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<\/a>The food street, right next to our university, is lined with food carts and noodle shops (here, a bowl of noodles can cost as little as $.75), and full of good-humored college or high school students. On another street, closer to my apartment, an entire three blocks of sidewalk (clear for most of the day) spontaneously transforms into an open-air market every afternoon, as peddlers bring in their wares on an assemblage of rickshaws, carts and scooters. This same street, in a remarkable show of fluidity, changes again around 6 p.m., turning into an open-air hot pot restaurant. And the parks! At a park in Nanchong, one might join a crowd in listening to a man practice his karaoke skills, watch a group of people participating in a spontaneous line dance, or appreciate music drifting from a local band\u2019s weekly street-side practice. But the most striking part of it all is the thousands of other Chinese who are simply content to be alive and to be outside, strolling happily with a friend or spouse.<\/p>\nThis is where the people of Nanchong are, and this is why Nanchong feels so strikingly different from any American city I have ever been to. In all of these places, the buoyant spirit of the Chinese manifests itself in a way that reflects in stark contrast with the typical American view of China and its people. Call it consumerist if you like, but it certainly is not American consumerism. It is China. To distill it to anything less, anything else would be unfair to the unique spirit and palpable humanity that pervades modern Chinese culture.<\/p>\n
– Harrison Horst (sophomore)<\/p>\n