This blog entry is brought to you by Hinterlands Associate Artist Steve DeWater
Chengdu is located at the bottom of a basin in the Sichuan Province in southern China. The skies overhead are eternally white and the horizon is washed in a thick haze. When morning arrives, the sun - if it is visible - holds like an orange bulb that darts in and out between the buildings as the city bus rumbles through town. The busses are like hives: crowds of people crushing themselves up against each other, reaching to steady against the sway. Surrounding, swarms of motorcycles and bicycles buzz along the curb-edge and taxi’s cut in and out of oncoming lanes of traffic speeding their passengers onward their destinations. At every busy corner of the city, throngs of people wait en masse behind stoplights for the green to go. Even now, in the privacy of my bedroom at this late hour of the night, I can hear the constant cacophony of car horns ringing in my ears. Still, when the light changes and everything starts to move forward again you feel at ease with it all. It’s the way it is here and it has a nice flow to it.
Chengdu is a damp and cloudy place but by afternoon warmer air moves in. The atmosphere adds density to sound making it travel farther and louder, I think. It makes odor suspend and linger. It is rarely windy and you can see it in the way cigarette smoke lifts sleepily off and doesn’t want to move. The smells of the city are various. On a walk up a side street you will be accosted by the sour bite of sewage and then treated to the sweet scent of chestnuts & peanuts roasting in charcoal. Fresh, fried bread and buns in the mornings. Meats and broths and baked goods in the afternoons. Diesel from construction trucks. Tobacco smoke. Perfume on a pretty girl. Something always burning.
Even though Chengdu has been in the same place and under the same handle for three thousand years it is, as of yet, still very young. Skyscrapers, pollution, and four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic congestion (they like Buick’s). Pushing and shoving. Crazy taxi driver’s. Homeless children begging for coins. Stray dogs. Storefront windows occupied by butchered ducks, naked chickens, and sausages on string hung on hooks just waiting upon the buyer. It is not uncommon to spot fancy women wearing outfits lifted from the latest fashion magazine. And it is not uncommon to see leathery faces and bent backs hardened by years of labor. It’s not all blue rivers and pretty pagoda’s here. Or tea gardens. Or old men with long white beards and round spectacles smoking pipes. Or groups of elderly women gathered around a bamboo table playing Mahjong. All those things certainly exist - and such moments are beautiful finds - I have seen them. But you have to remember that KFC is also here along with several Chinese imitators. There is a Dairy Queen right around the corner from one of the local religious temples - right across from Starbucks. Consumerism is not lacking. There is construction sprouting up every place - apartment buildings, corporations, business ventures, whole neighborhoods coming into bloom, sculpture art, even structures supporting the local populace. For example, there is a new music park in East Chengdu with coffee shops, bars, stores and concert grounds. The twinkle in the eye of today’s youth strikes something familiar in me… I can see the dream. It reminds me of the United States back in the 1950’s. It is clear the ball is rolling. I feel like I’m on the edge of something wonderful that is about to happen. While the infrastructure across the US is failing and money woes back home paints a blight on the American spirit, I can tell you that the future of Chengdu looks like it is going to be prosperous. Something to think about.
All the same, the general population here is not used to encountering people from the outside. America is the famous melting pot where all cultures converge and elbow it out. But China, simply put, is just not like that. At one of the temples we visited a few days ago, a man walked straight up and put his arm around my shoulder and asked his buddy to take his picture. He was saying something about how tall I am. Within seconds a crowd of ten -maybe twenty- people formed to see what was happening and they all began to snap photos of us. It was a bizarre situation. I felt like a costumed character at a theme park! Granted, it is a fact that they rarely get to see a 6 foot, 4 inch, 200lb. white man who sports a full beard and wears hearing aids. They call me ‘Foreigner’. The adults say it with their eyes. The children laugh and point and say the word. I think it’s all quite wonderful.
— from Steven DeWater’s notebook
(Dave, Liza, and Richard in *Dreamtigers,* commissioned by PuppetArt Detroit)
(Wang Shize, Liu Hongxiu, Liza, and Richard)
