16 days to go

I spent time yesterday reading about Chengdu in my Lonely Planet guide. This is the city where I will be for five weeks, the majority of my trip. The layout of the city is really not difficult, or at least I've been telling myself that, as I study the city map. I will be at the Southwest University for Nationalities which is near "South Section 4, 1st Ring Road."

Ring a ding roads
There is a square in the center of Chengdu called Tianfu Square. Then three "ring roads" circle the square: First Ring Road, Second Ring Road, and Third Ring Road. Each Ring Road is also named by its location: North First Ring Road, West Second Ring Road, South Third Ring, etc.

This layout of streets strongly motivates me to learn the Mandarin words for first, second, third, north, south, east, west, and road ... as well as street. I've been working on these words with a CD, but without actually being there, number and location words remain abstract--pure memorization. Now I at least have places on a map to tie the words to.

By the way, "road" is "Lu," "one" is "yi," and "ring" must be "huan." First Ring Road is "Yihaun Lu" (pronounced "ee hon loo"). Please, if you know more Chinese than me, email me with the correct pronunciation.

There are major boulevards that run through these rings as well as minor streets. The ring layout of streets with roads cutting through, kind of like a target with a star in the middle, seems logical as a way to lay out a city. But it sure is different from the west, where streets lie straight, cross each other in 90 degree turns, and form grids. Boise streets run fairly straight, but I lived in Utah growing up and whoever drew that map clearly laid out a grid.

In a way the rings of Chengdu, almost as remote as the rings of Saturn as I daydream about the near future, will also have similar "addresses" in the solar system of Chengdu. But not consistent addresses.

Fun fact about China: LP calls Chengdu "a true Asian city" in "its nonchalant disregard of systematic street number and naming"; some places have five sets of numbers on the door from various streets that intersect the particular location (LP 755). So LP suggests finding places more by landmarks than by addresses. And that is a western approach.