ChinaTeacher

I love Chengdu, having visited several years ago.  So it was my pleasure to show Kathleen around.  Although my favourite downtown hostel, Holly’s Hostel, wasn’t available the first nite, I made sure to arrive early the next day to secure us a room for the remainder of our stay.   I love this place because it is located in the ‘Tibetan’ quarter of Chengdu and close to many interesting sights.

Holly’s restaurant serves excellent western food and as a result, I kicked off each morning with a perfectly toasted bacon/egg sandwich.  Kathy developed a taste for toasted fried egg sandwiches and said she couldn’t wait to make them at home – success!

Now, Sichuan food in Chengdu is the exact opposite of Xinjiang food, ie SPICY!!! I don’t normally like spicy food but I have to say that I developed a taste for Sichuan Noodles – yes, they’re damn spicy, but man they taste good, even while they’re burning up your mouth!  I also enjoyed Mango Ice: Tons of chopped up mangoes served atop crushed ice – fantastically good!

We did all the requisite ‘touristy’ things in Chengdu, visited the Pandas where we can into Matthew (from our visit to Kashgar), enjoyed tea at Renmin Park’s famous outdoor teahouse, went to see Sichuan Opera which featured ‘shadow puppets’, facemask-changing, and opera of course!  Another highlight of the show was the way in which our waitresses served tea – from 3 feet away with long-spouted teapots, in the dark!  Amazing!

As with most hostels, we met lots of great people:  We made good friends with Anda from Ireland, some girls from Spain, a young guy from Guangzhou… and best of all we met a young professor from Vancouver!  Turns out that he was staying at Holly’s for an extended period to do some research on Tibetan literature.  This man is passionate about his work, which I thoroughly admire.  He gave us tons of advice about the Tibetan villages we planned to see and even cautioned us about what to do if we experienced any ‘high altitude’ problems due to the fact that many places were located 3,000-4,500 metres above sea level.  Pills help, he said; he even gave us a supply of our own.  I am deeply thankful, although I only used them once (when I was having trouble breathing one day).

I showed Kath some of my favourite places in Chengdu: The “Bookworm”, a fantastic place which labels itself a Library, Bookshop, Bar, Restaurant and Local Community Centre.  They also have locations in Beijing and Suzhou and, hopefully soon: Hangzhou!  She was impressed!  Dinner at Peter’s Tex-Mex introduced my good friend to some Texan and Mexican foods: a Burger and Burritos!  I think she was more impressed with the Burrito than the burger, frankly, but I thoroughly enjoyed them both!  The highlight of the meal came when we learned that desserts are 1/2 price after 8pm; we had just finished our entrees by 8pm – how lucky were we?!?!  A huge hunk of dark chocolate cake certainly made my day!  I haven’t had cake like that in over 5 years – fantastic!

We had a wonderful visit to Wenshou Temple and its environs, and then came across the most wonderful sidewalk teahouse, purely by accident.  Tea cost just 10 RMB, but with that tea came the most comfortable wicker chairs, large enough to fall asleep in, and looking around us we could see that many of the local people did just that.  What a relaxing way to spend our final afternoon in Chengdu!

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