Dinner and a Show

Once upon a time, in the great midwest, there lived a girl who loved Chinese food.  And then she moved to Shanghai, and let me tell you, Shanghainese is the world's worst Chinese food.  It is disgusting.  It kind of ruined Chinese food for this girl, in spite of the fact that she also had great Xinjiang food, and Taiwanese food, and Cantonese food...

And street food was the worst, by far.  In Shanghai you couldn't get within a half mile of an old town without smelling stinky tofu.  Well, I am happy to report that I didn't smell stinky tofu once while I was in Chengdu.  Maybe it's just not a Sichuan thing.  Instead, on Jinli "Old" Street they have street food that looks absolutely delicious...

...but this one wasn't from Jinli Jie.  Would this be what Grub Club would eat in China?  The world will never know.  Needless to say, Bear Grylls would be in heaven.

 I already mentioned that the streets of Chengdu have the perfume of spicy food wafting over them, and that I was going to do a cooking class at the Traffic Inn.  It was NOT cooking class with Bronte.  It was, however, interesting and we made some delicious food.

Kung pao chicken, sweet and sour eggplant, and twice-cooked pork.  I haven't made it down to Merkuri yet with my list of ingredients, but I'm dying to try making the kung pao chicken on my own.  Although - big news up here in Zaisan - a new Chinese restaurant just opened.  It's swank and the food that's been tried was good.  It's a relief to know that there is a finally a good restaurant up here.

After cooking class I set out looking for Wenshu Temple, and to a Sichuan opera performance from there.  I took the subway to the temple, since there weren't any taxis available (I already mentioned Chengdu's dearth of taxis, eh?) and THAT was a fun experience (not really).  The temple was kind of cool, I found a restaurant that served roasted bugs (see above), and eventually made it to the Jinjiang Theater.  I originally planned to go to Shufeng Yayun Teahouse, but the Lonely Planet listing didn't have an address, and the Jinjiang theater turned out to be just fine.  I think the acrobatics were my favorite...if I ever end up buying a house I'm going to be sure it has a big old tree that I can tie some long strips of silk to and teach myself how to do these things...or, more likely, break my neck trying!

They had a performance of various kinds of wushu (aka, Kung Fu).  The whip sword was really awesome.  Also fun was watching ripped men run around with their chests showing.

The best "opera" performance was a short comedy piece about a scolding wife making her "cockscomb" husband (that was their word choice - not sure what we'd call him.  A fop?) do a bunch of stuff with a lit oil lamp on his head.  He'd make a great belly dancer.

The big finale was a mask changing performance.  These guys have some sort of device in their hats, as far as I could work out, that swap the masks they are wearing.  The one above also did a "costume changing" performance, where layer after layer of cloth was whisked off him from behind until he was left with what you see here.

The costumes these characters wear often have these huge voluminous sleeves, which they whip around quickly to hide the change.  This guy had six faces (their presentation was a little over the top, as you will see below), so big sleeves didn't cut it for him - he had a flag to whip around.

To me, the craziest, most over the top part of the show was the fire-breathing, face-changing puppet.  Give.  Me.  A.  Break.  The face changing performance is magical enough without pulling out all the stops.  I saw one when I went to Beijing in 2005, and it was the best part of the show (actually, I was really pleased with, otherwise, how different the two shows were).  The whole point of this performance seemed to be to see how many wild and crazy mask things they could come up with.  And this is how we ended up combining face-changing, fire-breathing, and puppetry.  Which is not to say it wasn't cool.  Hell yeah, it was cool.  Just, you know, a little unnecessary.

OH MY BUDDHA!

As I was studying up for Chengdu, I found out that nearby was the largest stone Buddha in the world.  In a little city (by Chinese standards, anyway - 2.3 million people beats out my hometown of Kansas City by 7.5 to 1) called Leshan, two hours down the road, lies a marvel on par with the Sphinx of Giza...according to the Leshan tourism board, at any rate.  I wasn't sure if I could fit it in - I was only there for two days, after all, and the tour I'd signed up for that included both the Buddha and the pandas got cancelled because I was the only one signed up for it.  However, I talked to Domestic Goddess, who said that missing it was one of her biggest travel regrets OF ALL TIME, and after reading up a little more I decided I could be on the first bus out at 7:20, since the bus stop was so conveniently located next to my hotel, and make it there and back with some time in the afternoon to see a little more of Chengdu.

So here's the story: an 8th century monk named Daitong decided that the best way to deal with the treacherous meeting point of three rivers was to carve Buddha into the cliffside, that he would calm the river.  The Buddha actually took 90 years to carve out, and in the end, the river did become calmer, although whether it was caused by his divine influence or detritus from carving him is debatable. 

How big is the Leshan Buddha?  He is one BAMF (the "B" in this case standing for "big").  He is so freaking big that it's hard to get a photo with all of him in it.  Can you see the puny mortals standing on the cliffside behind him?  You could fit a bunch of them in his 23-foot long ear.  That's how bloody big the Leshan Buddha is.

On one side of the Buddha is a set of stairs wending their way down the cliffside.  The Chinese monks in olden times had names for this path - for example, the bird's way, because it was only fit for the birds.  It's kind of fun except for the million or so Chinese tourists pushing their way past you...that tends to be a little nerve-wracking.  Don't get me wrong, I like the Chinese (on a good day), but the idea of patiently waiting for the line to move doesn't always appeal to them, and the idea of falling down a cliff definitely doesn't appeal to me.

I couldn't understand the rush, personally.  I was snapping pictures all the way down.  One of the things I loved the most was all the niches with Buddhist sculptures carved into the side of the cliff - they were a little worn from the wind and the air pollution, but still just absolutely beautiful.  You can actually get up to the top fairly easily, even on a pair of feet that were very weary from way too much walking.  From the bottom, you have to go up a less steep, exposed path to get back to the top, which is a lot more exhausting, but it's worth it to see the Buddha along the cliffside path.  There are tourist boats that depart from the other side of the river and give you a much better view of the Buddha, but my "bus" - a 6 passenger van that was very comfortable (guess the early bird really did get the worm in this case - the bus on the way back was less comfortable) - dropped us off right outside the tourist area gate, which was kind of nice.

If you've never traveled with me, you may not realize that a 25 year-old pound purry named Peppermint shares my adventures.  She's a much lower key traveler than I am, and often prefers to stay in the hotel room than go out wandering...after all, she doesn't have my sense of direction and might not be able to find her way back if she got lost.  However, she was really excited to see the biggest stone Buddha in the world, and insisted on having her photo taken with it.  She and I were both a little offended when a tour guide asked us what we were doing.  I was taking a picture of my cat.  Duh.

Black and White and Red all over

Although Chengdu is supposed to be the most agreeable of all Chinese supercities - a friend I met in Shanghai went there last year, intending only to stay for a few days, and ended up staying for two weeks - the whole purpose in going was to see giant pandas.  China's goodwill ambassador to the world, and after living there two years I'd never seen them, so off to Sichuan province (one of the three provinces in which lies there native habitat) I went.

According to the advice Lonely Planet gave, morning is their most active time, and I had great intentions of getting there early.  Instead, I didn't leave Traffic Inn until 8, and although I immediately got on a bus, it took a long, long time before I got there.  I asked the guy at the desk how much a taxi would cost, and he said, "A lot," so even though it would take a lot of time, I chose to go with the bus.  Well, on the way back I was too tired to mess with buses, so I took a taxi anyway, and it cost less than $10...SO worth it.

Anyways, as a result of this bad decision, the pandas were beginning to get lethargic by the time I got there, but you know what???  So what?!  They were amazing.  They are truly gorgeous creatures, sweet and shy and mostly were just munching away on their bamboo.  Speaking of which, strolling through the park there seems to be a lot of it, but in fact the panda center doesn't grow enough to be more than a supplement to their meals.  Most of the pandas' meals come from bamboo purchased from people living in the countryside, harvesting it for a living.  I thought that was kind of cool.

The little ones were ridiculously cute.  I didn't get to see too much of them, but the ones I did made me want to take one home with me.  That's how cute they were, crawling around on their stubby little legs.

I will admit that I was a little nervous to see how things worked here after being to the Siberian Tiger Park last month.  I needn't have worried - as I said, these are China's goodwill ambassadors to the freaking world?  I mean, who doesn't love the hell out of a panda?  Of COURSE they are going to be happy and well-cared for (well, they were happy as far as I could tell).  The park had lots of signs, in both Chinese and English, which explained about the pandas and how they were raised (the official name is the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding) - for example, I learned that mothers often give birth to twins as a result of artificial insemination.  This happens rarely in nature and results in the mother abandoning one.  At the panda center, the mother and the caretakers at the center take turns taking care of them, one at a time.  The signs also listed the pandas names and ages, and included notes about their personalities.  It was pretty cool, actually.

You may or may not be aware that the giant black and white pandas aren't the only creatures bearing that name.  There is also such a thing as a red panda, which is NOT a relative of the giant panda, but the panda center has a few of them, anyways.  And as amazing as the giant ones are, I think I loved the red pandas a little bit more.  For starters, I believe in a little thing called ginger solidarity, but they also reminded me of my cat, Barnabas, with their striped tails and masked faces.  They are a little bigger than he was, and as Babysis pointed out, probably not into headbuts, but I don't care.  They were cool.

(P.S. Is it just me, or do I need to improve the endings of my posts?  I feel like most of them just kind of fizzle out at the end.  Maybe I'm just too tired when I write to finish on a strong note...)

Don't Mind if I Cheng-do!

Blog-a-Thon, Round Two: DING! DING! DING!  I said I was going to get a VPN before I went to Chengdu.  I lied.  I tried installing an open source VPN, but I lost that techno-battle, and in the end, it's just as well.  I was going just about every minute I was gone; no time for blogging.

Last month's experience in Harbin gave me cause to reflect on my love-hate relationship with China.  Last month I was feeling more love than hate.  This month was a different story.  Don't get me wrong - I had a good trip, but it started out rough because I didn't get enough sleep the night before (one of those things, again), I wore the wrong shoes, China's really crowded, I forgot my deodorant, and there are just.  Not.  Enough.  Taxis.

Some things I loved about Chengdu?  My hostel.  I used to be afraid of that word, hostel.  I envisioned sleeping in a dorm without any privacy and having my stuff stolen.  I've stayed at a few, always in private rooms, and it's never as bad as I feared.  This time I stayed in the Traffic Inn, and it was awesome.  The staff were friendly and helpful, the rooms were clean and comfy, it was hella-conveniently located (right next to the Xinnanmen bus station which made catching the first bus to Leshan on Saturday a possibility instead of a good intention), and they offered a cooking class, which was nice.  I'll have to let you know if the food turns out to be as good when I try it on my own.  In a strange coincidence, as I was walking out my first morning to go explore, I saw one of their goldfish had jumped out of the bowl and was gasping for air, so I called them over and they put him back in.  Unfortunately he wasn't a daredevil wonder fish; he didn't survive.

Also, they had a sense of humor.  In front of the hostel is the Traffic Hotel.  On the Traffic Hotel is a sign with a caricature of a backpacker, asking if any of the (none-too-flattering) traits described you....ridiculously big backpack with all the conveniences of home, Lonely Planet so you can have the same experience as everyone else, hiking boots for taking the well-trod tourist trails.  In the bathroom, they had a sign with some laowai eating hot pot, swearing over how spicy it is, and a note that said, if you ignore the customs, avoid the people, reject the food, etc, you'd be better off staying home, that you are like a stone thrown into water.  You get wet on the outside, but don't become part of the water.

Well, I was in Shanghai for two years and I'm pretty sure I only got wet on the outside.  But I loved the Sichuan food - spicy as hell.  In fact, on the first day on my way back from the Panda Center, I noticed something...you could actually smell the spiciness on the air.  It was awesome.  And I've seen my share of temples (Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucianist), learned a little Mandarin, and now, I've even learned to cook a little, although unfortunately not hot and sour soup, which I feel sure would excuse my aimless wandering in my family's eyes.  By the way - these photos are obviously not of the hotel or the food - there is a food blog coming and I didn't take pics of the hotel.  Instead, you get a couple of random temple/old town-y shots.  I've blogged about temples and old towns before, and since there was nothing jaw-dropping about the ones I came across on this trip, I'll save my words for more interesting things.