So many police, and so little crime

CHENGDU, China -- I arrived in China more than a bit paranoid.

I was travelling on a tourist visa, which was easy to obtain, and not a journalism visa, which, after several weeks of trying, I concluded was impossible to obtain, more so since the Communist government's clampdown to prevent foreign journalists from snooping around for corruption stories.

The tourist visa meant I would raise suspicion if I interviewed people, particularly officials. I joked that if I was arrested and deported, it would make a great story, but I knew it would be no joke if it actually happened.

In addition, I had been warned security police would go though my stuff when I was away from my hotel room, photos of military bases (even personnel) could lead to arrest, police were everywhere and watching 24/7.

In China, the only child prevails

CHENGDU, China -- The announcement that China was relaxing its one-child policy coincided with my arrival in Chengdu. That the draconian law, enacted in 1979 to slow population growth, was being reformed to allow two children was big news around the world, but it caused hardly a stir in Chengdu. Why was that?

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I couldn't help but notice toddlers in Chengdu, or pregnant women. Not because there were so many, but because I knew they likely were only-children, and the mothers' bumps were the only ones they were likely to have. It seemed like the premise of a dystopian science-fiction novel. But if that were the case, why did children and parents seem so happy?

Megalopolis a village at heart

CHENGDU, China -- Chengdu is a city of open storefront shops. There are tens of thousands of them. And without them, it is difficult to imagine the city of 14 million could function.

To be sure, Chengdu has gargantuan superstores, like the world's largest building by floor space, the Global Centre, which measures 100 metres by 500 metres by 400 metres.

In all, it will have 18 million square feet of floor space when it is completed, 4.3 million of which are dedicated to shopping. (By comparison, Polo Park has 1.2 million square feet.)

A massive furniture store in the downtown caught my eye. It takes up three corners of a major intersection. Furniture is big business in Chengdu, where 3,000 furniture manufactures employ 500,000 people. But even so, in China's furniture sector Chengdu ranks fifth largest.

It’s a different kind of cold

CHENGDU, China -- It was 12 C as I left Chengdu on a morning in late November. (It was -14 C in Winnipeg, a difference of 26 degrees). And yet as mild as it was, and with the forecast for a high of 16 C, my translator Duanduan Liu shivered and called it "a snow day" as she drove me to the airport in her new Buick Regal.

What passes for winter in Chengdu is mild by Manitoba standards. But all the same, residents dread the arrival of snow days that portend the winter to come when the average temperature slips to 5.6 C in January and often plunges to zero, even as low as -5 C -- minus five!

Cold, as every Winnipegger knows, is a relative thing. Which explains why every person in Chengdu whom I met and who had spent time in Canada said they preferred Canadian winters to Chengdu winters.

The reason? Central heating.

Hot on the recruitment trail

CHENGDU, China -- Sandy Prentice is the international program administrator for the Kootenay Lake School Division. The name rang no bells for me. It helped, however, when Sandy explained Kootenay Lake is the school division that serves Nelson, a town of 8,000 in southwestern British Columbia.

What on earth are you doing here? I asked.

"What everybody else is doing," she responded. "I'm recruiting students."

We were in a great exhibition hall at the impressive Shangri-la Hotel, built on park-like grounds at the forks of the Jin and Funan rivers in downtown Chengdu. The hall was filled with neat rows of booths, like streets along which thousands of students, many with their parents, window-shopped for an "international" school where they might study in English.

Head and shoulders, ears and toes

CHENGDU, China -- My interpreter, Yanjiao (Ivy) Zhang, one day pointed out a clinic a few doors up the street from my hotel where I could get a foot massage for a reasonable price.

It's a common and sensible thing in Chengdu but seemed a foolish extravagance at the time. As the days passed and the miles piled up, however, a foot massage seemed ever more inviting -- even necessary, I rationalized.

Finally, I relented (in the service of inquiry, of course) and walked up the street to where a sign painted on a window promised speedy acupuncture and massage.

When I entered the building, however, I found myself in the waiting room of a small hospital dedicated to spinal treatment, or so I concluded after an inspection of glass display cases featuring what could only be diseased or deformed human spines.

Winnipeg’s sister city: The bold and the beautiful

CHENGDU, China -- I arrived in Chengdu so exhausted I remember nothing about that night except thinking, as we drove up a broad avenue lined with buildings alive with moving light shows, I had mistakenly landed in Las Vegas.

The events of the next day, however, were the eye-opener, a crash course in modern China, and the seeming effortless speed with which the Chinese adopt and adapt modernity, as if the transformations, especially over the last decade, had been there all along. Everything I did or saw after that first day was mere elaboration.

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I was up early and went down to the lobby, where the breakfast buffet was already crowded. It was all perfectly familiar, except all the people in familiar, casual western clothes were Chinese!

A recipe for trouble

CHENGDU, China -- The KFC restaurant at the intersection of Zong Fu Road, a six-lane main street, and the Chunxi Road pedestrian mall seats 300.

It is not the size of the restaurant, however, that is remarkable, although by Winnipeg standards it is very large indeed. No. What is astonishing is it is one of three identical KFCs on the block, along with three McDonald's, three Starbucks, three Pizza Huts and one Burger King, newly arrived in Chengdu and trying to establish a presence by slashing prices by one-third.

Although all of these fast-food chains can be found on street corners everywhere in Chengdu, their concentration at this place is symbolic of changing tastes here, the Epicurean epicentre of the province of Sichuan, famed the world over for its distinctive, spicy and healthy cuisine.

To be sure, China has not become a junk food nation. And although these remain lean times, a nationwide survey of 14,000 released this summer by the China Institute of Sports Science, indicated 11 per cent of young adults (20 to 39) are obese, up from nine per cent three years earlier, and overall 34 per cent are overweight. (The obesity rate in Canada is about 24 cent).