Sights So Far

Although nobody has seem to have ever heard of Chengdu (myself included until about a year ago) there really are some great things to do here. First and foremost, the most publicized highlight of any Chengdu trip is the pandas. Chengdu is the home to the most pandas in the world. I'll get back to this in about a week as I'm making my trip to the research base in just a few short days. Next comes the Sichuan Opera - yet another Chengdu must-do that I haven't gotten to yet. That one's going to be going on Sunday night.

What I have actually done here is the following. I visited the Green Ram Temple which is only about a 5 minute cab away, home to about 20 Taoist monks. Parts of the temple itself date back up to 1300 years ago. Next was a trip to the highly commercialized "authentic" Jinli St. Going back about 1200 years, this street used to serve as a social street with many restaurants and shops. Now its awesome restored ancient architecture is ruined by the placement of a Starbucks inside. It is literally the first establishment on the street and nothing else could crush the culture of this place more. However it wasn't all bad. The way it looks is ridiculously badass and I did have my ears cleaned by a top notch pro. I never knew how much wax I had back in there. Afterwards I could feel wind blowing on the inside of my ear, it was a cool experience for sure.

We've also had the opportunity to make it to a couple of open air markets of two very different varieties. First, one with little trinkets, souvenirs and unauthentic paintings. The second, and absolutely more interesting, was the food market. My god it was awesome. Their fruits and veggies look way more vibrant and fresh than anything that Publix tends to carry but more importantly their meat selection far surpasses Whole Foods and even Fresh Market. Pig faces, live frogs, a bucket full of eels, cow brain, an even bigger bucket full of chicken feet, and endless amounts of meat just sitting out with flies all over it.

The last two places we've been to so far are Dufu's Thatched Cottage and the Jinsha Relics Site Museum. Dufu was apparently a very famous old poet in China who spent four years in Chengdu writing some of his most famous work. They set aside an entire park in his name (which really is ridiculous considering all around it is skyscrapers) built around the cottage he built here in 760 AD. The Jinsha Site Museum is a place that is about 3 blocks from my dorm, however, we decided to hop the bus downtown to go to the place because we are all severely retarded. After going the wrong way for about half an hour we caught a $3 cab all the way back a little past our dorm and to the museum. Long story short, some old shit is housed here. This place holds the logo that is synonymous with Chengdu (check out the pictures in the link below). The picture shows the model version that is good for pictures. The real one is made of gold leaf and is about 4 inches in circumference and extremely unimpressive. Otherwise there was some pretty cool stuff there including a gold mask that I wish I was wearing right now.

Check out some of the sights of Chengdu!