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Living in Chengdu was extremely comfortable. One of the things that impressed me about Chengdu and other Chinese cities was how livable they were. Throughout my 20’s, I suffered from chronic vertigo and as a result, I’m sensitive to crowds, noise, and traffic. I still don’t have a driver’s license. Having vertigo was like being an astronaut. I would close my eyes and feel like I was rotating, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, sometimes head over heels. Watch Gravity with Sandra Bullock, imagine the film running for 13 years, and you’ll get a sense of how I felt. I followed a girlfriend from Edmonton to Toronto in the late 90’s only to discover that my vertigo-ravaged stomach would not cooperate and for the first month, I ground my teeth in my sleep due to stress. Bangkok initially hit me in a similar way. In Bangkok and Toronto, my stomach lurched, and my head swooned.

Stomach problems and teeth-grinding were surprisingly absent in China. The cities I visited, Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, and Chengdu, have far more people and a much greater density of traffic and buildings. Chengdu, for example, has a population of 21 million and forests of skyscrapers and condo buildings. That’s more than half the population of Canada in just one city. It’s almost 20 times the population of Montreal or my hometown, Edmonton. However, in Shanghai, Beijing, and Chengdu, I was surprisingly relaxed.

I sometimes wonder if it had to do with a sense of balance in urban design. Chengdu really was a “garden city”. It did an excellent job of blending its public spaces with greenery and parks. Areas of high traffic were skillfully interlaced with pedestrian friendly areas that seem to calm things down. You can sometimes assess a city’s urban design based on what you find underneath its bridges. In Montreal, you find concrete blocks, chain link fences, and heavy machinery. In Chengdu, you find well-kept greenery and elegant architectural mini parks.