Tibet Trip Day 1

Chengdu, China

The things I put up with being in this family. I guess in this case the frustration level is relatively low, possibly because I'm so used to it and desensitized, and as the truth of this trip comes out in real time, I just chuckle at the ridiculousness of what I put up with.

I only found out yesterday that this trip isn't what it seemed – that I wasn't going with the uncle I'm most familiar with in Taiwan, which is no big deal since traveling with him has pros and cons, usually more cons – and I found out today that the trip was completely not what I was led to believe. Not only was the other uncle I thought I was going with not going, but I was in a tour group with 11 other people, including my cousin (at least I got that bit of information right), who is the tour guide.

My cousin picked me up at my uncle's building at around six this morning. My cousin's wife drove us to Kaohsiung International Airport. It was only there that other people started to show up and I realized it was a tour group. Whatever. I was just floating through this and letting go and letting myself be told what to do and when. I was fine with the tour group thing, too, since it would allow me to be more anonymous.

We flew to Hong Kong (1½ hours) and transferred to a flight to Chengdu, China (2 hours). We did some touristy stuff, and my fellow tour group members soon got familiar seeing me only with my iPod earbuds stuck in my ears. Since they were all talking in Taiwanese, I felt no need to even pretend I wanted to communicate with them. This was their tour, and I was tagging along.

Hong Kong, 11:22 a.m.; China Airlines is a Taiwanese carrier. Air China is Chinese. I'm not in Kansas anymore.

It turns out I was taking the place of my uncle who decided he didn't want to go on this trip, and I got Shanghai'd, so to speak, into it. Typical of his about-face selfishness that tends to drive people crazy, but overall he's so generally likable he can get away with it. He's also very generous in other ways, which counterbalances it.

I guess I should've been offended by the arrangement, as I was only an afterthought to make things convenient for other people, but I can only chuckle at my insignificance, and I agreed to it because it was Tibet. Anywhere else, they couldn't convince me to go if I didn't want to.

The touristy stuff in Chengdu was pretty pedestrian, and I couldn't get away from the tour group until after we checked into our (rather nice) hotel, and it was dark by then, so I just did some exploring on foot at night. Chengdu seems to be a nice enough Chinese city.

Chengdu, China; 4:20 p.m. Just a pagoda in a park.

Black and whites (Pentax ZX-5n Nikon N70, Kodak BW400CN film):