That way

Long before the Chinese man summoned me, waving vigorously for me to follow him to the bus on the other side of the fence, I'd been fed an extra-early breakfast, had bumped my bulging suitcase down six flights of stairs, and had wobbled across a quarter-mile of unevenly tiled lanes to the taxi-stand with hopes of beating rush-hour traffic. There I caught my breath for a minute. Then, spliced between hair-raising games of taxi chicken through Chengdu traffic were teeth-gnashing periods of paralysis. The worried taxi driver understood my answers to questions about my bus ticket but not much else, so we sweltered on in silence.

Once at the downtown station, she pulled over to let me out, while dozens of truck and bus drivers behind us leaned on their horns. Immediately, a half dozen bystanders clustered around me, shouting at me and each other. Wary of their intentions, I waved them off and wobbled into the station, where "security" meant standing in line and dumping a hundred pounds of gear onto a conveyer that nobody was monitoring and walking through the portal with my real goods still strapped around my waist. I spotted gate 24, and a very pretty uniformed woman walked me halfway into a fenced compound with numbered spots for big dirty buses, including the one bound for Beibei.

I was one of the only passengers standing there when a man in a gray polyester shirt asked to see my ticket and pointed to a bus on the other side of the fence, where another man waved vigorously from the stairwell of the bus. Not about to be kidnapped by faux-long-distance-bus-drivers, I ignored him. People seated on nearby benches paid scant attention. The man returned and I dismissed him, saying I needed bus 693 to Beibei. He shook his head and pointed, taking my suitcase, weaving through a maze of other buses outside the fence to the one with the exercised driver. He pitched my luggage into the belly of the bus and made an old man forfeit his front seat for me. I was about to call Peace Corps when I spotted on a tray before me the other passengers' tickets, all like mine, 24-693, bound for Beibei.  We headed for the same exit that all the other buses did and were checked out by a uniformed official who jumped onto the bus, asked for papers, counted heads, and hopped off again.

It seemed to be the right bus, an ancient, grimy coach with windows too dirty to capture much of the scenery as the skyscrapers of Chengdu melted into a string of poor shops and then mushroomed into thickly vegetated mountains. When it was apparent that the four-hour bus ride was going to take five or more, I called the person who was waiting at the station to fetch me. That man, "Frank," asked in English to speak to my seatmate so he could determine more exactly where we were. A dozen passengers who had been watching me burst into commotion when I turned to see who might talk to "Frank." One man took the opportunity to point his long telephoto lens my way while his seatmate took the phone and jabbered away for a few minutes.

I got off in Beibei, although the turnstyles I saw through the dark station window turned out to be plumbing equipment in a hardware store. I was re-directed around the corner, where the station was not so cavernous that every eye couldn't still be fastened upon the white-haired giant who had just wobbled into the station.  "Frank" had stepped out for a moment, but reappeared shortly, and it wasn't long before he, my waiban; Li Ling, my host for a week (not to be confused with Li Ying, my host in Chengdu), and "Eric," the professor who serves as the coordinator for foreign teachers were laughing and conversing (mostly in English) over hotpot at a local restaurant, our individual pots gurgling on the electric burners next to each place setting.

"Frank" was decked out in cut-offs and had been listening to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujuah" in the car, and I was infinitely relieved to be spared an elaborate banquet with baijiu and toasting rituals. After our very late luncheon, we bought my return ticket on the train, checked out my future apartment, tried out the key for my university office (shared with "Eric" and several foreign teachers from Minnesota), and surveyed the beautiful gardens of Southwest University.

It was the next morning when I had to check in with the police, as you do upon entering any new city. My passport was strange enough that I was ushered upstairs, not to the side of the hall that said "Crime Crackdown" but to the side that said "Prevention" and had doorways marked "Foreign Police Glimpses" and "Safety Shield."

No matter how mundane my getting settled routines might have been (checking the water heater in the apartment, seeing if the windows latched, etc.), the time sped by. My delightful new host, her husband, and exceptionally talented daughter are so easy to be with--I look forward to being able to spend a lot of time together throughout the next two years. I confess, we spoke in English mostly, partly because the daughter is an award-winning English speaker, but they're all game to help me with Mandarin (which is not the only spoken dialect in this "small town" of half a million, a satellite town outside Chongqing).

I have yet to see what teaching will be like (and I have another ten days to spend with the whole Peace Corps group back in Chengdu) but I'm just delighted with what I've seen of Beibei. JinYun mountain towers over the Jialing River, where mahjong players seek relief from the heat, setting up tables under umbrellas in the shallows of the river. The "small town" of Beibei, like other Chinese "small towns" is crammed full of skyscrapers, but there's still a college town feel to the bustling neighborhood where I'll live.

Below is a picture of Li Ling, her daughter, and me posed about a block away from Xi Nan Daxue Teaching Building Number 5, where I will live for much of the next two years.