Chengdu - girl

48 hours on the train and we arrived in Chengdu, a small city of four million people. Our home in this sprawling city was Sim's Cozy Guest House. Sim has made it his mission to create the best hostel in China, and quite frankly, I think he's succeeded. The place had everything a backpacker could want or even wish for. Our small room even had a tv and dvd player. We fell asleep in front of a film every night in Chengdu.

 

I guess, for me, the food is a good place to begin ruminating. Szechwan is famous for its cooking and we certainly enjoyed it although the McDonald's we had upon arrival was also fantastic. Hot Pot is a particular delicacy in the region and C. made it our business to keep the industry going. We had three hot pots in four days. Two of these were in the same, very good, restaurant and one was in an abysmal place that basically just stole our money. The general idea is: boiling flavoured oil in a dish in the middle of the table in which you cook your own veg and meat. Some oils are full of szechwan chillies and mushrooms and others fish heads. The taste is incredible (unless you accidentally order fish head oil, which we did one night) - I can totally understand that C. wanted it so much, however, for me, the oil sat particularly badly and I spent much of our time in Chengdu burping up mushroom oil flavour. Delightful.

 

We spent one morning doing a cookery course in the hostel. We learned to make sweet and sour pork, fish flavour egg plant and a local chicken dish. All three are stunningly delicious. We took the course with three others, two who paid and one old, Swiss, woman who crashed the course and made it alternately more entertaining and more annoying. She was incapable of keeping quiet and kept interrupting the chef and his interpreter. Although she couldn't join in the cooking she more than made up for it with the amount she ate, during the class and the meal that followed. The rest of us were a little surprised given that she hadn't paid anything but sometimes it's easier to keep quiet. Poor C got stuck listening to her over lunch while I chatted to the other two. I felt sorry for him but not sorry enough to relieve him!

 

The lesson was so much fun, much better than the Indian cookery course in Udaipur where we just watched a slightly bored woman cook a few dishes. Here we got to do everything. C. even set his wok on fire a couple of times in his enthusiasm. Brilliant.

 

Having been to China before, the city layout and architecture didn't hold any surprises for me except for the People's Park, which really threw me. This is basically a concrete area with lots of trees where people congregate to make as much noise as they possibly can, all at the same time. People sing next to people practicing their dancing (with loud music), next to an orchestra, next to other singers, next to other dancers and on it goes. The cacophony was incredible, and for me, not in a good way. I am extremely western in my views on noise I suppose. I don't like anyone else's noise imposing on me (and I try not to impose on others in this way) so I found the park quite trying. The other side of the park comprised of tea houses where we sat in relative peace for an hour or so, enjoying lemon tea and each other's company. Seeing how people can carry on their own activities whilst others compete for sound space is amazing but even more amazing were the few on the edges dancing or doing Tai Chi on their own, in their own (almost) silent world.

 

Most people visiting Chengdu go to see the pandas. We didn't. It was deliberate but I'm not entirely sure why. I guess it had something to do with the exorbitant prices to which we objected. We did, though, go to a Tea House Opera. I was a tad sceptical about this excursion, having seen Chinese opera before, however, I was wrong. It was magnificent. On a cold, rainy, night, we sat outside with hundreds of Chinese tourists, watching a variety of acts - opera, shadow puppets, comedy, orchestras - all of it perfectly wonderful. I don't usually like to be wrong but I'm glad I was here.

 

The only other touristy thing we did though, I found fairly bland and typical of many Chinese tourist attractions. The world's largest buddha is around three hours drive from Chengdu in a park that requires a high entrance fee and a great deal of patience to deal with the thousands of jostling, spitting, smoking country-folk who also want to see it on the same day as you. Everything in the park is extremely ordered and concrete-y. In order to see the giant buddha one must queue for around an hour, fending off every sodding person who wants (and tries) to push in front. Upon reaching the front of the queue one then enters a sort of pen area where everyone can squish together as much as they like (and they like) to move through a small gate. Much fun. The system continues much like this with intermittent views of giant buddha until suddenly one is at the feet of this thing, a few photos are taken and it's all over. I was fairly under whelmed; unable to focus on the buddha due to my dislike of being pushed around by people who have no idea about personal space. My problem.

 

The complex also houses a number of other attractions, one of which is a Buddhist temple (yup, I thought I'd seen enough too) with hundred of alabaster statues of buddhas or fairies or something, each with a different expression. Pretty cool.

 

And then we got a plane to Shenzen, a town by Hong Kong. In order to get into Hong Kong we had to go through customs. There was none of the order and precision of the Tibetan/Nepali border. Here, Chinese people were invited to push and shove as much as they liked (and they like) to reach the Chinese border guards. We had a fairly hard time of it here as our extremely officious guard claimed to have never seen a paper visa before. We explained we'd been on a group tour of Tibet, she called over another guard who verified the legitimacy of said paper visa but Ms. Officious was having none of it. She checked the paper again, and again, and again. All the while, the mush of people behind us was growing as was my frustration. It gave me great pleasure to push the big red button marked 'dissatisfied' once she'd let us through.