Chengdu

Chengdu is what I like to call a small town in western China, of13 million people. It’s located in the Sichuan province, which is where those horrible earthquakes were a few years back (Chengdu, for the most part, was unaffected). We live northeast of the city center in a huge apartment complex comprised of about 10 buildings. The grounds are nicely landscaped with lots of little streams and ponds and walkways. There are probably thousands of people that live in the complex, and during the day there are lots of people out and about. There are old men playing entertaingly intense games of ping pong, little kids riding bikes, pairs of badminton players on the wider parts of the paths, and couples walking dogs. There are babies and kids everywhere, and during work hours you see lots of grandparents with their grandchildren. I’ve even seen kids wading in the ponds with cut-off two-liter bottles trying to catch fish. In the greater scheme of things, our apartment complex is located on Chengdu’s Second Ring Road (there are three ring roads circling the city center, with a few streets that bisect the rings coming out from the city center). There are many modern stores near us, including a Wal-Mart!