@linka
I agree with Charlie in that your post is a well written perspective piece.
However, I don’t think you get one thing – perhaps the most important word in this thread – stereotypes. It isn’t necessarily what *you* or *I* think of Sichuan or Sichuanese – it’s about guessing an opinion, based on experiences, what a commonality amongst many other people may be. It may be completely false. That’s what a stereotype is. Here are some examples about Canada, which while aren’t necessarily true, I accept as stereotypes about Canadians: Canadians say “eh” a lot; Canadian police ride horses; Canadians all love hockey; The whole country is cold, covered in snow and ice; We can’t say “house” or “about” without an exaggerated “oose” or “oot” accent; we all wear toques; We all know “jimmy” from Toronto….. — I know there are lots of “sayings” about Chengdunese, and of course all the Chengdunese saying about Chengdu will be positive, but in my experiences the stereotypes other people feel about Sichuan are absolutely not so much wonderful as critical, just as Sichuan stereotypes many other places negatively.
Hope this helps clarify.
On that note, there’s no need to get defensive over anything in this thread. I guess it was a fire-starter in the first place in that there’s another stereotype about Chinese – rather than just Sichuanese – and that’s being extremely *extremely* defensive over any China-related criticism. 😀