Day 2

My second day is devoted to getting to know the city by getting lost and found again. There is a main road down the centre of the city and the hostel is about one third of the way down, so I go off to the left or right of this road (人民路). There is one area, near a temple, that seems to be trying to be like Chang Huang Miao in Shanghai - same type of old fashioned buildings and touristy shops - but less busy. I go into Carrefour (家乐福）which is supposed to sell a lot of western groceries. If they do, I don't notice - I thought I knew quite a bit about Sichuan food, but am astounded by the variety and quantity here. There are enormous displays of pickled vegetables, only a few of which I can identify, huge variety of dried meat snacks, incredibly fresh seafood, and one area set up as a dumpling and Chinese stuffed crepe station.

Lots of the clothes I brought here are not going to be appropriate - I brought a lot of skirts and hardly anything I do here involves dressing up. Maybe I can put them to good use if I get a business English teaching job but meanwhile I am on the lookout for some things to keep the chill off like big socks and a scarf. (Oddly, it always seems colder indoors than outdoors.) I go into department stores to look at boots and am greeted with 光临 (guang1lin2, honored guest) though they still do the downwards gauge-the-customer shoe glance, which I think is universal. I am not rating much since I am wearing greasy hiking boots. I check the fibre content on a scarf and the shop girl rearranges the scarf as soon as I stop touching it, which my friends tell me happens everywhere.

Computer Street, south of the University, is the most amazing place - along this street are three big multistory buildings with floors full of every kind of electronic equipment and very cheap cds and dvds. I could spend hours and hours here. I also go into the Starbucks, which is a pretty authentic Starbucks experience and costs the same as at home. I've been really looking forward to food here, but getting something to eat is a bit intimidating - the few characters I know are not usually enough to figure out what is on the menu. The phrase 什麽 是 最 好 吃（shen2me shi4 zui4 hao3 chi1) serves me very well a couple of times.