AmericanWriter – are you in Chengdu? If so you can wander around the North/Northeast of Chengdu, and as you get past the train station and avoid big developments you can find some absolutely poor areas, typically represented by dirty red brick walls around a block with tons of semi-rubble-ish huts crammed inside the walls, and when you find the entrance, feel free to wander in – lots of hobbles have no doors, and the people will likely be very curious as to how a foreigner ended up there and if you are able to speak Chinese, may pick up some interesting tidbits to help with your writing. Or – go at night – same area – find some crappy food stands, and hang out, chat to people.
This is exactly what I was going to suggest – go up by the North Train Station and just walk around there. It is the nexus to the very-poor other regions of Sichuan. Check out all the tattoo vendors around the train station which lay out their blurry printed out images of tribal tattoos that they will ink on you for less than 100 kuai.
I went up there a year ago and took some photos and posted them here on the forum. You can find them here: Streetside Tattoos in Chengdu