Fuddland

I’ve been living in Chengdu for just over two weeks now, gradually expanding my neighbourhood as I find places to eat, drink and be merry. Our new flat is much larger than the pokey little number we had in Suzhou [but at three-quarters’ the price], with a marvellous-sized kitchen and—being on the ground floor—we even have a good-sized back garden all to ourselves which we’ll be able to enjoy more once we get some furniture out there.

Actually, there are two other reasons why we’re not currently making more of the back garden. The first, main reason is that a cat decided to give birth to her two kittens there several weeks ago, and being feral she’s rather wary of us. Sadly, a few days ago I found that one of the kittens had not survived. [It was noticeably smaller than its sibling and walked with a limp, so was not off to the best start for a feral life.] It was given a simple burial under a nearby bush, two chopsticks marking its resting place. The surviving kitten seems stronger and we hope it will soon be big enough to escape the confines of the garden and be able to fend for itself.

While I was looking for a suitable place to dig the hole I almost walked face-first into the second reason why the garden isn’t my favourite hang-out at present: the most alarming-looking garden spider I’ve seen.

[There’s not much in those pictures to give you a sense of scale, so let me assure you, those are not taken with a macro lens. The spider is about nine feet in diameter. Think Shelob only scarier.]

My role in my new job has been rather undefined so far, but that’s the nature of the beast as the organisation reorientates itself from focussing on emergency relief towards project-based sustainable development. While I get to grips with looking for grants and putting together proposals there are plenty of other things that I’m much more comfortable with for me to do when I need a bit of a break: sorting out the website; organising and verifying the information that is coming in.

Despite being about 1,200 miles closer to Europe than Suzhou, Chengdu is definitely has a more “Chinese” feel about it, being a lot more inland and, moreover, not trying to soak up the overspill of Western influence from Shanghai that Suzhou has been attempting over the last fifteen years. It’s the fifth biggest city in China but, much like London, it doesn’t feel overwhelmingly huge. Yesterday I was taken out of the city for the first time, to see a nursery school only a couple of hours’ drive away in the countryside that had partially collapsed in the earthquake. We are hoping to fund the rebuilding, but the contractors have come back with quotes several times higher than originally estimated. Which reminds me, I must look up the Chinese for “cowboy”, I’ve a feeling it’s going to come in handy over the coming months.

The bigger-than-usual National Day holiday is coming up later this week and we hope to see a bit more of the city—including checking up on the pandas I saw over two and a half years ago.

#1

srh | 2009 / 09 / 30 – 16:59

Ick, we had a spider in the house yesterday with legs as thick as tree trunks ;)
Don’t forget to name some of the pandas when you visit them!