It was a great idea to move south, we must admit. It’
getting warmer and more laid- back with every city we visit, and Chengdu was
the first place where sitting for hours, drinking tea and doing absolutely not
much more than that, is not only socially acceptable, it seems like a way of
life in here. Of course, it would be a naive oversimplification to say that
everyone in the city, or in Sichuan province,
is like that, or that is the rule that everyone is following.
After
all, it’s big and busy city, and I doubt everyone has plenty of time to sit and
drink tea. However, the social life in Chengdu does seem to be centred around
teahouses, and apparently other Chinese regard the pace of life in Sichuan as
being nothing more than a sign of laziness.
And we ourselves felt it somehow, that the craziness of Bejing couldn’t
be find in here. Maybe it’s also the warmth, more pe- we’ve already escaped the
winter, there areThat’s what we thought as we were walking on the (dirty)
riverside towards the temple.
The best place to slow down, drink tea, walk around and
generally get relaxed was supposed to be the people’s park not far from the
centre. Do you get this sometimes- you get an idealized picture before you
actually see something, you expect something to be like in that idealized
picture. So maybe you too, after reading the first paragraph though that the
People’s Park will be just like that, slack, relaxed, laid back, chilled, calm.
And maybe it normally is. But when we arrived there, the music , noise, the souvenir sellers, the crowd and general mess had hit our heads and penetrated to the
brain with the force of a piano falling from the skyscraper on a mouse- chasing
cartoon cat. We were unlucky enough to be there at the time of some fair- thus
we became victims of our own expectations, as the fair did seem alright, and
had a nice community filling, but that’s just not we were looking for at the
moment.
The temple not far from our hostel was a much better place to catch a breath and drink tea. The beautiful tropical garden, full of older people playing games and chatting was charming and full of inner peace.
Very near we found a small restaurant with cheap local food, we went there twice - first time we ordered cold noodles with chilli and sugar (knowing only noodle sign, chilli and sugar was a nice surprise). However, as we wanted to try more local things we took a picture of the board with food and after translating it, smarter, we came back and ordered some more - cold noodles again, pork dumplings and noodle soup.
The rest of the city attractions was too touristy for our taste - the local streets with snacks near Tibetan quarter turned out to be an artificial alley of overpriced food and souvenirs stalls.
We went to see pandas using local transport, as we've always trying to do(saving money and observing locals, but it also takes more time). 'The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding (hereafter Chengdu Panda Base) is a non-profit organization engaged in wildlife research, captive breeding, conservation education, and educational tourism.'http://www.panda.org.cn/english/us/1.htm It was a really nice experience to see these lazy and cute animals. They are endangered species, which is sad, but on the other hand, they seems so clumsy and slow so no wonder...
After pandas, we went to Leshan to see the biggest Buddha in the world. The whole thing was a bit crazy, because we didn't want to stay in Leshan, as the city is dirty and not really nice, and as we booked a hostel in Emeishan to go trekking on the next day. Because we overslept, as we stayed up late the day before with people we met in hostel in Chengdu, we had a limited time to see everything there.
Anyways, the statue is impressive and the surrounding temples in the jungle are a great place to explore and relax for hours, which we didn't have. I am still surprised that we managed to catch the last but to Emei, where we went for 2 days trekking climbing the stairs ;)
