Eric's Beijing Diary

John Wesley Powell's conclusion to his journal is terse and unceremonious: "August 29.--We start very early this morning. The river still continues swift, but we have no serious difficulty, and at twelve o'clock emerge from the Grand Canyon of the Colorado."

Of course, I skipped some of the excitement, but the fact is that Powell's journey after the Howland party left him was largely anticlimactic. And once the mission is over, there is not much more that can be said about it. Powell is not writing for television. He is keeping an accurate journal, and he doesn't try to make it more than it is. Do the job, and report the results.

This morning, I departed the ship at Chongqing and took the bus here to Chengdu. I had hoped to spend a little time in Chongqing, because there is much history in that city. It was the capital for awhile when China, under Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek), was fighting the Japanese. But Chongqing doesn't have any youth hostels. So I would have had to stay in an expensive hotel. Chengdu is a transfer point for backpackers going to Yunnan and Tibet, so there are quite a number of youth hostels. I am here at the Dreams Travel International Youth Hostel. I chose this one because it is run by a travel agency, so I figured it would have the best travel desk. The dormitory is 15 yuan per night (about two dollars).

This evening, the hostel had organized a tour to the Asian Cup football game at the new Chengdu stadium. Saudi Arabia was playing Iraq. When we got to the game, I was interested to notice that the people of Chengdu overwhelmingly favored Iraq. The team leader from the hostel told me that it was because the people in this area tend to view Iraq as the underdog in their fight with the Americans. As we were watching the game, a man sitting near us with a pair of cymbals stood up and started leading a cheer:

Iraq xiong qi! This is a popular cheer in the Sichuan dialect which means roughly, "Be a man," or "Rise up!"

The crowd responded:

Iraq, xiong qi! Iraq, xiong qi!

The man who was leading the cheer became more and more animated. Before long, he was saying,

"Saddam, xiong qi!" "Saddam, xiong qi!"

The police came and stopped him immediately. He had crossed a line. That was a political statement. Cheering one's team during a football match is fine. But Saddam Hussein has nothing to do with football.

Labels: Summer 2004, Travel Sichuan