Blogs from Chengdu, Sichuan, China, Asia - page 91

Or more appropriately, "How Chengdu Robbed My Tastebuds." But before I get to that, a quick run down of the rest of my day. I woke up early around 6:45 to catch a tour to the nearby Giant Panda Research Center. Man, those guys are cute! We left early in order to catch them during their feeding time, when they are most likely to be awake and not curled up under some tree. We first caught a glimpse of the larger Giant pandas before heading to the baby panda facility. Here, the worker/scientist brought out 7 babies just to pose for the gawking tourists (myself included). She propped them up on chairs and teeter-totters, and the Chinese tourists squealed with joy. I tried to contain myself by squealing on the inside... The baby pandas were followed ... read more

I got up early to finish tidying my room and flat before heading to Shangliu airport to pick up Gordon. Leaving in plenty of time I managed to get a taxi pretty quickly that took me to the airport for about 40rmb. The taxi driver was really friendly and I ended up speaking to him in my basic Chinese and his basic English. He helped to calm my nerves as I was excited and nervous about seeing my boyfriend after not seeing him for over five months. I got to the airport in about 30minutes and was pretty pleased I had made it in plenty of time for the plane's arrival. With the flight number from Amsterdam at the ready I figured I had between 30minutes and an hour until Gordon's flight arrived. Making my way ... read more

Ni hao as usual... At the weekend, some of us laoshi made the trip to Xindu, a small town 11 miles east of Chengdu. We went there to say 'zaijian' to Barry, who is leaving back to his home in Australia - he's a friend and fellow teacher of OUR friends, who are teaching in Xindu. But first of all a few of us visited Baoguang Si monastery (Monastery of Precious Light), 宝光寺 in Chinese. I've already explained in a previous blog how to get to Xindu, so I'm not going to repeat myself! However once you get to Xindu off the bus, just hop in one of the many taxis and say the name of the monastery (pronounce 'Bow-gwang Suh'), or give the taxi driver a scrap of paper with the Chinese characters on. It ... read more

Located on a sprawling UNESCO World Heritage Site in Sichuan Province of China, this impressive 230 foot high Dafo, or Great Buddha, has been carved into the red sandstone hill called Lingyun Hill, where 3 treacherous rivers confluence, the Min, the Dadu, and the Qingyi Rivers in the city of Le Shan, some 3 hrs from Chengdu's Panda Bears. To safeguard the passing boats, the monk Haitong in 713 AD, (at a time before Charlemagne the Great created the Holy Roman Empire), decided to carve a protective icon into the sandstone cliffs as a public works project. No doubt, he wisely understood, that the resulting rubble would fill in the river-shoals, to calm the often raging waters, taking the lifes of many, and usually threatening the profitable, surrounding agricultural areas of the citizens. Its construction took ... read more

..which means 'Happy New Year' in Mandarin, tho there are several ways to say it! First of all, I'll describe Christmas....I would have loved to be somewhere hot with preferably a) a pool b) a beach nearby, but as I'm near bang in the centre of China, I knew that wasn't going to happen! Maybe this year....? It pissed it down on the day (and has been for a week now, is it trying to remind us of the UK or something?), so we spent the day having a fry up, watching DVDs, tidying up a bit after our Christmas Eve party (a great success) and then heading out for Christmas dinner. In the end after much 'faffing about' we settled on tea ('dinner' to you non-northerners) at Dave's, which was quite impressive for 55 kwai, ... read more