Sichuan Special

Well we typed up a really nice long blog about Chengdu but when we tried to post it, it went into thin air! Also, it seems that China began blocking this blogsite as well so we had to wait until we got to Nepal (today) to post this…

On our arrival to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in China, we booked into our really cool hostel and took a stroll around the city to see Chairman Mao’s statue and the People’s park which is a beautiful park set in the middle of the city full of tea houses and people doing tai chi.

The next day we spent buying bus tickets (yes, more bus journeys were in our future) and that afternoon, LJ surprised me with an early birthday present; a Sichuan Cooking course where we (or mostly I) learned to make some of our favourite Chinse food; sweet and sour pork, kung pao chicken (gung bao jidin), sweet and spicy eggplant, Sichuan spicy green beans and dumplings. As a bonus, I asked the lady how to make another one of my favourites, baozi, which is steamed bread with filling, usually pork mince. As she was teaching me, LJ happily polished off the leftovers of the cooking class. What a great team we make! That afternoon we explored an area that has been constructed to look like the typical Sichuan alleys. We bought a milk tea and enjoyed it on an old wooden bridge watching the world go by.

The next day we spent on a bus heading to Jiuzhiaguo National Park. And the following day we spent the entire day hiking through the National Park, an incredible place that neither words nor pictures can describe…despite this we still took hundreds of photos of it. It is a National Park set in the mountains and has some of the most stunning scenery with loads of waterfalls, turquoise lakes that reflect the sky and the surrounding mountains and forests. It is so beautiful that some of the scenery was worthy enough to be used in the Chinese films Hero and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and it made the 20 hour round-trip journey from Chengdu worthwhile.

Upon our return to Chengdu we had another amazing Sichuan meal before retiring early for an early day the following day. Up for an early start, we headed to Leshan (yep, on another bus) where we went to see the Grand Buddha. At 71 meters tall, it certainly lives up to its name. It was built in AD 713 to calm the waters of the 2 rivers that meet at the buddha’s feet. When we finished walking around the area, we had a bit of trouble finding the exit. We met “Chinese Patrick” who guided us out and claimed that meeting us was the highlight of his business trip at it was ‘destination that we met!’ We then took another bus to a tiny little town called Baoguo which is the starting point for hiking and exploration at Mount Emei.

The next day we started our exploration of the sacred mountainous area. We walked through and around many temples hidden in the mountainside and through the beautiful forested areas of this UNESCO heritage site. On route to the top we passed through the “Fun Monkey Zone.” Despite being escorted by the trained monkey handlers (which were really just women with bamboo sticks and slingshots that they used to deter the monkeys and some with packets of food to distract them), it did not stop some of these Macaques from jumping on my head a couple of times and on LJ’s back and grabbing and shaking my bamboo walking stick when I tried to gently direct one of them away from me. Mt Emei/Emei Shan was another gorgeous area for hiking, however, the best sight of the day was seeing a grown man running/falling up the wooden path with a massive adult Macaque on his back shrieking as if he was on fire. If we could have gotten it on video, it would have definitely been one for the Funniest Home Videos.

The next day we returned to Chengdu and made a shopping trip for provisions for the upcoming 48 hour train journey to Tibet and went for an early birthday meal at a fabulous vegetarian restaurant. Many of our family members will disagree that a veg rest could be fabulous but even the carnivorous LJ agreed it was an impressive meal!

Our last morning in Chengdu was appropriately spent at the Giant Panda Breeding Centre. I had a fit over the baby Pandas (they really were so cute) and joined the queue 5 times to see them…and LJ didn’t protest to it so I think he was as smitten as I was That afternoon we spent soaking up the Chengdu tea culture in a typical tea-house with a really friendly owner who spoke Mandarin to me as if I understood her. Our final activity was, of course, to eat a final Sichuan meal before heading to the train station to start our journey to Tibet. We had a fabulous time in Sichuan province and were really sad to have to leave it despite having Tibet to look forward to.