Chengdu – An Unexpected Afternoon

Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Although I told you we would be taking a bus tour in the afternoon, we arrived there only to discover that the Number 901 Tourist bus was no longer running.  Not just today, but not anymore at all.  (Note to self – The internet might not always be correct.)  This really wrecked our plans for the afternoon and we had to quickly come up with a plan B.  So we asked our driver to take us back to Jinli (pronounced ‘Jen Le’ Street.  Since Michael had not been, I was ok with going back for him… and I had not prepared for any Plan B…my bad.  But everything happens for a reason and it turned out to be a great time.

We passed by one the famous technical universities in Chengdu.  Our driver told us that basically if you are accepted to this university, you have a job guaranteed at graduation.

Here are a couple of snaps from Jinli St.

While we were taking our pictures here, there were Chinese people taking our pictures too.  Again we end up in someone’s vacation album… I am always surprised by their desire to have our pictures… but Michael does look like Santa.

Of course we had to stop for dessert at the Dairy Queen.  Once we enjoyed our ice cream, we decided to leave Jinli St and just head down the street… no particular destination … no map… no anything… just follow our nose.  We could always hail a taxi if we got tired or had enough… but for now we would just explore where ever it lead us. 

After getting a couple of blocks away, we saw what looked to be a huge park and there were lots of locals headed in, so we figured what the heck… let’s check it out.  And I am soooo glad we did!!!

Just inside the gate, stood this massive iron pot with dragons running up its sides; I have no idea what its significance, if any, but it was impressive.  And there were beautiful gardens and flowers everywhere. 

We just followed the flow of the people and let them take us where ever.  The wherever turned out to be awesome.  We did not know exactly what kind of park we had wondered into until we were leaving… out a different way.  It was a graveyard to honor a famous general.  However, unless you see that written you would never have known… he is the only person in it.

It was actually a place that the local people gather to play cards or dominos or hang with family or dance or listen to music… or just wander around.  It is a day of leisure and socializing.  Something we Americans have kinda forgotten how to do.  We do not just decide to spend the day relaxing in the park unless something is going on, some kind of planned event.  But this is just an ordinary Saturday for them… nothing special in the park… just hanging out with friends and family.

Several areas like the one above were scattered around the park.  Every table was full.  Some areas were just people playing cards and some areas were people just playing some kind of strange dominos.  I am not sure what kind of dominos.  They were much larger than our dominos at home and no dots.  We watched for a good while and could not figure out exactly what they were playing.  We later learned it was called mahjong, a Chinese tile game.

This couple was dancing and there were other people around dancing to the music too.  I missed the shot of an elderly gentlemen standing and swaying and twirling to the music… he was so cute.

In the snap on the left, a lone man was playing his horn with an instrumental recording of the other instruments accompanied him.  From the distance we thought it was a full band.  What drew us to him… he was playing ‘Beer Barrel Polka’!!!    Not the song you expect to hear in China.  However, it is not all that uncommon to hear American music on street corners… literally.  There are street merchants on their tricycles with the cart on the back filled with CD’s… mostly American artists.  I am guessing bootleg, but only guessing.   

On the right was a massive sand box.  There were children playing in the sand pile; with of parents and grandparents looking on.

As we left the park out a different gate is when we learned what the park really was… Here is the sign prominently posted on the real entrance.

The next photo is the actual entrance to the graveyard. It is considered the first structure of three leading to the tomb.  Although this was not the exact order we encountered everything, I tried to put it in an order that made better sense for the blog. 

This is Jing Zhong Gate.  It is an arched gate of 3 passages, the second structure on the passage leading to the tomb.  The first photo is the front of it and the next is looking to the back side… no giant antique dog sculptures.

This is the Tablet Pavilion.  It is a square pavilion of 81 sq meters, the third structure of the tomb passage.

I am not 100% sure what this Temple like structure is, but it had guards and we decided we didn’t need to know that badly.  No one seemed to be getting too close.

The next photo is the sign by the actual tomb.  It too is like the tomb of Liu Bei… it is a crypt above the ground, but it had an impressive marker.

Right around the corner from this tomb, more vendors were selling their wares.  Little did we know, but it connected back into the Jinli St area, but we had missed it the first time around while wandering through from the other entrance.  Since it did not look familiar, we thought we would see what was there and glad we did.  As we rounded the corner, two men were pounding something in a barrel with huge mallets.  I was trying to get a closer look and figure out what they were doing or making.  A lady overheard my questions and understood me.  She told us it was sugar.  They were making candy.  It was an interesting process.  When telling my kids about this experience they said they had seen it on Discovery or History channel just a week or so before. 

Well of course now that we had seen it made, we had to buy some to see how it tasted.  So we bought a container of one that had peanuts in it.  It tasted really good…not too sweet and slightly peanutty.  What we have discovered is that sweets here are really not all that sweet… or at least the things we have tried.

Once we had seen all that we could, we hit the street again.  Some kind of school activity was going on… too bad we do not read Chinese script.  We were guessing some kind of athletic event.

We started in and decided maybe we should just continue our walk on the street instead.  We had no idea what street we were on, but it did not matter.  Like before, we would go wherever the street took us… and when we got tired… there would be a taxi along soon enough.

We just headed in the direction we thought might bring us closer to our hotel… albeit the hotel is outside Third Ring Road and we are inside First Ring Road.  Lots of interesting shops and smells which seems to be the case regardless of where you are. 

After walking probably 4 miles or so, we felt we had gotten ample exercise for the day.  Within a few minutes we had a cab and were hurling down the road toward our hotel. 

It was a very satisfying day, our last in Chengdu… tomorrow we are bound for home.