Profiling (briefly) the Nitty-Gritty of Chengdu

And now for some of the more unsavory aspects of living in Chengdu. Those of you who kept in touch with me while I was in France may recall that during my time there, I stopped looking in front of myself and instead started concentrating on my feet. The reason for this was that pet owners allowed their dogs to use the sidewalk to take care of business and never bothered to clean up after them. Well. Suffice to say that after stepping in dog poop twice in two days, I have once again learned to stare at my feet instead of the road ahead. On top of that… this is going to get gnarly. Let’s backtrack a minute. Most people know the air quality in China is pretty poor. They don’t have many government-mandated environmental protection laws, so smog is a huge issue. Chengdu has the same problem. You know when you walk out of the house and you inhale deeply and smile because it smells so fresh and good? Not here. The air just smells a little dirty. Now, a little closer to home, so many impurities in the air tend to build up in this perpetually present phlegm-like substance that lodges itself in your throat and makes it impossible to enunciate clearly. I just try to cough a little bit and deal with it that way, but the local solution is to spit it out on the sidewalk, the street, the gutter – whatever is within the artillery range, as it were. So in addition to dodging dog poop, I am also dodging spit. And I’m suspicious of any amount of liquid I see on the ground. I mean, really. If you have to go, just go! Who cares where you are? China is like an obstacle course that’s never finished.