Spontaneous 561mile detour to Chengdu, Sichuan!

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In an utterly random turn of events, my dad completely randomly suggested on the phone that I take a detour to Chengdu, in Sichuan, 561 miles away!
The original plan was to head north to Shaolin, and then east to Xi'an, (look it up on a map if you want) but this kind of turbelence is typical of my dad, as any member of my family will know.

Hence, here I am in Sichuan, dubbed as being host to the best food in China, and really very hot.
There's a saying that goes:

Visit Sichuan when you're old, because when you get there you'll never want to leave

Some friends of the family were extrememly kind in letting me stay with them there, and I toured most of the sights with their daughter, Anna.

Chengdu is strange; you know how Shanzhen was all towering skyscrapers and lights, while Xiangtan hadn't changed for a few hundred years? Chengdu seems to have randomly plonked towering buildings and malls on top of an ancient city, resulting in no 'modern' and 'slum' quarter, but instead 400yr old buildings next to 40 storey flats....?

First stop was the Wuhou Temple, and anyone who has played Dynasty Warriors will recognise the names Cao Cao, Zhuge Liang, and Liu Bei, all opf which have shrines in the temple. It's also Cao Cao's final resting place, but being a paranoid little tyrant, he had about 70 fake graves made all over the place, so nobody knows which one is the real one anymore.
Instead, we all just circle the approximate area of about 500sq metres which I found quite amusing.

Later the same day, Anna took me to Dufu's Thatched Cottage, and for those ignorant few (like me) who don't know about this guy, he existed about 3000 yrs ago, and wrote hundreds of poems in his little thatched cottage, and in terms of fame and popularity, he's a bit of a chinese Shakespeare.
Wandering around the (reconstructed) cottage, I tried to understand how he managed to capture the essence of nature in his works and stuff. Unfortunately hardly anyone can even understand the poems in their original format without a few years of study, thanks to how the language has changed.

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Photos

I thought this shot was quite clever..
Here's the beginning of that 500sq metre plot that Cao Cao is probably buried in. Approximately. lol.

Liu Bei
He seems umm fatter than his character in Dynasty Warriors... ok I felt really dumb here, my only knowledege of this epic part of chinese history derived from a Playstation game.

How much is inspiration and can you get a student discount?
So, this is the place. Yes, we got lost a couple of times. Then we found a map. Did I mention that we actually managed to blag a student discount using my ULU (Uni of London Union) card?

Nature. Beauty. Life. Lillies.
As you can see, I'm contemplating the art of poetry. And calculating how rich he must have got for being so enlightened, and how ironic it is that the requisite enlightenment leaves you without desire for wealth. Forget happiness, show me a way to survive in the modern world without money and I'll stop trying to get rich.

Ten Thousand Buddha Temple
Ok, now I see such a claim and I get the urge to start counting. A stroll around Dufu's Thatched Cottage turned into a personal crusade when we couldn't find it anywhere. We might have been there forever if I hadn't realised it was under refurbishment. After we got our breaths back from the laughter, this I had to photograph.