Making our way from Chongqing to Chengdu by train was not easy, not having a phone SIM card (a classic foreigner-in-China problem), and being overall confused as anyone visiting China after the pandemic might find themselves. We ended up buying a last minute standing ticket on the train do to poor planning, and it was a long ride, I can assure you. This was not made any easier when we arrived at the location of our residency, and it seemed that it was somehow the wrong location.

It turns out that NY20 is a multi-faceted organization and happens to have two locations, which are not too far from each other, but still a taxi ride away.

NY20 is composed of an art park, a community of artists with their own studios, and also a more touristic part with restaurants, tea houses, a museum, and the residency apartments too.

It is very rare, but this one was one of those residencies where we were completely taken care of in terms of meals, as we were given some snacks for breakfast at the local grocery store, and would visit the restaurant with our personal (strong-willed) chef for every lunch and dinner, together with fellow resident Martina. The location of the residency is truly remarkable, easily accessible via metro, and right on the path of a cycling path (the Tianfu Greenway) that circles the entire city. Also, it was right at a time when all the fields would be blooming with some kind of yellow flowers, which are canola flowers, making the view very festive.

Our residency was just a month, but we made it a point that this time around we would try to explore the local music scene a bit better. That’s why we reached out to local musician Yu Zhuoling, and the concert series Daybreak for a concert at the Yard Cultural and Creative Park (where you can find a very cool record shop too), and we also hung out with our new friend Shii as well, who introduced us to the film maker Monkey during a community festival in the district of Yulin.

It was our second visit to Chengdu, but we could not remember very much about the city, except for the very famous People’s Park. One of the most remarkable museums that we ever visited though happened to be a bit outside of Chengdu, and it is dedicated to the Sanxingdui people. The museum reported some interesting information about the hairstyles of the people represented through this statues, about the sacrificial pits discovered since 1986 in a nearby site, and much more.

A remarkable event that took place during this residency was the shooting of a 15 minute documentary with local Sichuan TV, a somewhat painful experience of being followed by a TV crew for a couple of days with very rigid expectations about what the daily routine of artists might look like. Every time we boarded the metro we would see these same kind of documentaries, and we wonder now what people will have thought maybe watching ours at some point. They also filmed our final performance at NY20, where we premiered some new music making use of a yangqin bought on Taobao (so many taobao deliveries we received during our time in Chengdu! It is very dangerous to activate your WeChat pay…), and modified through an exciter and some contact mics. In the studio we worked a lot also on magnetic tape mechanisms, but never finalized any useful device with those experiments.

During our time at NY20, we also got to share an incredible abundant and generous lunch with one of the founders on the occasion of the visit of the director of the Arte Laguna Prize. During this event we started chatting also with a representative of the Sichuan Art Centre, that invited us to join a trip outside of the city soon after. Together we went on a day trip to Dayi, that first stopped at a glam camping site, then followed the visit to a sunflower farm, and ended up with an incredible hotpot experience at a wormwood plant farm, hosted by a very funny and charismatic feng shui master. To date it is our most opulent hot pot experience yet, complete with xiyou ji themed plates.

We also got the chance to reconnect with a dear friend of ours, Jia Jing, and we visited him in his studio first, then shared hotpot and tea together. The time at the teahouse was really special, having chrysanthemum tea and bamboo green tea. It was remarkable to hear about his experience of the pandemic, of the lockdown, of the protests, of his dreams for moving to the USA, the accounts of his mum’s memories of past famines, and some overall pessimistic views on the local art scene. He talked to us about a new generation of Chinese kids that do not want houses, cars, kids, or name-brand clothes. Together we ended the day reconnecting with other friends at a music shop where we had performed in 2019, a shop that has now doubled in size.

With Shii and Monkey we set off one day toward Leshan, which was depicted to us as a sort of paradise of food. We immediately got into a sort of creperie shop, followed by a cold hotpot (钵钵鸡) and Leshan duck (甜皮鸭) lunch. To burn off some calories we took a walk on the river from which you can see the alcove of a huge Buddha statue, but can’t get a glimpse of the Giant Sleeping Buddha itself, unless you get on a boat. It is carved on the cliff at the confluence of three rivers, and it is the world’s largest carved sitting statue of Maitreya, dating back to the Tang Dynasty. We decided to make our way toward the valley of the Mount Emei Scenic Area before our pilgrim visit.

As we were driving along river in the valley we started encountering locals who would warn us to turn around as the area is supposedly guarded and not accessible to non Chinese people, due to national security reasons connected to a nuclear site in the nearby. At first we kindly shrugged off these warnings, and continued to walk through a rather sketchy tunnel related to some historical battles in the area, and then across a bridge, where warnings started escalating. A man walking a dog and carrying a photography book more vehemently addressed us as foreigners, and simultaneously began shouting at us, filming us with his cell phone, and finally called the local police too. Soon a couple of policemen arrived, and were actually very kind. They did something with our passports, and they gave us a lift back to our car so that we could get back on the designated tourist-friendly track. We found out that we were in one of the very sites of the so called Third Front: between the mid 60s and the 80s, Mao created the concept of the Third Front to locate critical infrastructure and national defense facilities away from areas where they would be vulnerable to invasions, into rural Sichuan as well. Operating on the principle of "choose the best people and best horses for the Third Front," many skilled engineers, scientists, and intellectuals were transferred to Third Front facilities. In Sichuan province, China developed an integrated nuclear sector which included uranium mining and processing facilities. Because Chinese policymakers believed that the risks of invasion from foreign powers were imminent, Third Front workers were instructed to "engage in a race against time with American imperialism and Soviet revisionism." We got to see also the bridge that belongs to the Chengdu-Kunming Railway that links between Chengdu and Kunming, but also important facilities like Xichang Satellite Launch Center. On a personal level, we can say that this was maybe the most delicate encounter we have ever had, where the fact that we were foreigners was the main focus of the problem. Even more interestingly, the man who was threatening us on the bridge, was doing so with the hopes of capturing the whole scene for use on TikTok, where a recent trend prioritizes viral clips of foreigners misbehaving. Luckily, our quality of being far too boring saved us once again from the TikTok feed.

Once we got back on the tourist path, we started hiking uphill on a mule path, what was once a ropeway, which gave us some nice views over the river, but we couldn’t complete it as it was already getting dark and we wanted to get back to town in time for a visit to the Buddha. By then, we had decided that we could spend the night in the area, so that we could go and visit Mount Emei the day after.

We parked the car in Leshan, and started walking toward the Buddha, which was past a very deserted tree avenue ending in a guarded gate. The guard was apparently sleeping, so we just passed through very quietly. Right after we were in, the gates closed behind us. We kept going and started making our way up the stairs toward the statue: we were the only visitors, it was dark, and it was maybe 20 minutes before the official closing time of the park - that’s how we started joking that we are the last customer of the Buddha. We got to enjoy a unique intimate encounter with the beautiful statue, illuminated, and observing the river and the cityscape. It was then time for dinner, and our brave friends took us to a special restaurants where we got to eat some frog meat hotpot too.

*The Buddha’s view of Leshan city at night*

But adventures for the night were not over! We wanted to see if we could spend the night at a KTV to avoid paying for a hotel, and Shii, who is extremely resourceful, chose a KTV where you get massages too. Needless to say that, when you go to a KTV with a professional singer, you are better off leaving the singer sing - so after all it was a great deal for us, witnessing a private live concert, while getting a Sichuan-style massage. We have been to a KTV three or four times by now, and we are not certain but it seems that somehow you always end up hearing the same songs, no matter how extensive the song list is.

At the last minute, it was maybe 2am, and it was decided that we should probably look for a hotel to take a rest, but this turned out to be not such a easy task: finding an hotel that could register the two of us, foreigners, took a few tries, and then our friends found a spot for their own; we would have reconvene in the morning. The plan for the second day was to visit Mount Emei: the weather was rather awful, and we had to buy some raincoats. After a bus ride we arrived at the midway point, where steps would start toward the top of the mountain. It was not an easy walk, but still we were really happy to finally get to the Golden Summit, where a complex multi-faced golden statue (48m) of Samantabhadra Bodhisattva was awaiting. There were also preparations being made for the celebration of the 4th April, which is the The Qingming Festival. The way down was also eventful, because we met some monkey families, and we caught a ride on the cable car too. Unable to refuse another opportunity of tasting Leshan cuisine, we stopped by a restaurant serving duck soup, before heading back to NY20, where we had to find a way to get into the fenced compound, waking up the night guard.

That was our last night in Chengdu, so in the morning we were supposed to get up early to catch a train to Chongqing; and we had never got up so early, so we were really surprised when it turned out that the gates were still closed in the morning, and we had to wake up the same night guard, again! The whole mishap caused us to miss the train, and we had to get to another different Chengdu station to get another one. Overall, it was really hard to get a cheap ticket on these trains, because the standing tickets were always all sold out. Once in Chongqing, we got picked up by our dear friend, Kunlun, who took us to a hotel and then to his gorgeous new music venue and vinyl shop, located within a district designed by a Soviet architect. The night was overall such a sweet time of old and new friends, and ended with a delivery of delicious barbecue skewers. We only have delicious and sweet memories from all of our visits to Chongqing!