At long last, I was able to go to cross off a key travel
destination on my checklist and visit Chengdu – a town known for spicy food, ancient
history, spicy food, mountains and more spicy food. The trip had 5 main attractions: the city
itself, pandas, SanXingDui, JiuZhaiGuo (a short plane trip to the west), and
spicy food.
Chengdu is a city that contrasts traditional culture with
cosmopolitan allure. The new infrastructure
of Chengdu immixes modern office high rises - home to the world’s biggest
software companies - and traditional Chinese temples and dark - brown stained
wooded housing and markets. Some hi-lights
included:
·
- Wenshu Yuan Monastery - a
beautiful buddhist monastery
- An open-air market called Jinli Street. Our team (Jeff, Clare, and Ben) visited the same hot pot place that Michelle Obama went to. While the food was pretty good, the ‘changing of the face’ show was the best attraction. My favorite part was the switch between Spiderman and Doramon. Here are a few videos.
- A XuJiaHui type of area with modern bars and clubs. We had a party at the beach club with sand on the ground!
- Asia’s biggest building home to a waterpark, two hotels, and 2 dozen restaurants. This building was closer to the airport
A short 30-minute car trip from the city is every tourists
major attraction, the Panda village. The
spacial, open-aired Panda village is created to allow for tourists to meander
through a forest setting while seeing the animals. In the morning, I marveled at watching the
pandas gnaw through thick, bamboo tusks. The more charming sister of the panda - the
red panda - resembled a big, fuzzy, fox with a panda face and could be faintly detected
up in the trees. The attraction is a
nice half-day visit especially for kids.
A further 60-minute car trip away is SanXingDui, a historic
area where remnants from 6000 years ago were only discovered 20 years ago. It was not so much a museum as it was an archaeological
site that had 4 distinct museums and an active scientific community that was
working on other discoveries. The site
had 4 distinct attractions: a
sacrificial alter, a museum for the bronze faces, a museum of other artifacts
like pottery, swords, clothes, and finally a museum for the large money tree
(tree that pointed to the gods as an offering).
All of the artifacts had some spiritual connotation. My favorite artifacts were the bronze faces
with the eyes dangling out of the heads.
A further 60-minute plane trip away is JiuZhaiGuo. JiuZhaiGuo is often described as the US
Yosemite. It's China’s most visited national park with beautiful lakes,
mountains and scenery. Unfortunately, it
rained most of the day and though it was described as low season, there were still
millions of people. The efficient bus
system made it bearable to get from place to place, though. JiuZhaiGuo is quite a beautiful place with
lots of hotels. While I may not visit the National Park again I would consider
a few days relaxing at a nice hotel, breathing the fresh air, enjoying the BBQ
lamb and local hotpot, however.
And the food was fantastic and every spicyness that I had
yearned for. Hot pot is on every corner
and I think locals must eat it almost every day. The more adventurous eaters may enjoy their
hot pot with any parts of the animal like curded blood – which I didn’t try
after just recovering from salmonella poisoning in Japan. Some of my favorite other foods were bbq
lamb, pear tea, spicy vegetable soup, chicken and mushroom soup, spicy packaged
tofu, spicy braised pork knuckle, and one of my favorites, spicy fruit
cocktail.
