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This is a long email that a recent friend from the summer program sent. I enjoyed reading it enough to feel it was worth posting here. It's a bit long, so don't feel bad if you skip a few sections, but I feel it captures a lot of what's really great and interesting about China that I forget sometimes. Enjoy,

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Hi everyone - greetings from Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan
Province. Right now I am in an internet cafe that smells like smoke and is
filled with chinese guys playing video games. Lord knows how long they've
already been here or how long they'll stay. The stacks of red bull, nescafe
and instant noodles for sale at the front desk imply a very very long
time... Speaking of things long, this is going to be a novel because I still
havent gotten my lazy ass around to starting a blog, and want to have some
of this stuff written down electronically in case disaster strikes and I
lose my notebook. So if you have better things to do than read stream of
consciousness ramblings on China, yeeah you probably ought to go do them.
Otherwise enjoy, and don't say I didn't warn you :)

The summer term in Harbin ended last weekend - the final week of the
program our language pledge toppled and fell as we realized it was our last
opportunity to have real conversations with each other. Many late nights of
talking in ENGLISH gasp and general silliness ensued, which led to me being
pretty tired and a bit hung over the day of the Big Scram. Much like I was
the day I left Germany for China, hmm trend anyone?... Fortunately our train
didn't leave til evening so I slept through the night as we trained to
Beijing.

Most people were headed home to the US; I spent the day relaxing with them,
then took the night train to Shanghai, where I met up with a friend from the
Harbin program (she'd flown) for a few days. Shanghai is nuts but after two
months in Harbin - loud, dirty, gritty, occasionally-smells-like-piss yet
you love it anyway Harbin - the western comforts were, well, comforting.
Sit-down toilets, international restaurants (first night we went Middle
Eastern, I hadn't realized how much I miss hummus), people not gawking at
you because you're foreign. Shanghai is very modern, spots of old European
architecture lining boulevards along the river/in major financial areas, and
ramshackle, dilapidated old woodshingle two-story dwellings with laundry
hanging out the windows to dry fill in the spaces between and below
skyscrapers. Bells in the steeples of the older European buildings tolled
the hour - it was such a familiar, rich, friendly sound and I hadn't heard
it in a while, my ears were happy. Yet despite its quasi-European exterior
Shanghai is still very much Chinese. People on the street still coming up to
you with 'Hello lady hello! Buy my (fake designer) bag/watch/shoes!' They
got kind of annoying actually, and as they speak some english weren't
deterred with no thanks. To make them go away I thus took to naming German
menu items at them. A forceful exclamation of 'spargelcremesuppe!!' (cream
of asparagus soup) was particularly effective.

The next day we went to a wonderful art museum - ground floor had a photo
exhibit from Xinjiang Autonomous Region, the mountainous and deserty home to
disgruntled Muslims of Uigher extraction, northwesternmost area of China.
Upper floors had old traditional through cultural revolution through today's
art, I really enjoyed it. Otherwise bummeled the main drags, window shopped,
stopped in a coffee shop or two to escape the humidity, rode the subway, ate
delicious traditional Shanghai dumplings, went out to a club that was
ridiculously, gleefully uebertrendy (or as my friend said, 'typical
Shanghai'). Ha that was fun. My friend is gay and lived in Shanghai before,
has traveled all over the country, but at that club for the first timeshe
met out Chinese lesbians. Or rather they met us. We were dancing together
which I guess made them think we were gay (ok they were half right), so
before long there's this Chinese girl behind me taking decidedly unwarranted
liberties with my ass. I was like, hoookay this one's for you chica and
swung her to my friend. Buggered out, lost my friend for a while and got
thoroughly drunk at the open bar (50RMB, about $6, all you can drink) with
some Europeans and a Swiss-Chinese girl. Hooray for someone who understands
my drunken Germandarinfrenchlish. Afterwards found friend again; her lesbian
buddies had basically passed out on each other in a heap in one of the
club's side rooms. oh Asian alcohol tolerance... Still it was really
refreshing and encouraging to meet Chinese gays who were comfortable and
open about being gay, and had straight friends who were cool with it too.
Definately hadn't seen that in Harbin - most Chinese and the govt
think homosexuals are diseased/disturbed, hmm kind of like in the US. No
wonder people say Shanghai is China's best face to the world.

The last night we had dinner at a posh Shanghainese restaurant with my
friend's old host family. They were very welcoming and gracious - almost
overly hospitable, typical Chinesisch. Next day my friend flew home so I had
the day to myself to poke around a couple markets, walk along the Bund
(strip of treelined sidewalk running along the Yangtze opposite the famous
skyline view), finish reading Lolita, write postcards and buy provisions for
the 40 hour train ride to Chengdu. Fri morning up early, grabbed my stuff
and found myself on the train.

Until this weekend the longest I ever spent in transit was maybe 36 hours
getting from Tehran to Tufts in dear old Somerville, Mass. Thus it was odd
to realize that I would spend 40hrs in a train just to stay within the same
country. But taking a Chinese train is its own journey. In a way a
destination in and of itself. You have four options - hard seat, soft seat,
hard sleeper, soft sleeper. The seats are very cheap but for 40 hrs very
uncomfortable - crammed into hard (or not as hard, if you go soft seat)
bench-like rows of seats in groups of 4 or 6 around a table covered in
everyone's instant noodle packages, bags of fruit bought from streetside
vendors, tea thermoses, plastic-wrapped chicken feet (a chinese traveler's
staple) and other various snacks; everyone's luggage stuffed under seats,
precariousy hanging out of overhead racks, in heaps blocking the aisles; the
air increasingly stuffy and smelly. Apologies, but I'm not that hardcore. I
took the hard sleeper, giving me the top bunk in a small room with six beds,
three to a side on each wall. Luggage rack up top, giving me easy access to
my bag. A TV in each room would sporadically turn on to some kung fu movie
or obnoxiously shrill Chinese comedy routine (apparently the louder and
higher-pitched Chinese comedians screech at their costars, the funnier they
are. By this rubric our guys were freaking hilarious, but alas my Chinese
lacked the subtlety to appreciate it). The narrow hallway outside the
doorless doorways of each room lined with seats and small writing tables
along the window. I spent most of my time there reading, writing, listening
to music, talking to people with my newfound functional chinese, and
watching countryside from the window.

If you drive 1658km/1030miles across the US (the distance from
Shanghai-Chengdu) you'll spend hours watching empty countryside roll past,
with the occasional farmer's homestead or gas station breaking your view of
the land. Not so in China. The landscape never quite became landscape.
Though there were places with fewer buildings and roads it always remained a
'humanscape' of sorts - the flat river valleys and plains west of Shanghai
became tall hills and small mountains, steep cliffs rose up from polluted
brown rivers. Amahoro-mates if you thought I was flipping out over the dirty
water in Rwanda you should've seen me yesterday. Right, anyway. There were
always little towns, surrounded by tightly packed fields of cornrows
grown on even the smallest, most irregularly shaped scraps of land or
corners of hillside. If it could be cultivated, it was. And the
electrical/telephone wires never ceased. They covered the country in a
10m-high net. A few times we passed towns with huge industrial plants in
their center, where otherwise all around were just crops growing. Mmm
healthy. One stands out in my mind - Jiang You, massive power plant in the
middle, smoke and steam billowing out from the complex. For several miles
preceding and following Jiang You the sky was hazy grey, and I could look
straight at the sun without squinting. It glowed unnaturally, but
beautifully red through the smog. The oxen and cows grazing in the fields
below didn't seem to mind. Or notice they glowed in the dark and had extra
legs growing out their ears. Ok not really.

Talking with people on the train was a blast, though after a while tiring
(prolonged involved chinese still an effort for me). On several occasions
younger people approached me to practice English. As many Chinese have no
great love for America I often said I was German, when I got a good vibe
from a person I was American, or both. All the people I spoke with shared
certain traits: they were very curious about me, appraising my bag, pen,
jewelry, clothes, notebook, everything with their eyes; verbally shy
sometimes to the point of caution, and openly puzzled by the fact that I, a
woman, was traveling alone. Got hit on several times - let's just say I have
yet to meet a smooth Chinese guy. Told them I had a boyfriend when they
started getting weird. Yes, he's very handsome. No, he's not Chinese. Topic
over. At one point to stretch my legs I walked the whole length of the train
- which in the seat sections was not so much walking as climbing what with
all the luggage/people in the aisles - and think I may have been the only
foreigner on board. Sometimes heard people talk about me as I passed - have
firmly established that to Chinese I look Xinjiangese (province from the
photo exhibit, borders Kazakhstan). Heard a lot of 'ooh, is that a
xiaoshuminzu (ethnic minority)? Yes, she looks like a Xinjiangren. But her
clothes?...' Pretty funny sometimes. Reminded me of Iran, where they thought
I was Persian or Tajik. Thank you mama and papa for these ambiguously ethnic
genes.

A lot of people also felt obligated to offer me advice (this is very
Chinese). When asked where I was headed, I said, to Chengdu for a couple
days, then I'll go to the Tibetan border regions of Sichuan to hike a week
or two. To which they would say, best not go there. It's underdeveloped, and
the Xizangren (Tibetans) are not the greatest. You know what you should do!
Join a tour group in Chengdu and go see the giant panda zoo - if you buy the
right ticket you can even touch one! My cousin touched one once, he took a
picture! And they were visibly delighted to be able to offer this lone,
young, clearly lost foreigner some sound advice and spare her the misery
awaiting in the mountains. For which I would thank them graciously and say,
I look forward to the clean air of the mountains, being away from the city a
while, and away from tourists and crowds of people. But I'll certainly keep
that panda in mind.

Last anecdote. One of the first people I met on the train was an older man
named Mr Zhu. He was a retired businessman from Shanghai, in the room next
to mine, and upon hearing my accent (it's a doozy believe me) came out of
his compartment to talk to me. Where you from? Good vibe: I'm
American-German. Ah, very good. Germany is very good, and I went to America
once, to Xiyatu. Seattle, really? I grew up there! Thus started a very long
conversation about our families, traveling, Shanghai, Chinese isolationism
and xenophobia, the Cultural Revolution (he was in his 30s at that time and
was brutally harassed for having Western friends), getting old, being young,
the fabulousness of Chinese food. At one point he took my left hand and
examined it, pressing a finger or muscle and tracing the lines on my palm.
Held my pinky against my ring finger and said, you have many friends, and
they're good people. He said my life line is strong. Squinted at another and
said approvingly, you will get smarter and smarter (hmm. methinks I'll leave
it to you 'good people' to be the judge of that). He also said I'm going to
have one child. let's see how these predictions pan out. If I get hit by a
rickshaw tomorrow we'll know Zhu Xiansheng, though a wonderful person is no
fortune teller.

Finally, last night around 9:30, arrived in Chengdu. Upon putting on my pack
the women around me were insisting I shouldn't carry it, it was too big for
me and they would help me find a porter, which I politely but futilely (is
that a word?) declined. Mr Zhu just said in his gruff grandfatherly
approving way, 'ta de shenti hen hao' - her body is strong/good. As the most
senior member of the luggage commentators and thus the most respected, his
was the last word. Made me smile. Walked out with Zhu and said goodbye,
fought through the crowds to get a cab and went to the hotel he had
recommended to me (right on the river, big clean 4person rooms for
30RMB/night = about $3.75). Realized I was starving, dumped my stuff, found
a teeny noodle restaurant nearby and blissfully chowed down. The waiter
said, oh are you from Xinjiang? Heh.

The last week or so in Harbin I'd gotten restless, stressed - a permanent
tiredness, the feeling I've been on the road too much the past few
yrs, crept up on me whenever I thought of packing and leaving again. It's
true I've been traveling too much, and need to slow it down next year, and I
will (I hear half of you saying yeah right Jessie). For now though, am so
happy to be here, without any agenda or set plans, here and alone, free to
go out and meet people or stick to myself when I feel like it, just to be
here in this confusing exasperating but wonderful country. Bought a cold
bottle of beer on the way back to the hotel, walked under trees along the
river past young couples making out and vendors selling fruit, shirtless
older guys hanging out smoking and laughing loudly. And I thought to myself,
I love this. Life is fucking amazing. Hope you're the same :)

Jessie