Chengdu – The Heart of Sichuan

Sichuan, a province that is famous of its (spicy) food, opera, pandas and the giant Buddha – Now I’ve seen them all. I was travelling again by night train from Beijing to Chengdu and did notice again that distances in China are something else than distances in Finland… Train ride was about 20hrs there and 25hrs back, so basically to spend four days in Chengdu, I two more days in train. Crazy! But time went relative fast (lying on a bed, sleeping, eating, studying) and as I got to Chengdu I head up to my hostel named “Lazybones”, the best name ever!

First day I was just walking around a city and to be honest… in the city itself, there is not that many things to see, of course there are temples and parks but if they don't have any special meaning, those temples and parks looks more or less the same. But there was one famous one, Wenshu monastery – the best preserved Buddhist temple in the city which was different from others I’ve seen because monks were actually living in the same area so I could see where they were eating, sleeping etc. It might be also just my imagination, but I think Buddha statues and other relics had more kind of Indian looking influence than some other temples in the East of China where I’ve visited.

Until this trip I’ve been quite lucky on my travels but now first time on ever, my luck changed for a moment. Original plan was to go visit Mt. Qingcheng (famous Daoism mountain few hours away from city), but it never happened. I did get up in the morning to get to bus station, did manage to buy a ticket for a bus. The date was 1^st of May, which is public holiday in China (= lots of people everywhere) and the bus station was packed of people and when I was “queueing” for the bus, there were people standing no matter which direction I would look and literally there was no space to move at all. Suddenly I noticed that a pickpocket did stole my wallet and that’s it, no mountain day for me. Luckily I didn't have passport or foreign bank cards with me… The most annoying thing is that I lost my driving license, but on the other hand Im not going to drive in China anyways so even that loss is not the end of the world.

As you know, in (The Peoples Republic of…) China everything is for the people – also in Chengdu. Main city square, also cited as people’s square although official name of it is Tianfu Square. The place gives again great contrast between traditional China and modern China: Shopping street, high buildings, neon lights and of course a big statue of Mao. But only 10 minute walk from there, there is the Peoples Park. It's like a central park of Chengdu, a place where people gather together to sing, dance, to play games and of course to drink tea. 

 

People’s park have one of the most popular tea houses in Chengdu, tables made of old wood and chairs made out of bamboo. I was afraid to sat on a bamboo chair because I thought it might collapse but it didn't. While enjoying tea there came a guy offering me ear cleaning. Yes, ear cleaning – again kind of traditional thing in Chengdu so I thought why not to try. Although I was bit excited when the “doctor” put a lamp on his forehead and started to clean my ears with the tools that looked like he was going to pull of my brains through my ears. Luckily he didn’t do that, but he pulled out lot of other “stuff” from my ears and I was just thinking quietly that it has been a while when my ears was cleaned so perfectly.