A Walk Through Campus

I had a great talk with my sister yesterday. I love Rhea!

I'm going to post photos I took last week. I live by the East Gate of campus. There are a lot of businesses, bus routes, and general city life outside West Gate. I walk across campus this way at least once a week, usually two or three times a week. So I took photos for you. Campus is nice, it's a lot like the UW. It is integrated into the city, but also separate. There is more landscaping, though it's not at nice as the UW. Just so get a feel for where I love. Plus I am up late avoiding my homework, so this is more fun.

These got hopelessly out of order. It's mostly a trip back in time from my destination, West Gate, to my starting point, the dorms by East Gate. This blog isn't the best for photo posts.


Cute couple. Also a good example of things I think about. You learn in the West that Chinese people aren't comfortable with public displays of affection, but that this is changing. I find that on campus and in the city the displays of affection are just what I would see in the U.S. But I never see people making out like you might in Paris or something.


This is the Center for Science and Technology. It's fancy looking. If you come in West Gate, it's one of the first buildings you see.


Approaching West Gate, so you are seeing the end of my walk first.


The view out of West Gate.


This is the view of the sign right outside West Gate. That is also the school font, so you see this lettering all over everything.


This woman is on a street half way across campus. She often sells me new phone minutes. She sits here every day, with her bike and a little stool. She knits really well.


This a Chinese student dorm. All of their balconies are not gated, just the first floor, sopeople don't steal from them.


This is the sports stadium, it looks like a bug. The roof is designed to capture water, that is used in a system under the roof, for natural cooling. It's ugly.


Here's the front.

This road is almost at West Gate, it's very cute. There are more buildings on either side that they rent out to the public, it's a nice residential area, with people and puppies. One family has an American Eskimo I always stop to look at.



The creepy paintings on the side of the preschool and kindergarten. This is where I get to see the kids get picked up by their families often, and it's just so cute.

Just around the corner, just one building on campus. Many look like this.


This is just a street. I walk down this street almost every day. A few more blocks down are a bunch of cafeterias and some little stores.


You see this scene all over campus and the city. This couple has a little station here every day, they fix bicycles, but she will also fix and clean your shoes, they make locks for bicycles and homes, and various other odd jobs.



This neighborhood is just next the my dorm. It used to house teachers. But the housing is older and outdated, so it's rented to city residents. Old women are often sitting here talking and sometimes watching some toddlers. On this day I saw chickens. Yes, not more then 100 feet from my front door, in the middle of campus.


This is a broader view of the same street above with the chickens.




Looking off that street into the narrow lanes in between the apartment buildings. You can see it's very lived in, laundry is hanging, ther e are some plants growing. But China is dirty and just messy, there are pieces of broken things laying around and the apartments are falling apart around the edges.


Same lane, different view.



Across from the kindergarten is a sports field. Outside are the ubiquitous scooters. The black phone numbers you see are painted all over campus and in some places all over the city. I was told they are numbers you can call for prostitutes
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The front view of my dorm.


Blurry photo of me in front of my dorm that day.


This a good view of the lawn in front of the dorm. It's really nice. Sometimes they mow the grass and it smells great. You can also see the tall buildings, those are across the river from us. So the view from the roof is nice, we are an island surrounded by shorter buildings.



This is right across from our dorm lawn. The little building seems to be abandoned, the thing it is connected to is also abandoned. There are empty spaces like this on our side of campus. There are a lot of buildings in Chengdu that seem abandoned, there are also some concrete shells of buildings that were never finished.


This is the odd path that leads out a dirt alley and out a gate, so you don't have to leave through the official East Gate. I got out this path to get noodles and pick up junk food, or to go catch a bus. Through the doorway at the end, in the alley there are women selling vegetables and meat hanging on hooks. My mom told me not the buy the meat.