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The title of this post is, without a trace of irony, the title of the news program playing on the bus from the airport this morning.

My flight wasn’t bad—no, wait, it was, actually. The last airport bus leaves downtown Xi’an at 1800, and my flight was at 2255, so I got to spend several hours in the Xi’an airport (about 2 each land- and air- side). XIY is one of the unenlightened airports lacking any food options (even a token KFC “Select” as seen at PEK) not owned by the airport operator. The flight was in transit from some place farther west, which meant transit passengers had to board first (because… they have to?), which meant I spent about 10 more minutes in a classic Chinese queuing situation than I like to. Then, during the flight, the lady on my left couldn’t contain her arm and gesticulated wildly throughout the various parts of my left arm and shoulder.

Also, I arrived at 0045. After wandering around the airport for a while and driving a hard bargain, I got a generic business hotel room kind of near the airport for 150. I could have just stayed in departures, which looked like it wasn’t too bad, but I felt like I could use the shower. The room was great, except for the Lingnan-style bed and the mosquito bite just under my eye as I was falling asleep. And the cold shower. But it could have been worse, and it had a free airport shuttle.

This morning brought an adventure—a pilgrimage, really, as I tracked down the Shanghai offices of Elong to claim my ticket to Japan. I eventually got them to figure out what I was talking about and got my paper ticket (in fancy red-strikethrough quadruplicate). Beehome hostel is nice and relatively easy to get to from the subway. I finally got into town without my pack at about 3 p.m. and did one of my Stubborn Urban Hikes (I’ll go 90s on you and come up with a catchy InterCapped name: StubUrban Hiking!) from Nanjing Xilu east to the Bund, up and down it a few times until the sun went down, up and down it a few more times taking pictures, through the cheesy “sightseeing tunnel” to Pudong, and then the wrong way into several construction projects for about an hour before I finally gave up and took the subway one stop to get back.

Most things are better when they’re illuminated: carved pumpkins, ancient manuscripts, “LA Lights” sneakers when you’re in grade school… the Bund is no exception. Well, Pudong is, too, for the same reason that the night improves Hong Kong: it helps buildings cut through the fog.

This hostel does have an annoying 30 minute time limit for its free Internet, even when (as now) nobody’s waiting. This entry’s over now, I guess.

I never take the tour. I never take the tour. WHY DID I TAKE THE TOUR?

With that out of the way, the tour was not as bad as it could have been—just two enforced 30-minute shopping breaks. Unfortunately, those were (by 5 minutes) longer than our longest sight-seeing breaks. Sigh.

It was pretty cool to see the warriors—they’re impressive, and there’re a lot of them. Not much I can really write about those, I guess. I did see two fellow tourists wearing their money belts on the outside of their waists, so it’s a good thing they were on the tour… Lunch could have been worse: they only extracted 30 RMB each from a captive audience. That’s at least 15-20 profit, but I expected worse after our shopping breaks.

Thought I had more to say about that. Oops. Well, I might get around a bit this evening, but I’ll definitely be around the city tomorrow after I check out—I won’t need to get to the airport until mid-evening.

Being hot, tired and miserable didn’t help my first impressions. It’s gotten a bit better.

It’s still gray and big and industrial, but I saw a few of the parks yesterday and let the Chinese gardens work their curvy magic on me. I also went to the central square, briefly admired the Mao statue, and started one of my stubborn, interminable urban hikes which took me several km away. Usually I feel that streetmaps in guidebooks overstate the size of cities: not so with Chengdu. After circumnavigating Sichuan University in an attempt to find Tex-Mex food, I found a bus back and had dinner and a shower (which both helped tremendously).

This morning I woke up relatively early. I spent the morning at the panda breeding center north of the city. I guess it’s a tourist must-do: there are definitely more pandas there than you’d tend to see in one place. Got a lot of photos, deleted a lot on the ride back, etc.

I hope my couchsurfing attempts in Japan get more successful because it seems like US$25 is about the bottom-line price for a dorm bed in the most crowded dorms available. Ouch. I prefer RMB 25 (what I’m paying now), though 45 or even 60 (Xi’an, Shanghai) would be fine too.

Sichuan food has not been disappointing… nice and spicy. If anyone from first semester at Lingnan is reading this: I found the “Christmas peppers” (all over my gong pao ji ding).

I saw some really interesting headlines on the BBC and NYTimes through my RSS reader, but I can’t actually read the articles (and I don’t want to get the g/h in trouble by scaling the Great Firewall). Bummer.

Today I will continue to be lazy around Chengdu (since I was tramping around peeking at pandas all morning). Tomorrow, I might try to get out to Leshan to see the Big Buddha there (look it up, it’s a bit older than Lantau’s): it depends on the bus timetables since I’ll need to be back here in the evening to catch my flight. It’s a two hour 34 RMB bus ride, so as long as it starts early enough that should work out fine.

Any HK people reading, please please please keep me up on your new and exciting lives. I’m still going through withdrawal.

My first impressions of Chengdu are not great. My very first: I couldn’t see anything. Grey-out. It’s been raining a bit. Big, industrial. Cheap taxis. Bigger hostel/guesthouse operation than I’d like to stay in, too.

Guess I’ll see the pandas and some temples and move on to other things.

People are disappearing right and left. It’s no fun. I’m still sad. People I’ve known since August are disappearing, some forever—and the number of spring-semester exchangers I really hung out with, small to begin with, will soon be at the point where I can count it with my nose.

In other Hong Kong news, at least one political leader nearly tripped over himself to agree with his fellow toady that Hong Kong isn’t ready for universal suffrage because of insufficient national education. The proof is that most HKpeople still think that the Tian’anmen incident on 6-4, 1989, was a massacre. I wonder if it was the tanks or the guns that gave them that impression.

I had a really nice day a couple days back involving freshly-made dumplings in Sheung Wan, a shop full of brilliantly-colored birds, a Star Ferry ride on a clear night, and catching the delightfully cheesy harbour light show in English. On a day like that, though, even staring down the Mirador Mansion courtyard (say) feels atmospheric. Better late than never, right? All this time I’ve been telling people to look away from the Central area when they’re looking for good, cheap Chinese food… Oops.

My tentative plan for the post-term-pre-flight period: I booked a flight to Chengdu for the 23rd. After that I’d like to go overland to Xi’an before flying to Nanjing or Shanghai (which are near each other, Hangzhou, and Suzhou). If money, miles, or both permit, I’d like to spend a week in Japan from there before returning to Hong Kong to catch my flight out. If Japan doesn’t work out, I suppose that’s enough time that I’d be able to take advantage of my bump ticket (free r/t HKG-Manila).