Xiangtan Begins

I have been in the USA for four months and have just returned to China. I am now in Xiangtan and will be here until mid May.

I am beginning to think that Xiangtan may take a little getting used to (duh).
Of course I know I am new here and don’t anything about it just yet, and I do acknowledge that Chengdu took some time to learn where to go, what to see, how to get around, etc; but this is definitely a small town.

I managed to get out between rain storms on Saturday to walk and see and look around. My first observations are that the roads are in need of some definite attention. Too many potholes and broken curbs and cracked, broken sidewalks. And the little street sweepers that you would see all over Chengdu keeping all the debris cleaned up with their little witches brooms are nowhere to be seen here. In fact, large piles of months (years?) old trash is literally strewn everywhere. So while I know I am not in Kansas, Toto; I am definitely in the rural reaches of south central China.
My second observation is that there are far fewer restaurants available. I had grown accustomed to having restaurants and banks on every street corner all competing for my Yuan, making it easy to select where to go for lunch/dinner - but not so much here.
My third observation is that westerners are pretty much non existent. I saw a few in the hotel and a couple out on the streets, maybe only 10 or 15 so the local stares are pretty intense. However, as I have found the curiosity is pretty strong also, so several people have stopped me to ask where I am from and that always leads to interesting dialogue. Like the guy who stopped me on the street to ask where I was going (and since I was just walking with no destination in mind), I pointed forward and said “I am going that way.” He looked puzzled and asked “What’s ‘That way’?”, so naturally I replied “I have no idea, that’s why I am going there.” He smiled and said “Um, well, OK.” And then scurried off.

So, while I find the town really small and in need of some infrastructure improvements, it seems I will be able to count on the natural curiosity of strangers to engage in the usual bantering. I do find it interesting that the Chinese are much more curious and desiring to talk to strangers than the Americans are.

My only real concern so far was in finding a bank to draw some money. In fact, this caused me a major anxiety for a while on Friday. Recently, my company changed from a corporate MasterCard to a corporate American Express card. Normally, I would prefer this until I began to hunt for an ATM that would accept an Amex card. The more I looked, the less I found. Since I had all of 100RMB in my pocket, this was a little disconcerting and I began to panic about what I was gonna do if the Amex just wasn’t accepted here? Bank of China is the largest bank and the easiest to deal with (ATMs have English language option), but even those I found didn’t accept Amex. Fortunately, with the help of our local team and driver, we found that the Bank of China central office ATM in the middle of town will, in fact, accept an Amex. Whew! Of course, I have no idea how we got there, so I will require help again to find it when it’s necessary to reload but at least funding won’t be an issue – even if I have only one location.

It did rain all weekend (at times very hard), so I have had only about 3 hours Saturday and 2 hours Sunday to go explore to locate restaurants, stores, ATMs, etc, so I still have much to figure out. But I did locate a good place next to the hotel to get cheap beer and the always important Coca Cola’s and there is, of course, a McDonalds and KFC. I did actually stop at McDonalds for Lunch Saturday and discovered that they also have a delivery service. As you see from the photo all that is required is to bring your bicycle into the store, load the food into a warming bag, place that into a basket on the bike, and off you go. Imagine that back home? I couldn’t either.

Anyway, this next adventure has now begun and I have a whole new lifestyle to learn. Should be interesting.

Here are few more pictures of the Xiang River, and some of the sites I have seen. The river is big and full of commercial barges and some small fishing boats. It runs through the middle of town. I found a park where people can visit and walk and fish and they have some “attractions” for the kids. I especially liked the air filled balloon you get into and “roll” your way around on the lake. I know somewhere there is the Chairman Mao museum (this was his birthplace) and some attractions associated with him, but those are adventures for another day.