. The large statue of Mao Zedong overlooks the vehicles and pedestrians moving around him in the centre of a giant round-a-bout. He was standing in front of what probably had been a grandiose building but was now in a dilapidated state with broken windows and crumbling walls.

The numerous food stalls distributing hot pot meals to people on the roadside emitted such spiciness just being near them made my eyes water. There were many options for food around but we held off from the spicier choices due to the tang of my breakfast still resting uncomfortably on my tongue.

We continued walking, passing many construction sights suffering from work either being abandoned or suspended. The skeletal constructions reached into the sky as birds flew from floor to floor.

We strolled around the river to the southeast of the city centre, and found the bus station we would be using the following day. Nearby, we indulged at a western-food restaurant, as I’d been scared off the local food. They dished up half-assed burgers on sandwich bread accompanied by warm coke.

Despite the brown water and ships in the distance, the river and trees reminded me of the Avon River cutting through Christchurch city surrounded by restaurants, gardens and old buildings. I laughed at the thought, as I have never been able to afford to eat at a restaurant by the Avon River. I had to travel to central China to have an experience similar to that.

The inner-city traffic and road conditions were mad, as drivers fought the way to get around Mao. Crossing the road was the usual fun experience and hopping out of the way of cars driving on the footpath was becoming natural to me. I had lost my trepidation for the sound of horns, although the odd one or two did startle me from time to time.

That evening, at a restaurant next door to the hotel we ate a meal called “Noodles over the bridge”, a hot pot meal based on the legend of a man who was working late, so his wife had to deliver his dinner. As it would always arrive cold she devised a way to keep the food hot during transport that included crossing a bridge. She’d found that using certain oils in the soup kept the noodles at temperature and a new cooking sensation was invented. Five-foot explained this in much more detail than I could remember.

There was a spicy and non-spicy version available and after experiencing what the term “spicy” means in Chengdu, both Five-foot and I wimped out and went for the non-spicy. Certainly, people in Sichuan can handle their spicy foods. With a bowl of soup boiling, we took raw meats and vegetables from a platter and threw it into the soup to cook. A few minutes later, we scooped it out and dug in. This is a great way to eat.

Before returning to the hotel room I stopped at a market over the road to buy some bananas from a vendor. I pointed at the bunch I wanted and he started up the bargaining. As a haggling beginner, I was becoming, if not savvy definitely less petrified.

“Shi,” he said to me, meaning Y10.

“Uh-uh, si,” I replied, offering Y4 to his dismay.

“Jiu,” he said, going down to Y9.

“No, wu,” I said, meaning Y5. This was as high as I was prepared to go, as this was how much I had seen Jan pay on our last trip.

“Ba,” he said, Y8 which I shook my head at.

“Wu kuai,” I said, reaffirming Y5 was the offer. He then stopped at Y8, and wouldn’t go lower, so I began to walk away. He instantly went to Y6, grabbing my arm to stop me. I said Y5 again and he let go of my arm. I took another step away and he called out Y5.

I paid and he ripped off the bananas from a larger bunch. I had just bought four more bananas than I had wanted. Maybe I had just bargained my way into the history books, actually winning in the exchange for a change.

While trying to convince Five-foot of this when I got to our room, a dubious frown showing his disbelief, the phone rang. He answered and replied in the negative again and hung up.

“Do we want a massage?” he asked me, as he had the night before.

The next morning, we were walking along the riverbank in remarkable peace and tranquillity on the way to the bus station, when we came across a couple of cops kicking and slapping two young men. There was a police car parked beside them, rear doors opened and it seemed the aim was to kick them into the back seats. Whether they were thieves or jaywalkers, we didn’t know but the cops didn’t care that they were doing this in front of a growing, interested crowd.

The cops looked up and stopped, mid-kick, to stare at me. It was second nature for many Chinese to be surprised by my presence, and for the cops it was no different. They looked at me looking at them standing over these two kids and then something clicked in their heads. They went straight back to kicking and slapping the boys into the car, and Five-foot and I continued towards the bus station without speaking.