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The Chinese word Tao means path or way, or street. This idea is the root of the Taoist religion. While most places in China aren’t that religious these days, life here is filled with streets, and the streets with life.

The way can be difficult to navigate. I live in a small mountain city called Wanzhou, which is on the banks of the Yangtze River, in the Sichuan region of western China. The river and the mountains combine to prevent any street from being straight. I spent months getting lost whenever I strayed from the main roads. There are stairs everywhere, making each walk an exercise in three-dimensional thinking.

In all these wanderings I have yet to find a street that’s been far from the click of mahjong tiles. Mahjong is a tile-laying game that occupies almost everyone’s free time. And free time is in great supply. The streets are loaded with small shops and all of them have more  employees than it seems they could possibly need. Unless they are needed precisely to defeat neighbouring shop employees at the game. Players at green-topped game tables congregate in parks and alleys and spectators gather. But it’s not just mahjong on which people spend their time. Cards use less expensive equipment and can be played with a stool and lots of shouting. People talk about Sichuan people having fiery tempers to go with the spicy food they eat. Big — yet good-natured — screaming matches often ensue.

There are more sedate pastimes. Old people sit and watch kids running by or meander through parks. The gentle clicking of metal spheres being slowly rotated in hands often accompanies these walks. I’ve been told that rotating these spheres is a way to maintain longevity. Another common technique is walking backwards in circles. Many of those old pedestrians seem as aimless as me. They’re just walking to see what there is to see, especially the ones walking backwards.

In Wanzhou sunny days are rare. But when they do occur, the kite flyers come out. Carefully spaced old men, tethered to their contraptions far above, line the banks of the Yangtze. These are the kinds of kites on which I can imagine trying to send a person into space. Those sunny days also turn into impromptu flag ceremonies when people can actually expect their clothes to get dry.

While Wanzhou is a small city, it is technically part of Chongqing, a huge metropolis a couple of hundred kilometers upriver. Chongqing is known for its spicy food. I’m assailed with more than the jingles of fast food restaurants when I travel through the city. Independent vendors attack your sense of smell directly as they fry up noodles or potatoes or anything you can put on a stick. The spiciness that wafts from tubs of takeout causes your mouth to water as beautiful girls try to find places to sit and eat. Or at least I tell myself it’s the peppers. Then the burning coal they use to cook on the street, where there are no gas lines or electricity, always give me coughing fits, and the girls are out of sight by the time I recover.

I also coughed in the mountains, where people burn yak dung in fireplaces and incense in offering pyres. The idea of a path takes on even more significance in Lhasa as Tibetan pilgrims circumambulate temples, prostrating themselves all the while. On the ground around the Jokhang Temple the rasping of the pads that protect the pilgrims’ hands and knees sliding over rocky tiles is omnipresent. But you can get away from all of that; get above it all with monks who’re listening to the rituals happening below.

Then it’s time to find the way home. Even though my apartment is away from the noise of the street, all that stuff is waiting just outside. The paths are filled with life.

In The Fray Contributor