Chengdu, China

In May we took a short trip to Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan province in China. Our main reason for going to Chengdu was to see the Giant Panda bears. While Chengdu might not be as well-known as some of China's other cities like Shanghai and Beijing, it is nevertheless a big city with a population of over 10 million people.  

Chengdu is one of the major financial, economic, communication and transportation hubs in western China.  Some of the word's largest companies like Sony, Motorola, Toyota, Cisco and Eriksons have subsidiaries in Chengdu.  Chengdu has also become a strong base for the electronics and IT industry, and multi-national companies like Intel, IBM, HP, SAP, Xerox and Cannon have offices here.  

We found Chengdu to be a busy city and as expected, it was difficult to communicate with the locals.  Fortunately the staff at the hotel where we stayed, spoke minimal English and helped us arrange transportation around the city.  We had a fantastic visit to the Panda centre (it was worth the trip to China) and enjoyed the other places of interest in Chengdu.

Qintai Old Path

This street was named to commemorate the love between Zhuo Wenjun and Sima Xiangru, legendary figures from the West Han Dynasty.  It is a beautiful street with the traditional style of construction from the Ming and Qing dynasties.  These old-style buildings are home to many shops and restaurants.  This street is also home to the popular Shufengyayun Tea House, where visitors can watch traditional Sichuanese Opera.  With Opera (especially Chinese opera) not being our cup of tea, we decided to give this a miss.  We did however have a good time admiring the architecture and doing some window shopping.  

 Tea houses in Chengdu

 Chengdu is famous for its numerous tea houses.  There is a saying that "China has the best tea houses in the world and Chengdu has the best tea houses in China".  Well all we can say is that whoever came up with this saying definitely has not experienced the tea houses in Japan and even South Korea, because those are definitely worth a mention.  Using Japanese tea houses as a standard, I guess we were expecting tea houses in China to be similar or even better, especially after all we had read.  Unfortunately our expectations were dashed after seeing a few and discovering that they really are nothing to write home about.  The only special thing about these Chinese tea houses, is that they are great gathering places where locals spend hours socializing with each other and playing games like Mahjong.  We came across a tea house (which we think is pretty much representative of most of the local tea houses in Chengdu) in a beautiful park called Baihutan Park with a river view.  It looked idyllic from afar, but when we got there, it was a disappointment.  We were surprised to find the tables and chairs set out on sand-covered ground, it was also pretty dirty everywhere and the tea was being served in plastic thermoses (the thermoses weren't even on a table, but on the ground).  It was also quite a sight when we witnessed one of the tea servers clear one of the tables - she basically gathered all the used cups, then very nonchalantly threw the un-drunk tea on the ground, before removing the cups from the table.  Needless to say, it was not an inviting site and we decided to give the tea drinking a skip.         

Hot Pot

For dinner the one evening, we decided to try some local food and a Sichuan favourite - Hot Pot.  We asked the concierge at the hotel to recommend a restaurant and we took a taxi there.  As with some of our previous experiences with eating at restaurants in China, David was again the only Caucasian person in the restaurant.   We also though that we might have a problem communicating with the staff and also ordering, but surprisingly there was a very basic English menu and our waitress (an elderly lady) was able to speak enough English to help us order. We ordered an array of vegetables and some bean curd. Sichuan Hot pot is known for its spiciness.  Fortunately there were two types of broth - regular and spicy.  The spicy broth was a very dark colour and had a lot of hot chilli peppers and peppercorns in it.  We cooked some of the food in the regular broth and some in the spicy broth. The meal was enjoyable even though we were perspiring like crazy from the hot spices.   

Jinli Pedestrian Street

Jinli Pedestrian street is a famous entertainment street and area in Chengdu.  It is a very popular place to visit and draws both locals and tourists alike.  We spent an afternoon walking around this lovely area, which is home to many food stalls, a few tea houses, shops, restaurants and bars. 

 Local Food

There was a lot of different local food for sale at Jinli Pedestrian street.  I (Sam) decided to try some spicy tofu on a stick, similar to Sichuan's famous Mapo Doufu.  It was tasty, but a little too hot and spicy for my liking.

Tea House on Jinli Pedestrian Street

This tea house in the Jinli street area was a lot nicer than the other tea houses we had seen, but then again this is a tourist area, so we are sure this has a lot to do with it.

Ear Cleaning
While most of us think of ear cleaning as something we would do in the privacy of our own homes.  In Chengdu it is a practice that is done in public, often at tea houses where it is a common site.  Who would have thought ear cleaning would go hand-in-hand with drinking tea!
Ear cleaning is an ancient art that not only involves cleaning the inside of the ears, but also stimulating the acupressure points in the ears, thereby promoting healing of the body.  The thought of a stranger sticking various instruments in our ears was scary and so we were happy to just be onlookers.