I haven't really seen many "sights" in Chengdu, but I've been spent a great day and a half relaxing here and hanging out with some fellow travelers.

The city, perched on a broad plateau in central Sichuan province (home of kungpao chicken and other spicy dishes), is one of the nicer, more relaxed cities that I've seen. There's not much in the way of tourist attractions, but the various parks are a great place to slow down and unwind mid-trip.

On my first day, I wandered out to see the giant Mao statue overlooking the park in the center of the city. His pose, with one arm raised in a vaguely Third Reich sort of salute, is exactly as I imagined it to be. Further south from the statue, a river cuts through the city with a pleasant park stretching along either side. It must be wonderful in the summer. I passed a low-key evening eating a cheeseburger and drinking beer at a Westerner's hangout near the river called Sophie's Oasis (formerly and sometimes still called Paul's Oasis), talking with the Chinese proprietor and two expat English teachers, one English and one Israeli. After returning to the hostel, my hitherto unmet roommates appeared, and I stayed up a while longer talking with them. All three of them -- an Australian guy and a Swedish couple -- are great to hang out with.

I slept late today and spent the afternoon hanging out with my roommates. I accompanied Matt, the Australian, to the bus station to buy the first ticket on his long and difficult bus trek from here to distant Xining. Afterwards, we met up with the Swedes in the beautiful Renmin Guanyuan (People's Park). We rented a boat and rowed around a little pond in the park. We indulged our curiousity in two park attractions that were elliptically described to us as "ghost" and "subway." The "ghost" turned out to be a twisting, pitch-dark hallway in which motion sensors occasionally caused Halloween-masked manequins to spring to life and screech their way towards you. The "subway" was a little underground monorail that wandered through a bewildering collage of mangy-looking exhibits ranging from aliens on the moon to the Great Wall to the American West. Both attractions were worth every kuai, in their kitschy sort of way. Afterwards, we sat in the park drinking tea and eating sunflower seeds, which are a very popular snack here in China. (Perhaps this is where the Chinese get their work ethic. A snack that requires so much effort for so little reward would never be as ubiquitous in the States.) When the afternoon faded into a chilly evening, we wandered over to an otherwise empty Tibetan restaurant, where for the first and last time, I ate yak. I had Nepalese yak curry, which was pretty much how you would imagine yak curry to be. All in all, it was a wonderfully relaxing day.

Early in the morning, the Swedes (Asa and Henrik) are catching to flight to Lhasa(!) and Matt is beginning his grand bus Odyssey. Everyone's off on some grand adventure.

I will leave for nearby Emei Shan in the morning, a sacred Buddhist mountain dotted with monasteries that trace their roots back as far as the introduction of Buddhism in China. The hike up and down the mountain, which peaks at 3,099 meters, should take about three days, during which time I expect to be incommunicado. If you never hear from me again, assume I've been captured by a band of sacred Buddhist mountain monkeys.