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China: Chengdu - Waiting for Godot
Published: 2.11.2013
We both knew Chengdu quite well, so after a thorough sleep we went to a bamboo park at the university where I studied. Refreshed by a sweet watermelon we set ourselves another goal: the mosque to the west of Tiananmen Square.
I was slightly disappointing. The original wooden mosque was brand new. It was empty and it was of bare and austere appearance. While we were leaving a local Muslim woman stopped us. I do not know what would happen if said yes to her question: "Are you Americans?” She looked as prepared for combat. However, our answer made her happy and she started giving us a lecture. Sure, it would be extremely interesting talk, except that the lady was talking in the Sichuan language that we didn’t understand. So we used a moment when she was catching breath and little cowardly we fled.
The rest of the day we spent wandering around the city. Wow, they built new housing estates there! And a new subway line! Chengdu is same as other Chinese cities – it changes with incredible speed. Everything is growing so fast (needless to say, mostly at the expense of quality). They quickly destroy all old, and build the highest and the coolest new town asap!
It was pouring rain on the day we were leaving. Entirely wet we hid in one Internet café for a while. But it is not that easy with them in China. If you don’t own a Chinese national ID card they just won’t let you in. Only when you insist some owners take a pack of suspicious IDs and lend you one of them. Then you can just enjoy smoky environment among Chinese playing online.
We didn’t want to miss our train so we went to the train station in advance. We wanted to visit Chungking, which is also known as „Batman’s City “. We were curious about it and were looking forward to it. However, our excitement fade away when we saw estimated delay on boards that was slowly growing. Thirty minutes, one hour. Two hours. Three. Four and than we got enough of counting. Nobody could tell us if the train comes in an hour or five. Storm they said. Still, we got nowhere to go as the train station was in the middle of nowhere. People were buying up things in local stalls and many gave up. After ten hours it came. We didn’t mind that it was perhaps the dirtiest train we had ever seen. If we had known how Chunking would look like we would wait a little longer at the train station…
Text/photo: Hana Bašová
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