First of an occassional series about the trip to Shenyang

Everyone in China travels on National Day. Seriously, I’m pretty sure there were 1.3 billion people on the road, not heading anywhere in particular, just going somewhere, because, well, that’s what you do when you have a week off.

Not wanting to seem like strange foreigners with no handle on Chinese traditions, Will (the Canadian teacher here) and I booked a bus to Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning Province, where we had an invitation to stay with our friend Windy. We left Monday at 9:40 a.m., spent four hours on the bus watching Rat Race and cartoons in Chinese, and arrived around lunchtime.

There was nothing extraordinary about the trip: a smooth highway passing through farm land and fish hatcheries, skirting smaller cities along the way. I’ve made so many road trips in the past few years, from suburbs to high desert to Northern California shores, that I find the highway comforting. It’s more familiar than a city, which has culture and history and routines. The highway is just a comfortable intermediary, always in the present, and the same everywhere.

A friend warned us that traffic in Shenyang was something to reckon with—“crazy,” he called it—but our first glimpse of the city betrayed none of the chaos we’d see on the roads in the next few days. We saw only wide streets and traffic moving as it should. Cars stopped at red lights and drivers mostly stayed in their own lanes.

We stayed with Windy’s aunt and uncle. Their apartment is part of a cluster of gray high-rises, with their unit near the back of an empty and neglected courtyard. From the outside, the residential complex has the same look as the old Soviet prefab apartments I saw three years ago in East Berlin and Prague and Belgrade. It’s all gray, the color of communism on the ground floor.

We walked up a dozen concrete stairs, then opened a steel door into an immaculate, spacious and beautifully lit home. White tile floors and walls appointed with paintings and plants that added just enough color to the main room. There were three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and an eating area. A large window in the main room brightened the entire apartment during the day, and a ring of lights complimented a central chandelier at night.

Windy’s aunt and uncle are retired, although they’re in their mid-forties. Her uncle had a stroke last year and walks with a cane; his legs wobble a bit when he walks and his vision is off, but his face still looks young. They offered us a bowl of little spherical pears when we arrived. “We always eat things that are round in mid-Autumn,” Windy told Will and me. We both asked why. “Because the moon is round,” she answered. Oh, duh.

Shenyang was the seat of government in Manchuria before the locals marched into Beijing to topple the Ming Dynasty in 1644, and in someways it resembles other past capitals. Downtown, Shenyang immediately reminded both Will and me of Beijing and Xi’an (actually the only other Chinese cities I’ve seen; Will has been in China four years and has seen much of the country). At its heart is the old imperial palace, almost a mini-forbidden city, surrounded by food and souvenir vendors. There are two main streets, both called Zhong Jie (Center Road), one on each side of the palace. One highlighted Shenyang’s Manchu history, the other had two McDonald’s, two Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets and a Starbucks and is lined with retail boutiques.

We strolled through the palace grounds, being tourists and taking lots of pictures. We passed two boys, probably no older than 11, playing with a wooden sword and ax. Will overheard their conversation:

First kid: “Look, foreigners.”

Second kid: “You shouldn’t talk like that. We should pay attention to foreign culture.”

Will: “Why can’t my students speak like that?”

Hao chi ma?

Staying with a Chinese family means two things by default: You get to eat a home-cooked meal with the entire clan and drink your fill; and you have to eat a home-cooked meal with the entire clan who don’t believe you’re full and want to see just what it means to drink your fill.

We breakfasted each morning with Windy’s aunt and uncle. Her aunt took goodhearted stabs at what Americans and Canadians eat in the morning, setting out hard-boiled eggs, bowls of warm milk, loaves of bread, fatty sausage, cakes, brown bananas, pancakes, and one offer of moon cakes.

On our second night, we ate with Windy’s father and grandmother. Ten dishes were laid on the table: fish, pork, chicken wings, preserved eggs, garlic shoots with pork, cucumber salad, pork soup, wood ears, pork with mushrooms, shrimp. “Eat everything,” the matriarch said.

That gorging preceded a similar food fest at a local restaurant with Windy’s mother (her parents are divorced) the next evening. Every time we sat down, it seemed, someone was trying to fatten us up. I’m pretty sure I made up a bit of the weight I’ve lost from all this walking since I came to China.

One of my students told me last week that Chinese food is the “healthiest food in the world.” There’s no way that’s true. Most of what we ate was fried or loaded with fat (often both), and we ate tons of it. We ate until it hurt to hold chopsticks.

‘Give me Dalian any day’

We stayed until Friday morning, taking the same bus back and getting into Dalian just in time for another huge meal with friends. Few things make you appreciate a place like leaving it, and Dalian was literally a breath of fresh air. That ocean breeze and perfect autumn temperature was a welcome relief to Shenyang’s smog and bustle.

Shenyang is an interesting place, but not somewhere I’d like to spend more than a few days. The city was dense, crowded, busy and congested. Smog and haze dulled the otherwise colorful monuments and street architecture.

The people seemed indifferent to visitors, except those trying to sell us something. Then it was back to “hello, ten yuan, hello, hello.” On buses, we were shoved backward and sideways when someone needed to get through, and few people anywhere in the city looked happy.

Maybe this was just part of the holiday rush. Maybe it’s like this everyday in the Gray City. But I think Will said it best.

“Give me Dalian any day.”

Coming soon: ‘We’ve got nature right where we want it.’

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 7th, 2006 at 8:31 am and is filed under roadside blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.