It’s most definitely summer, which in our family also means it’s peak birthday season. For mine, we had a family dinner at Took Took in West Hampstead, followed by a little walk along the path through Fortune Green and behind Hampstead Cemetery which we used to do on my birthday every year growing up.
Randi and I also spent a lovely evening at Angela’s new flat, which – happily – is right around the corner from us. We also spent a wonderful Saturday at Simon and Fleur’s barbecue with a mix of familiar faces and some new people I’d never met before. Not only did I consume a healthy mix of beer and burgers, but I also got to test-drive an empty buggy around the block under the influence of this beer plus burger mix. Apologies to the people of Hassocks if we looked very strange.
On the way home our convoluted train route led to an unplanned stop at Kartuli in East Dulwich for dinner, and therefore some unexpected khachapuri. This was delicious, even though – strictly speaking – it wasn’t really khachapuri weather. Equally delicious was our dinner at Dishoom with Robert a few weeks ago, who was passing through London for a night and spent his evening with us. Coincidentally, I also enjoyed a Zoom-based Groupon catch-up with Todd Webb later that week, who made me even more nostalgic for the days when we were all in an office together.
Recently I also went out for an evening with Jill, although we quickly abandoned our usual haunt thanks to it being live music night at The Island (nothing against it, but not great for talking) and switched to Curry Nights instead. I also swapped stories of product management with Katie’s friend Caitlin over drinks in Southwark, before grabbing food at Mercato Metropolitano and accidentally taking home one of their food buzzers. But our big social achievement was finding a weekend for Josh, Anna and Cora to visit our place for a sleepover! Together we made tacos, invented new games to play with Dominion cards, danced to the Mosquito song (the Minidisco playlist of the classic Spanish holiday resort having been updated since my day) and, in the morning, ate loads of pancakes before exploring the Horniman Gardens.
Randi was in Scotland last weekend, so I took a couple of days off work and made a slightly impromptu trip to Chicago. My short stay was clearly a bit suspicious to the immigration officers (“you’re here for two days?” “well, three days if you count today!”), but the double round of questioning at customs was more than made up for by the shortest queues I’ve ever enjoyed at O’Hare. Then I was nerdishly delighted to get one of the newer Blue line trains for the journey into town – spick and span and filled with suburbanites travelling into Chicago for 4th July the next day. That train from the airport is how Randi and I always take the temperature of how Chicago is doing, and this time the omens were very good.
Todd and Carolyn very kindly hosted me on this trip, and that afternoon I enjoyed a few beers in the sun with Todd and Dolly Dietz – Robert’s very adorable dog, who they were looking after – before ordering Antique Taco for dinner. I also playtested Todd’s murder mystery (albeit sadly not in its ultimate setting of the Bahamas) and enjoyed a can of Salted Lemonade courtesy of Benno and Shelby’s Five Corners beverage company. While I haven’t seen these guys in years, the fact that they are running an independent husband-and-wife business surprises me not at all, and made me smile.
The next day was 4th July (or July 4th?) so we headed over to Robert and Julie’s, both to return custody of Dolly and to celebrate freedom and independence etc. etc. I was inordinately proud of not being the first to be eliminated from Bernie’s drawing-based game, although he was probably just being kind, while Grant (accurately) labelled me a weirdo when I was being weird. The only thing I was less thrilled about was the start of all the random neighbourhood fireworks, which – at least when you’re at ground level – feel less like fireworks and more like a coordinated attack of the well-regulated militia. But I’m aware that I’m in a deep minority here – only Dolly felt the same way! – and at least once we joined the neighbours’ rooftop we could appreciate the spectacle from a safer height.
Since Robert had told a very long story about watching Landman on a plane, Todd and I resolved to watch the first episode before going to bed that night. It was excellent, in the sense that it was terrible, and so there was a lot to enjoy. I did also get some genuine satisfaction at hearing ‘advertisement’ being spoken in a Southern accent with the same pronunciation as my British accent.
The next morning, we brought Carolyn up to speed with the culture she had missed over breakfast at Bang Bang Pie & Biscuits, where I had some very tasty biscuits and gravy. Then, I attempted to introduce Toggolyn to Jet Lag! I’m not sure if I fully converted them, but we all agreed that chasing your friends around Switzerland by train is much more fun than getting blown up together at a malfunctioning oil well. And finally, Todd allowed me to wander around ancient Athens for a bit within Assassin’s Creed. The original intent was to find Socrates we that we could have a nice argument, but in the end I just took to the random murder of innocent bystanders, surprising both Todd and myself with my ability to run away quickly enough from any retribution.
I had one more stop to make before flying home that night. This was a very special afternoon at Catherine and AJ’s, who are only one week into welcoming the newest member of the family. I felt incredibly lucky to be able to hang out with them all together, and at this point in my life it’s also deeply reassuring to see everybody doing so well too.
The journey home was all very smooth, and the week afterwards we did some transatlantic hosting in reverse when Melissa came to stay for a few days! Along with a decent sampling of our local pubs, on Tuesday night we all went out to see Nye together at the National Theatre. This play is a tribute to the life of Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS, and its existence alone does something to capture the peculiar relationship between Britain and its healthcare system. As you’d expect, Michael Sheen gives an amazing performance, and the play does an excellent job of zooming around Bevan’s life and career. I particularly enjoyed the staging of the climactic showdown with the BMA in 1948.
This week we also went to Kirsty’s summer party (where I hit my quota of strangers to talk to) and enjoyed a relaxed Friday night with my mum. Finally, shortly after hitting publish on this blog we’ll be off to Sidcup to spend the afternoon with Tomas and Roberta, which I’m very excited about!
Hello, loyal blog readers! As many of you know – but maybe some of you don’t – my last few posts have omitted a few things. Because while I did write about everything from our muddy walks in Shoreham to our windy walks in Kirkcaldy, I didn’t mention that Randi and I are also expecting a baby in October. But we are! So, please just mentally insert a lot of extra paragraphs about hospital scans, midwife appointments and test-driving pushchairs in John Lewis, because we’ve been doing all of that too.
We’re very excited, but also, I’m not the one who’s pregnant, so you’ll have to find Randi’s top-secret pregnancy blog to read all about that. (I’m joking, there is no such thing.) (Or is there?) (There is not.) Once the baby is born I’m still planning to carry on with this blog in some shape or form, but obviously everything in our lives is also about to change, so let’s just see what happens.
In the meantime I’m going to carry on with a regular catch-up. But for those of you who were already in on the secret – or figured it out from all of the clues in the post titles – thank you for all of your love and support so far!
When we left off Randi’s parents had just arrived in London, and since then we enjoyed two weeks together with (mostly) sunny conditions. (Unfortunately, this did mean we were all wearing shorts when I erroneously led us down a narrow alleyway lined by stinging nettles.) As usual Beth and Stu cooked us a series of delicious meals – making friends with our local butcher in the process – but on one of their hard-earned nights off, Randi took us all out to Strangers’ Dining Room in Parliament for dinner. And for the first time, it was light enough to go out on the terrace first!
Together with Tash, Katie and Cormac, we also got a chance to visit Lea’s exhibition Zines Forever! DIY Publishing and Disability Justice at the Wellcome Collection. As someone who as a child once ‘published’ a twice-weekly newsletter with a total possible audience of four people – not so different from this blog! – I’m inherently quite fond of the concept of zines. If you’re not familiar, here’s Lea’s explainer. And on top of that, I’m also in favour of any exhibition which induces people to sit quietly in the corner and read.
After the exhibition we all had lunch together, followed by a round of complimentary teas and coffees for which none of us had a good explanation. Then Randi, Beth, Stu and I popped into the British Library – so really exploring the full spectrum of publishing – before meeting up with Andrew and Bonnie for a production of The Gang of Three.
I’m not sure whether this play was truly excellent or merely very, very well chosen for political nerds, but we loved it, even if (from the perspective of factional Labour Party politics) it’s one of those hands-over-your-eyes moments when the leadership totally blows it and the party is left adrift for two decades. It’s the mid-1970s, and Roy Jenkins, Anthony Crosland and Denis Healey are all vying to succeed Harold Wilson as leader. Despite being broadly in agreement about the future direction of the party, they’re unable to unite behind one candidate, partly (of course) because of personal ambition but also – at least as I see it – because there’s no one obvious standout contender. As a result, of course, they all lose, and we know what happened next.
The play itself is witty and fast-moving with excellent performances from all three actors, although during the flashback scene to their Oxford University days I did find the portrayal of a young Jenkins to be significantly more convincing than young Crosland. Many thanks to Andrew and Bonnie for snagging tickets to this!
The other planned activity with Randi’s parents was a cooking class at the Jamie Oliver Cooking School in Highbury, not far from where I used to live. (Indeed, we walked back via Drayton Park and Highbury Fields afterwards so I could say hello.) We’d opted for the Mexican street food class which resulted in some very tasty tacos, with tortillas pressed and kept warm in a cute little tin foil pouch until serving. Food highlight: chipotle chicken. Lesson highlight: mind-bending onion slicing efficiency.
Talking of food: as a joint celebration of Randi and Tash’s birthdays, last Friday we ventured up to Seven Sisters for Nigerian tapas together at Chuku’s. Everything was delicious, including the cocktails, and it was only social politeness which allowed the last few suya meatballs to survive on the table for so long.
The next day, Randi and I visited the Picturehouse Central (a beautiful venue, by the way!) to join the coordinated cinema screenings for the two-part Doctor Who season finale. This definitely triggered some mixed emotions. The immediate future of Doctor Who is now more uncertain than it’s ever been since the 2005 revival, and while I agree with those who say it can never truly die – Doctor Who will always come back, it’s just a question of when – it’s sad to contemplate another period in the wilderness. But more pressingly, I wasn’t ready to lose Ncuti Gatwa, and his regeneration was frustrating given that it seemed bolted-on to the story at the last minute, tied to a weird character twist for Belinda which I didn’t buy. Regeneration is always a double-edged sword, but this didn’t feel right.
That said, it is obviously always a thrill to see Doctor Who on the big screen and the story itself felt very well-suited for it. I loved The Rani – both of them – and I just hope we see them again. [Update: After watching the utterly lovely Doctor Who Unleashed special tonight celebrating the last 20 years, I realised I forgot to mention how excellent the scene with Jodie Whittaker returning to the TARDIS was. Loved that too.]
Finally, we saw mum last night for Thai food and a play at the Hampstead Theatre: House of Games. This is an adaption of a 1987 film which was first staged in 2010, set in Chicago at an ambiguous time. (I mean, it’s clearly still supposed to be around 1987, but it just bugged me when someone claimed to be able to play Snake on a cell phone.) Essentially this is the story of a long con, with the charismatic Mike – aided by a clever band of accomplices – seducing Margaret, a straight-laced psychiatrist and successful author, into an expensive scam.
Randi and I both likened this to a page-turning thriller. Unlike, say, a play at the Bush, the production is deliberately tuned for comedy and intrigue rather than raw emotion. This is absolutely not a production about the deep scars which con artists leave on their victims. This is not a complaint… sometimes you just want a fun Saturday night out at the theatre! But Randi was less forgiving of the dodgy American accents (it really didn’t feel like Chicago) and I think we were both surprised at how dramatically the ending has been softened from the original film, which – at least based on reading the summary, I haven’t seen it – suggests that it would provide a much more satisfying character act for Margaret.
Besides the accents, though, we enjoyed ourselves. The staging was also excellent, with a two-level set design featuring the brightly-lit psychiatrist office sitting above Mike’s disreputable bar. As it happens we were there on closing night, however, so if you were interested in seeing either of the plays in this post… it’s too late, sorry!
Lots to catch-up on in the last month, but I’ll start by belatedly celebrating this blog’s 21st birthday back on 27th April. (“You want photos for your blog?” asked my guide back in Chongqing. “That’s very old school! I haven’t heard that word in a long time.”)
Legally speaking, 21 is much less of a big deal than it used to be, but it turns out that there are still some rights which accrue at this age, at least in the UK. These include driving a bus, getting paid the full minimum wage, obtaining a helicopter licence and applying to adopt a child – although based on the experience of friends who have adopted, there’s no chance you’d still be 21 by the end of the process. Still, happy birthday blog, and I hope there’s still at least one other blog left in the 21+ clubs and bars for you!
We hosted Andrew, Bonnie and my mum for lunch the weekend after we got back, waxing lyrical about Chinese trains until they thought we’d joined the CCP. The weekend after, as part of the May bank holiday, I took a significantly slower train up to Edinburgh to join Randi in Scotland. Thanks as always to Katie and James for being such amazing hosts and for introducing us to Jet Lag, a YouTube series in the Amazing Race \ Race Across The World genre which I’ve known about for ages (I watch plenty of videos on their other channels!) but had never given a chance. Together we blitzed through one of their European games of tag, which was excellent, and since then Randi and I have started working through the rest.
Having all caught up with Doctor Who we also watched that week’s episode together, which provoked some mixed reactions! I think it’s fair to say that this season hasn’t felt as consistent as last year’s (which I thought was phenomenal from episode 3 onwards) although there have still been plenty of strong points, including the opening episode and the unexpected sequel to Midnight. But we also really enjoyed last night’s The Interstellar Song Contest, which (a) contained some very special moments, and (b) was a pleasant dose of Eurovision given that, for logistical reasons, we ended up skipping the main event this year.
Where was I? Oh, yes, Scotland – and on Saturday, Katie’s childhood-inspired tea party for Kirsty and Roger, complete with some very legit egg mayo sandwiches. The next day, Randi and I took the train up to Kirkcaldy to see Lea and Abi, without even realising the coincidence that two of our mums were – at that very moment – hiking through Peru together. I won’t claim that Kirkcaldy felt as adventurous as that, but we had a really lovely time at Lea and Abi’s house before walking along the riverfront\seafront together (this is a matter of some dispute), getting to see their studio space and learning about doocots. Thank you both for hosting us!
It wouldn’t be a trip to Edinburgh without a breakfast at La’Telve in Morningside, although I don’t seem to have actually mentioned this before during the first 21 years of this blog, so now I’m officially putting that right and asking you to backfill every previous post about Edinburgh in your head. Suitably filled with tatty scones, haggis and a legitimately really good breakfast burrito, we rolled back down to London on the still-not-as-fast-as-China train on bank holiday Monday.
The next weekend was equally busy, starting with a Saturday matinee of Cockfosters with Steven and Sadie. I was really looking forward to seeing this, especially given that Tash had recommended it during a previous run but the dates just hadn’t worked out. Essentially, it’s a wacky romantic comedy about finding love on the Piccadilly line, with a very fast-paced sketch show aesthetic as different side characters get on and off the (beautifully realistic!) Tube carriage set. A particular highlight was the North/East/South/West London rap battle, for which it felt like South London came off rather well. But it was all a lot of fun, as were drinks afterwards together at the Mercato Metropolitano.
And talking of South London: on Sunday we enjoyed a brunch feast with new South London converts Tess and Hugo at their new (and nearby!) flat, together with fleeting North London visitors Carolyn and Maria. Welcome to the neighbourhood, guys!
The next section feels more surreal to write, but on Tuesday I officially became German.
As with so many other families, Brexit prompted my mother’s generation to investigate whether there was a path to reacquiring European citizenship. For us, this was indeed possible due to the fact that my grandfather was German – leaving as a child to escape Nazi persecution of Jews – and the German government has long had a special legal process in place to restore citizenship rights to those who lost it during this period.
Until Brexit this never felt particularly relevant, but on Tuesday, Tash and I became the last in our immediate family to naturalise at a special ceremony at the German Ambassador’s residence. I’m hugely grateful to all of the embassy staff who were so diligent and thoughtful in helping us through the process.
Other than getting into the right airport queue, I have no way of knowing whether this will impact my own life very much… who’s to say? But given the uncertainties of the world, it felt like the right thing to keep this in the family, especially since – once the chain is broken – citizenship is often completely impossible for future generations to reclaim. Plus, I got to enjoy a delicious currywurst and half-pint of Adlerkönig at Stein’s afterwards with Tash and Cormac 🙂 🇩🇪
Finally – Beth and Stu are back in London! They arrived last week in time for Randi’s birthday on Saturday, which we celebrated with a return trip to Oxleas Woods and the celebrated Oxleas Woods Café. It’s great to see them back during this sunny weather, and they’ve already been on a successful Golders Green quest to fill our home with challah, babka and rugelach.
Editorial note: Yes, this blog title has been carefully formulated to be as boring and unappetising as possible. It’s a skill, available on request.
The final section!
Day 12: Chunxi Road
Chunxi Road is the main shopping street in Chengdu, and after a lazy morning we walked there along the river where I feasted on a (very tasty) chicken burger from homegrown fast-food chain Dicos. Most days took us along the river at least a little bit, in fact, and it’s a lovely one. Some stretches are quiet, others are filled with people, and at some points there are bags full of fish and buckets of turtles all over the place. I regret to inform you that we did not cross the road to investigate the ‘Chicago street food’ joint. But talking of food: that night provided another rare break from Chinese when we discovered a Thai/Vietnamese place inside the anime mall, and I savoured the beef brisket curry!
Day 13: Chongqing
Chongqing! I have to be honest and say that this city made it into our itinerary thanks entirely to the YouTube recommendation algorithm, which threw me so much of a totally crazy, multi-dimensional urban futurescape that I had to see it for myself. Chongqing is unusual in that it’s a directly-administered municipality, so not part of any province, and has a total population of over 30 million although the city itself is ‘only’ around 23 million. It’s also between 1 and 1½ hours away from Chengdu by high-speed train, of which there are many each day, so apparently it’s quite common to commute between the two.
Unfortunately Randi wasn’t feeling well on the morning of our day trip, so I left her to rest and recuperate in Chengdu while I joined our private guide, Chris, for a whistlestop tour of the sites. I had booked a tour with Chris before we left and he was exceptionally helpful in listing all of the possible things which we might want to see around the city and then crafting a bespoke itinerary – highly recommended if you’re looking for someone to take you around!
In our planning we had jokingly referred to Chongqing as the ‘dystopian megacity’, so I was surprised to find that it was actually very green. We started at the famous Kuixinglou Square, which feels like it should be on the ground floor until you walk over to the edge, look down and discover that you’re actually 22 storeys high. I’ve never been brave enough to hold my phone out over a sheer drop, so my video is much less compelling than all of the other ones you can find on YouTube and TikTok, but rest assured it is a very strange and cool experience.
Our next stop was the equally-famous Liziba monorail station, where the train passes through – and makes a stop in the middle of – a residential apartment building. For convenience, this would surely put all other homes to shame!
The rest of our tour included the tranquil E’ling Park, the central Jiefangbei Square, the remains of the ancient city walls and the retro socialist dormitory buildings of Minzhucun. According to Chris, this is a favourite spot on the tour for Eastern European tourists who feel nostalgia – at least on behalf of their parents – for a ‘labour village’ constructed to house workers for the state-owned motorcycle factory next door.
During the economic reforms of the 80s, the factory was closed and has since been demolished and replaced by a luxury shopping mall. The residential buildings survived, however, and the neighbourhood has since been revived with plenty of people milling about when we were there. It’s a fascinating historical contrast to the implosion of the USSR, which we know was studied very closely by China’s CCP as a ‘what not to do’ guide to their own survival.
Once the tour was over, I wandered by along the ‘Mountain City Alley’ – which sits high up alongside the Yangtze River – until I came to the ruins of an old French hospital, where the basement has recently been rediscovered and evacuated. In Chongqing, even their archeological ruins exist over multiple levels!
Then I headed back to Chengdu with lots of stories from Chris to share with Randi, who was thankfully feeling better enough to join me for dinner before walking home beside Chengdu’s own beautiful river.
Day 14: Tianfu Greenway & Livehouse
I’ve already talked about the Tianfu Greenway last time, so the short version is that we went back and rode some more! We almost didn’t: it was very hot outside, but cycling turned out to be way more cooling than walking. This section started at the ‘Global Center’ [sic] on a section of Metro where all of the stops have names like Hi-Tech Zone, Financial City and Incubation Park. The scenery was lovely.
That night we also wanted to visit another live music venue again before leaving China, so we did so after eating dinner at a trendier-than-usual fusion restaurant which somehow offered mango beer! It was a lively Friday night and a few live musicians were playing outside along the river, which we enjoyed before heading to another indoor livehouse venue. This was less cutesy than the area we discovered in Beijing – and for the first time we actually noticed a few other Western tourists floating around – but the vibe of the music was chill and relaxed. It was a great sorta-final night of our holiday… ‘sorta’ because our flight wasn’t actually leaving until 1.45am on Sunday morning, so we still had one more day in Chengdu…
Day 15: Last Day in China
After checking-out of our hotel, we headed to the Wenshu Monastery area for lunch for a noodle place which Randi had been wanting to try. Sadly, some mystery ingredient in a few of our meals in China had occasionally been giving her a mild allergic reaction and today this struck again – nothing serious, but requiring an emergency second lunch!
Afterwards we returned to Tianfu Square and stumbled half by accident into the (free!) Chengdu Museum, albeit sadly too late for the special exhibition on Sherlock Holmes which had recently ended. I didn’t find the main exhibits particularly enthralling – and did not even consider trying the new special exhibition on flutes – but as we sat in the café, we did have the lovely experience of two Tibetan teenagers approaching us and asking if it was OK to chat for a while. We agreed, of course, albeit through the medium of translation apps on each side.
In fact, they were not particularly interested in our lives (totally reasonable!) but were clearly experiencing their own form of culture shock in Chengdu and mostly wanted to show us lots of photos and videos of their homeland. They did ask us if we found things in China to be expensive, so the costs in Chengdu were also clearly on their mind. It was an unexpected reminder of how vast and diverse China itself is.
We had a final dinner at the Thai/Vietnamese place – they remembered us, so we clearly stand out. Then we collected our bags, said goodbye to the view from our hotel and rode the metro to the airport. An airport procedure I’ve never seen before: after checking in your bags, wait for 3 minutes in a separate area in case your name appears on a screen for some sort of additional security check. After 3 minutes have elapsed with no activity, you’re free to go.
If you’ve made it all this way, thanks for joining us on our China explorations. We’re so lucky that we were able to go, and it has ticked off a huge item on my travels wishlist. Although I am going to have to restrain myself from purchasing a scratch-off map of Chinese provinces and trying to visit them all… 😉
Continuing where I left off with our two weeks in China…
Day 6: Train to Chengdu, Tianfu Square & Kuanzhai Alley
On Thursday morning, we had a very early start and made our way to Beijing West station for the 7am to Chengdu East. The process of buying tickets was a little strange: they technically go on sale only two weeks beforehand, but Trip.com will take your money and try to snag it once it’s available, with multiple fallbacks in case your first choice is unavailable. Fortunately, we got 1st class tickets on one of the fastest of the five daily high-speed trains, which range between 7½ – 11½ hours to cover the roughly 1850km (1150 miles) distance.
Incidentally, Amtrak’s meandering route from New York to Chicago is actually about the same distance. Riding one of its three trains a week will take about 27½ hours, if it runs to schedule.
Like every other station we travelled through, Beijing West was large and well-organised. For breakfast we discovered that ‘tea eggs’ are a thing – think a hard-boiled egg, but boiled in tea – which is something we should absolutely do. But even more impressive is the fact that Chinese trains allow you to order food delivery to your seat! This was implemented a few years ago after complaints about the railway’s onboard monopoly. So now, in addition to ordering from the train itself, the official railway app – which, like everything else, is actually just a mini program within AliPay – allows you to order from a long list of participating restaurants as well. At your chosen stop, your meal is brought onboard and delivered to your seat by the train staff.
Honestly, I expected that the train itself would be infuriatingly fast and smooth, which it was. I expected that I’d be able to look out the window and see intensive road or apartment construction rather than stagnant land, which I did. But I wasn’t quite ready for the fact that China has the world’s best, fully-integrated system for market-based food delivery on a bullet train moving at 250km/h. It’s a perfect example of where China chooses to put its layer of commercial competition: at the perfect place to fully leverage its fantastic public infrastructure.
So then: Chengdu! This city is the capital of the Sichuan province in Southwest China, with warmer temperatures than Beijing, and is known for having a relaxed and laidback vibe. This is certainly true in general, although my immediate impression when getting off at the busy station (perfectly on time) was that this was more like the China I had been imagining: more people, more bustle. We took the Metro (which didn’t exist until 2010, and now has 15 lines) to a stop 10 minutes from our hotel, and the contrasts with Beijing only got bigger. The urban landscape is just massive, with tall buildings not just clustered in a central business district but stretching as far as the eye can see, although that’s not as far as the eye might be able to see without the pollution, mind. We’d also picked a very different hotel from Beijing, opting for the 5* luxury vibe with magnificent views over the city.
Our hotel was in a perfect spot by the river and only a short walk from Tianfu Square, another giant public plaza with a shopping centre/metro station cut into the ground beneath, and all carefully guarded by a giant Chairman Mao statue looking on. We returned here a lot for meals over the next week, but on our first night we ventured a bit further out to the famous Kuanzhai Alley, enjoying dinner on little tables outside.
Day 7: People’s Park & Food Tour
The next day we headed to People’s Park, a large park in the centre of Chengdu with lots for the people to see and do including boating on the lake, food stalls, public music and dancing, or sharing tea and playing mahjong together. (In general, everywhere you look in Chengdu you’ll see serene-looking retired people sitting in the sun and playing cards.)
Because we’re weird, our favourite feature of the park on our first visit was the series of security-themed sculptures (data security, biosecurity, security in space, etc.). Elsewhere there are war memorials to commemorate resistance against the “Japanese devils” (not my language) and a series of historical displays explaining that national security is “entering a new era” and that “if our party wants to consolidate its ruling position and unite and lead the people to uphold and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics, ensuring national security is the top priority”. It’s not only teatime in the People’s Park.
That evening we had our second Lost Plate food tour, this time led by Fiona and travelling between spots via tuk tuk. We were lucky to get a very interesting group of travellers, including a couple of Americans, and I was pleased to discover that actually I can perfectly handle the ‘normal’ level of Sichuan spice for which this region is known for. Overall, though, we preferred the diversity of food in Beijing to Chengdu, although Chengdu absolutely came out the winner for real gelato ice creams.
Day 8: Qingcheng Mountain
We had clearly started to imbibe some of the relaxed Chengdu way of life and took our time getting to Mount Qingcheng the next day, which required a subway to a train to a taxi for the hiking-friendly ‘Back Mountain’ area. (A scrolling message on the train requested passengers to “promote traditional values and advocate civilised values”, which I found a little too vague to know if I was complying with.)
So it was already lunchtime when we arrived at the Taian Ancient Village at the base of the mountain, and while eating at one of the many, many, many food spots I kept staring at Google Translate to appreciate the bizarre posters on the wall, which included “No matter how many times my customers abuse me, I will treat them like my first love” and a long list of deeply confusing prohibitions (?) including “wearing a bikini in winter”, “being even more arrogant than Bin Laden” and “driving an Alto and insisting that an Audi is ugly”.
If you’re planning on doing a proper hike you should absolutely leave more time than us, not least because the cablecars stop running. But we enjoyed our scenic walk along the mountain paths until turning back, although we didn’t love the incredibly slow cablecar itself, which took over 20 minutes on the ride up. A small observation, but one which speaks to a wider pattern, was passing a guy employed to pick up litter and empty the bins along this nature trek. This was a common theme in China (e.g. someone polishing surfaces on the metro, or the train attendant who tucked in the dangling straps on all the overhead bags) and I often associate this type of careful labour with a society which is big on people but low on automation. But China’s extremely high on automation! It’s a combination of efficiency with high personal standards, and it’s just nice to be around.
Final cultural encounter for the day: back in town, we ate dinner in another shopping centre where it slowly dawned on me that all of the non-food shops were anime-themed, and there was an absolute explosion of cosplay.
Day 9: Jinli Street & Marriage Market
After a lazy morning of reading (I had to finish the Cromwell trilogy somehow) we had lunch at Jinli Street, Chengdu’s other famous market of alleys, before Randi was extremely excited to relive her childhood by enjoying some Dairy Queen Blizzards. Apparently it’s a tradition for the server to turn these upside down before handing them to you, and Randi was also thrilled to confirm that China has retained this tradition, so Dairy Queen wins a lot more points from us for cultural authenticity than Pizza Hut.
Then we headed back to People’s Park because I realised we had missed one of the most fascinating aspects of Chinese society: the dating corner, or ‘marriage market’. These are rows upon rows of sheets (blue for boys, pink for girls) with people looking for partners, albeit apparently it’s often more likely that it’s their parents who have lost patience and posted on their behalf. The form is standardised (name, date of birth, height, unmarried/divorced/widowed, a personal section and the “mate selection criteria”) and only very rarely includes photos.
You could spend hours and hours here, just to get an insight into what ordinary people value and need. Men often want “emotionally simple” women, while being from a “native” family is a criterion for many . (It was later explained to me that being “native” to the city or province often brings privileged access to public services such as education or housing.) Insurance, healthcare, owning a car or house feature prominently, as you might expect. Many specify “no bad habits” in a partner, which seems very ambitious. One ambitious-sounded woman specified that she was a member of the Party. All of life is here, basically, and on this sunny Sunday the place was packed.
By the time we got home I was collapsing, so after skipping through many Chinese TV channels we watched a bit of Homestead Rescue on the Discovery channel, which is about as perfect an encapsulation of the opposite to the Chinese worldview as you could imagine. Later I roused myself for a late dinner, on the way to which we accidentally turned down a street filled from start to finish with pet shops. Now this is China: never just one of something when there could be 50. The same philosophy was clearly operating at the bakery after dinner where I wasn’t allowed to buy just one honey cake – no, it had to be six. (Total cost was still under a pound, and we ate them all.)
Day 10: Cycling the Tianfu Greenway
One of Randi’s discoveries when researching Chengdu was the Tianfu Greenway: a 100km long circular cycle route which makes a loop around the city and is entirely segregated from cars. During our time in Chengdu we rode on two small sections, and on our first outing we started in the east to finish in a surprisingly rural southeast corner. (It was a bit of a transport desert for the Metro, actually, but fear not: Line 13 is already under construction!)
Renting bikes is easy enough, assuming you have Alipay already linked to your mobile number. We chose the blue-coloured option, as apparently they have the smoothest process for foreign tourists. As ever, everything just kinda worked and was very inexpensive. And as ever, there were plentiful public toilets (plus water vending machines) all along the route.
Since we finished in the middle of nowhere, our route home was a bit haphazard – we jumped on a bus, but I didn’t want to swelter the whole time, so we jumped back off nearish a metro – which had the benefit of taking us through a truly ‘suburban’ feeling area. ‘Suburban’ in the sense that it’s clearly a ‘live here, raise a family commute into the centre if needed’ kinda place. Except the housing is still on a massive scale: a vast landscape of apartment buildings, built to a height which would induce heart attacks if you tried anything like this back at home.
Talking of raising a family: one of the bizarre things we walked past was an information display to promote the new ‘Family Education Promotion Law’ from 2022. The law itself, which I looked up later, is written in such broad-sweeping language as to be utterly alien to me as law. One subsection obliges parents to be:
Teaching minors to love the Party, nation, people, and socialism; setting up a conception of preserving national unity, solidifying awareness of the community of Chinese people, and cultivating sentiment for the homeland.
Also mandatory are to raise children to “admire virtue and be inclined to goodness”, “to be diligent and thrifty”, to “cultivate their positive social mores” and on and on. The information boards promote this law with a series of hypothetical (I assume!) case studies, including domestic violence, for which husband Hu may be reported to organisations in order to be “criticised and educated” with divorce following as an option later. On a lighter note, 8 year old Xiao Ming may dream of visiting the dance hall with his older cousins to dance, but “the purpose of prohibiting minors from entering entertainment venues is to protect their physical and mental health” and breaching these terms is a serious offence.
The final board outlines the legal obligations of adult children towards their parents, which in China are considerable. Courts are empowered to order children to pay maintenance or make mandatory visits to their ageing parents, which is a mind-bending exercise of state authority.
That evening, I cracked. Pizza Hut in Beijing had been a disappointment, but I wanted pizza, so we dined at Dominio’s. (Fun fact: everybody gets a pair of disposable plastic gloves to eat their pizzas with, and everybody uses them.) Then Randi successfully found somewhere selling regular playing cards (after a lot of failed attempts in anime-themed stores) and we played a few games of 7 Card Rummy and Speed from the fancy bar at the top of our fancy hotel.
Day 11: Pandas!
Pandas are everywhere in China, but in particular pandas are everywhere in Chengdu, which is world-famous for being home to a number of panda conservation sites. We opted for the ‘Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding’ which is the easiest to get to (metro plus shuttle bus) and is a giant panda zoo with both indoor and outdoor sections.
It’s all very nicely done, with a natural walking route between the different zones, although it is quite funny how intense the crowds are around the first panda enclosure. Everybody (including us) is desperate to get a picture (top tip: stand behind the school groups!) but if you just walk a little further on you’ll find equally adorable pandas with no crowds.
Somewhat oddly, the zoo is also home to a collection of ‘red pandas’, which are a completely separate species (similar to raccoons) and only linked to panda bears by name, as well as being native to China. Sadly, these areas were closed on our visit, so we missed out on the red pandas and will have to go back.
This post is already massively long, so I’m going to cut it before concluding with the third and final part of our trip!
Helen on It’s (waiting) time.: “Fabulous news, congratulations to you both! X” Jun 8, 21:51
