Gina and Lou in China

Chengdu is your basic big city with lots of traffic, people, buildings, shopping and air pollution. Picture New York, Paris, London, Madrid, Nairobi.

In China however, the number of human powered vehicles is astounding. You’ll see people pulling or pushing all kinds of carts with anything from bean sprouts to steel pipes to coal to garbage. These smaller people can find a way to haul around anything. They just pedal away with flip-flops or heals — no helmet, no problem.

Bicycles are the main mode of getting around. Some bicycles have a motor assist. Quiet electric powered scooters are also part of the scene.

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You’ll see lots of tricycle pedicabs with drivers talking on their cell phones, but many passengers are riding on a bike or scooter with a friend or parent.

You’ll also see people just walking along with maybe a traditional Chinese fan but almost never a back pack. We walk out of our cozy air conditioned foreign teachers’ apartment, located in a faculty houseing complex, ready to face the oppressive heat and smog, only to be distracted by the scene of multi-faceted traffic before us.

It’s delightful, except for feeling like an utter weakling.

Like most Americans, we have changed our residence a number of times. It’s never pleasant, but we are more or less used to sorting through our belongings, packing them up or throwing them away, cleaning out the refrigerator, changing our mailing address, and taking care of all the details of moving. This was the first time that we packed up our house and moved not into another house but into a suitcase, a tight squeeze. We had to make sure that everything we brought with us was important. We ended up with about 250 pounds of luggage. We’re very grateful to our neighbors Sylvia and Audrey for allowing us to store so many of our things in their basements, and we’re glad to have tenants that will take on the responsibility of caring for our house and furniture.

Going to the other side of the planet for a year involves a lot of planning, so much so that our lives were taken over by it. As the departure date got closer, the preparations became all consuming. By the time the final packing was done and we fell asleep for the last time in our own bed in our own bedroom (at 3:00 AM on the day we left) there was nothing else in our lives, just preparing to go to China. Any consideration of the actual reality of being there was completely crowded out. Finally we closed the suitcases, walked out the door, and drove to the bus stop to start the trip. Sitting on the bus to New York was the first chance we had had to relax in weeks, and the first time to think about the magnitude of the journey we were embarking on.

We certainly had a lot of time to think about it. There was the five hour bus ride to New York, where our friend Lynn put us up for the night. Then we had a six hour flight to Los Angeles and a three hour layover, our last moments in an English speaking environment. (Sort of. I had to speak to the restaurant staff in Spanish to order a beer.) Then there was a 17 hour flight to Shanghai, another three hour layover, and a three hour flight to Chengdu. Altogether 36 hours of traveling, not counting the night in New York, and it all went off without a hitch. We went straight to a hotel and collapsed.