There must be something about Chengdu, as despite not having that many sights to see and not boasting a beautiful location, most of the people we met at our guesthouse seemed to stay on much longer than they had planned. The same was true for us, as our 3 night stay turned into 6 (as we somehow managed to ignore what was the worst pollution encountered thus far). This phenomenon was most probably attributable to the fact that we were staying at what is by far the nicest guesthouse we have ever been to. It's resort-like features: ponds, outdoor seating, bar area, table tennis, movie hall, and get this - toilet paper and hand soap, definitely made us realise we had been on the road for too long! Our room on the first night came decked out with a DVD player which was a super luxury, although unfortunately a luxury which was somewhat diminished by the fact that the pirated DVDs kept freezing. The spicy Sichuan BBQ put on by the owners became a little addictive as the vege skewers were found to be a perfect compliment to a couple of 'longies' of Tsing Tao beer.
Suit and Cons - what a dude!
The first thing that comes to mind when you think of Sichuan is spicy food, followed by spicy food and perhaps thirdly spicy food. Our time there lived up to these expectations, with just about every meal unbearably spicy and unbelievably delicious. It seemed somewhat sadistic to continually assault our mouths at every meal, however despite our tongues being on fire and eyes watering we kept going back for more and more. The Sichuan Pepper makes your toungue go numb, which is not a particularly pleasant feeling, but still didn't result into any change of eating habits.
The highlight of downtown Chengdu was Peoples' Park, which we visited on the weekend to get a taste of what the locals got up to in their spare time. The tea houses were packed with people of all ages kicking back with their mates, catching up on the goss and playing games of mah jonhg and chinese chess. Little precocious brats scooted around on roller blades, oldies ballroom danced, kids encircled the main statue armed with sketch books and little fold out chairs, and lovers rowed around the algae infested lake. It was amazing to see the diversity of activities people were getting up to as the park was treated as one giant communal backyard (Chairman Mao would be proud). Possibly the only downside was the numerous ameteur Peking Opera Singers having a bash at their craft...
China's elite police patrol the lake in Peoples' Park
Aimes' favourite sight in and around Chengdu was undoubtably the Giant Panda Research Centre which is attempting to prevent their extinction with only a few thousand reportedly still in the wild. The cute cuddly things were arousing from their sleep as we got there in the morning. We watched them go through their morning rituals of releasing their bowels, having a bit a rumble with their mates and then sitting down and munching on the gastronomic delights of various kinds of bamboo. The breeding program here has been relatively successful, despite Pandas reportedly often being too lazy to mate some years, and you can see some of the tiny babies in the nursery area.
Giant Pandas!
More Giant Panda!
Baby Panda!(via a monitor)
Conversley, the Giant Buddha in Leshan (which is supposedly the worlds largest buddha after the Taliban decided there is a correlation between the dynamiting of ancient statues and precipitation) was a bit of a disappointment. Not that the statue isn't impressive and very big (it is VERY, VERY big), it's just that the theme park infrastructure which has been constructed around it takes away any sense of amazement you have and makes you want to escape as quickly as possible. We took a boat to get the best view of the statue and ended up spending most of our time watching all the Chinese tourists on board as they struck various seductive poses and contorted their bodies into difficult positions to get the best photos of themselves (oh, and the buddha of course).
The world's biggest Buddha statue
Boats (and some serious haziness) at Leshan
Our last couple of hours in Chengdu were spent at Xiao Wang's Tiny Museum which is literally a single room in a small house down some back streets which has been filled with thousands of items of Mao Zedong memorabilia. Newspaper articles, badges, portraits, books and lots and lots of gold busts pack the musty smelling room, which you can view while Mr Wang shouts at you in Chinese (we think he is just about deaf).
Xaio Wang's Tiny Museum
One unfortunate result of staying on in Chengdu for so long was a bad case of asthma for Aimes, something we might have expected considering the fact that on some days visibility was down to about 100m on account of the smog.
From Chengdu we headed south to Emei, intending to climb Emei Shan (one of China's four holy buddhist mountains), however asthma and a couple of bouts of gastro resulted in us abandoning these plans. In the end this didn't seem like such a bad thing as the people we spoke to who had done the climb reported being molested by monkeys for most of the way, something that reportedly became quite scary when any attempt to eat was made. As such a day and a half were spent in bed recovering before attempting what would turn out to be nearly 24 hours on transport to our next destination of Lijiang in Yunnan province.
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