A Tale of Three Cities - Chongqing Pt. 2
By Red Sox Steve
VagabondGuru.com
Chongqing
After a day and a half, I had seen quite a few of the sites in Chongqing, which were all in Yuzhong. As I stared at a city map, though, I knew I had only seen a small part of this massive metropolis. With an eye toward my trip to the dam, I knew I didn't have to leave Yuzhong to catch the boat. I wanted to see as much of this area as possible, so I hopped in a cable car that took me over the Yangtze River.
As the car started away, I had to do a double take. On both sides of the river, running up and down its shores, I saw a city more massive than I could have conceived (of course, I hadn't yet visited Shanghai...). Before I boarded, I thought I understood the scale and makeup of Chongqing - I compared Yuzhong to Manhattan; both have rivers running along either side which eventually converge. Taking my logic a step further, the outlying areas would be reminiscent of Jersey City, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, flatter with more space, fading away in the distance. I was dead wrong. Instead, I saw massive buildings rising up in all directions, a handful of bridges stretching from bank to bank of the bending rivers, and water-borne traffic off into the horizon. Highways ran in every direction through available gaps in skyscraper construction and a network of tunnels weaved through the mountainous urban terrain.
Chongqing is a frenetically busy place and, like many of the other cities I had visited, there were plans for expansion - Chongqing already has two train stations, but now there were plans to extend the subway and build additional universities and technical centers. Sometimes, when visiting a large city in the western world, one can compare the population to a small country. In this case, the massive municipality of Chongqing, with over 30 million people, is more like a medium-sized one.
Before leaving the city, there was one last thing I had to do. Up to this point, I had eaten excellent Chinese food in city after city. I learned what Chinese breakfast was all about in Changchun, regrettably missed the Peking Duck in Beijing (rookie mistake!), but I sampled some great food in Xi'an and Haerbin as well. The Lonely Planet couldn't stress this one dish enough - a fiery blend of meats and vegetables with a side of rice in case things get out of control. In Chinese it's written: 火鍋, which is pronounced ("huǒ guō"). The literal translation is "fire pot".
I'll never forget the first time I went into a hotpot restaurant - I was starving and wanted to give it a chance. I couldn't read any chinese, and I at least thought I knew how to pronounce a few simple words like chicken, beef, pork, vegetables and beer. The waitress handed me the menu, comprised entirely of Chinese characters; I couldn't read it, so I did my best to build an order on the few words I knew.
Weeks before, my teacher Ren, and her cousins from Changchun, taught me how to ask for spice. "la" is the word for spice. If you want something very spicy, you could simply say, "hen la"; a little spicy, "yi dian die la"; without spice, "bu la"; spice on the side in a small bowl, "yi dian die wan la". I wanted the oil filled wok to have a little fire to it and add spice as I wished, so I asked for "yi dian die la" and "yi dian die wan la". I tried to tell the waitress (pretty sure I was flubbing it) that no matter what she put in front of me, I would eat it. The next thing I knew, I had a 40 oz. bottle of Tsingtao an arm's length away, and a wok full of spicy red oil with mysterious contents was placed on the cooking range in the center of my table.
Then, she brought over plates of raw meat and raw vegetables, and I carefully dropped them in the hot oil. The meat was thinly sliced and the vegetables were chopped, so I knew they would cook quickly. I watched excitedly as the entire pot bubbled and the food soaked up the oil and spices. I dipped my chopsticks into the oil, and pulled up an oily, hot, reddened mass of meat and vegetables. I could smell the spices and saw some peppercorns stuck to my food, so I ate slowly, keeping one hand by my beer.
I started to get the hang of it, and my eating became more bold. The portions I grabbed became bigger, and with the increased intake of spice, I took more gulps of beer. I knew the combination wasn't the healthiest, mostly because I was coughing and I could feel my face turning red. The taste was excellent, but the after-effects were tough on my stomach. I couldn't get enough though - the fiery spice, the Chinese beer, and the exotic sensation of eating a regional dish over 1,000 years old, made this an experience I would want to have again and again.
Fortunately, the only climactic event was that I enjoyed everything I ate. From here, though, the best thing to do was hop on the subway and head back to my hostel. Sleeping off a meal like this close to a bathroom was the most advisable idea. Over the next 4 days, I would eat hotpot twice more - good for the taste buds, but rough on pretty much everything else.
One more thing I want to tell you about took place before I left.
I made my way to another hotpot restaurant (they are everywhere), but this time I had help ordering. The restaurant was less than half full, and, because westerners are so rare in Chongqing, I could feel the curious stares on me as I entered. I was in the middle of ordering (again, not having much luck), when - lo and behold! - another foreigner came over to my table and asked me if he could help translate my order to the waitress. I was grateful to have someone who could do a better job of ordering than I could, and invited Sebastien (a German) and his Chinese girlfriend, Sally, to sit down with me.
I appreciated the company, and Sebastien's helpful gesture, and from there we took the conversation straight to a global level. They both live and work in Chongqing. Sebastien works at one of the many Marriott Hotels dotted around the country, and has been here for a few years now. Sally, who speaks perfect english with a Chinese accent, works for Proctor and Gamble. Sebastien works in a "front of the house" capacity, dealing directly with incoming guests. By this time, I had seen the massive globally branded hotels (many, if not all, are somewhere in Manhattan), and had been around the hustle and bustle of the city enough to ask him a single question: "where do most of the guests come from?" His answer: China, Europe, India, South America, North America, Japan, Singapore, London, New York, Buenos Aires, Russia, and the Middle East. Basically, everywhere! He also told me that although Marriott has about 60 hotels dotted around China, there are plans to build about 60 more.
The conversation went on - I laughed when he told me his American boss informed him he had to brush up on his English if he wanted a promotion; as if his native German, good English and fairly good Chinese weren't enough already. Now, looking back, maybe they weren't.
I turned to Sally, who, although she was about 25, was aware of the "financial crisis in America", as she called it. Comparing that to what westerners call it ("the global financial crisis") tells you all you need to know about the economy in China. Sally, along with every student in China, has taken mandatory English classes in school. A small portion of the more than 100 million students in China have even taken extra English classes through private companies. Why? When she told me, the answer couldn't have been more simple: "you can get a better job if you speak English and Chinese."
She came off as articulate, confident, and aggressive and it surprised me how much she knew about America. She discussed the US Presidential Campaign of 2008, and we talked about the financial crisis and its impact on the United States and China. She told me a little about her job - part of her duties are to communicate with P&G headquarters back in Cincinnati about once a month because she oversees the distribution of P&G goods to local convenience store chains. The P&G business model is a metaphor for the economic relationship between America and China: P&G in America finances Chinese manufacturing of P&G goods for distribution to the growing Chinese consumer market, as well as to America; you can come to your own conclusion about the relative number of jobs created in Chongqing vs. Cincinnati.
I got lucky - not only was I able to have tasty hotpot again, I got to speak to a pair of people who, in a small way, represent the shifting sands of the global economy. Sebastien, a young foreigner, has begun his career in China, having almost no work experience in his home country. The company he works for has plans for massive expansion in the local market, and no shortage of opportunity for him in particular. He can't find this in Europe. Sally represents the most modern generation China has ever produced - an unmarried bi-lingual, college-educated woman who works for a major multi-national corporation in one of China's largest cities. When you hear folks talking about the "global competition for talent", Sebastian and Sally are some of the participants in the game.
I don't travel to the other side of the earth to see the proverbial "largest ball of twine." I don't spend twelve hours in an airplane seat or 36 hours sharing a train compartment with 5 other people to be able to say tell my friends I was in this place or that one, and I don't need to go to every country around the globe. I went to China to learn as much as possible about what's going on there, and how China and the Chinese people fit into the global landscape.
It's clear that China will soon overtake the United States as the world's largest economy, challenging every economic assumption we have ever made in the west, and overturning those that are wrong. The Chinese are deliberate and focused on building a better life for all who live within their borders, and, like every other young, powerful nation that has ever existed, they are committed to doing it their own way. Looking back, sitting in my living room here in New York, I couldn't believe the "success" of my trip to Chongqing, mainly because I learned so much.
