Sichuan cuisine (Chengdu greetings); Chinese English

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

   Greetings from Chengdu, a very large city in the Sichuan province of China.  I arrived at about 8 p.m. and I have a 7 a.m. flight to Lhasa tomorrow, so I have almost no time here.
   The Beijing airport was curiously lacking internet and international publications of all kinds (Herald-Tribune, USA Today, Asian Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Time, Newsweek, et al.).

TIBET TIDBITS--Air China distributed a disturbing English-language propoganda paper called CHINA TODAY.  I left it in my hotel room (Is it online?), but for the ANS-ers out there, there's an interesting article on what the newspaper sees as a trend toward more positive Tibetan baby names.  The newspaper compares the new names to those of before Tibet's "peaceful liberation of 1950."
   LONELY PLANET--TIBET notes not to trust monks or anyone who speaks English in Tibet, including your tour guide.  Oh, I _ALWAYS_ trust my tour guide!

SICHUAN CUISINE--I'll have a lot of it in Lhasa.  I jokingly asked my tour guide (a native of here, and never in the U.S.) about "egg rolls" and "fortune cookies."  He'd never heard of either of them!  I also asked about "General Tso's/Gau's/Chang's chicken."  He'd never heard of that, either!

IRON RICE BOWL--From the cover story in the BEIJING REVIEW, 6 September 2001, found at this hotel:
_CANDIDATES MUST NOW GO THROUGH COMPETITION BEFORE TAKING OFFICE_
_The new system of official appointment means leading posts are no longer an "iron rice bowl"_
(Check for this on the usual databases--ed.)

HUTONG--From the BEIJING REVIEW, 13 September 2001, pg. 26:
_Foreign tourists in a Beijing _hutong_. (Photo caption--ed.)
(...)
   After the _hutongs_, narrow alleys common to Beijing's downtown residential areas, markets selling farm products are major tourist attractions.

CHINESE ENGLISH (CHINGLISH)--A sometime feature here is how foreign countries struggle with the English language.  On a sign in the Beijing airport, the words "put" and "into" were broken on two lines as "p-ut" and "i-nto."