Stuff

I had just navigated 100 pounds of ill-matched luggage through LAX when, awaiting a hotel shuttle, I was suddenly engulfed by a 747-bellyful of Chinese adolescents. I was overwhelmed not by anything Chinese, but by the magnitude of sniffling, giggling adolescence all around me—and the coincidence of all this on the eve of meeting up with seventy-some Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs) bound for China.

That was two months ago in Los Angeles. A few days ago in Chengdu, some mature Chinese adults stepped from the platform onto train number 17 bound for Chongqing, only to be engulfed by Americans, many in their twenties, with an obscene amount of stuff. Each PCV, having just ended training and being sworn in, was accompanied by a Chinese teacher from the destination university. My good colleague, Kairong, happened to be sick and was rapidly getting sicker. All of us PCVs had in tow not only the (approximately) 100 pounds of luggage we’d barely managed to carry through US airports, but also another three or four big items we’d acquired from Peace Corps: water distillers, dehumidifiers, medical kits, TEFL books and more.

Kairong deftly swooped my water distiller (in a box the size of a medium suitcase) behind the last seat on the car and stuffed my huge duffel bag behind the last seat on the other side. I straddled one of my suitcases, with my knee-caps courting my ear lobes, while another few items barely stayed anchored in the overhead bins.

Unlike the bus to Beibei (taken a few weeks ago for a site visit), this train was clean, spacious, and ultra-modern, but it still couldn’t quite accommodate all our stuff. More PCVs stumbled along, trying to find a few more cubic inches for something. Chinese passengers stared ahead stoically in silent amazement.

Conversations—some in bad Chinese, some in simplified English—burbled along as the train sped us through lush Sichuan countryside and then into the municipality (think state or province) of Chongqing and then into the city of Chongqing (the mountain city of six or seven million at the junction of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers). At last our train pulled into the massive Chongqing station where—we had to disembark! With all of our stuff! In a hurry! No simple feat.

Because travel with excess baggage is uncommon, wheeled carts are equally uncommon—but Kairong and other Chinese teachers scouted around and came back with a few tiny men with tiny carts, which were soon heaped full with eight or nine suitcases apiece. The bungie cords could never quite hold all of the gear and inevitably one cartful of stuff would explode and have to be reassembled. When we got to the turn-styles where uniformed officials asked for papers and passports, the carts of stuff again had to be disassembled and reassembled just to get through the turn-styles.

Given that the most expert bargaining still couldn’t bring the porters’ fees down much below the price of the train tickets, I offered to carry the bulk of my stuff. Kairong was not one to stand on ceremony and, in other situations let me lug a hundred plus pounds (he had his own gear), but the first problem was stairs. There were simply too many. Even elevators couldn’t do their magic when they could be found. The bulging carts didn’t fit through the narrow elevator doors, and, again, carts were disassembled and reassembled. We eventually dispersed, going off in different directions, me to Beibei, a fabulous university “town” at the foot of JinYun Mountain on the Jialing. 

(For anyone who read the last few posts, this may be confusing: Beibei is a satellite city outside downtown Chongqing, both of which are in the larger municipality of Chongqing. I had visited Beibei a week or two ago, but just for a few days to meet my Chinese counterparts. I returned to Chengdu for the tail end of training, swearing in, and all that. This trip to Beibei is the real move--I'm on my own now. Tomorrow morning, Saturday, the School of Foreign Languages will host its first faculty meeting, and several other foreigners and I will be introduced to the 200 teachers in the School. The school has an excellent reputation for its work in linguistics, applied linguistics, pedagogy, literature, and, of course, foreign languages.)