Chengdu

On the map, Chengdu is a small Chinese town in the southwest of China close to Tibet. Just over 2000km from Beijing. Reality is a city of over 4 million people, however it have over 13 million in the metropolitan area, making it Chinas fifth largest city. It is more modern than Beijing or Xi'an and very clean. People are out sweeping the streets everywhere you look. It seems more affluent too and a very desirable city for Chinese people to live in. One thing we have noticed about China is how happy the people seem. Not the oppressed, controlled nation we are given the impression of in the western world. Yes they don’t have some of the liberties we enjoy, but it doesn’t seem to affect their daily life too much. The hostel we are staying in is very nice. Lazy Bones it's called and they have really helped us we our travel arrangements to Tibet. We were getting so frustrated even trying to buy our train tickets to Lhasa; would you believe they are only sold at certain times on certain days. Nobody tells you this they just say "no tickets" making you think they are sold out. So then you spend days trying to find a way to get tickets instead of just going back an hour later, or the next morning. Grrrrrr! The beer in our hostel is very cheap - 60p a bottle cheap and a plate of fried rice comes in at about 90p. All the food we have had here has been very nice and best of all; for 50p you can get a great cup of tea! Our second night here we went to a vegetarian restaurant not too far away. It has been the best food we have had in China so far (we are now in Sìchuãn so you would hope for nice food here). The deep fried lotus flower was just to die for :-) A surprising fact about this city; you cannot buy deodorant anywhere! Ummm so what do they use? And no we are not starting to smell! Another surprising fact we have learnt is how much they recycle. Apparently 89% of refuse is recycled. Into what we don’t know but there are recycling bins everywhere and everybody uses them. Something that has been apparent in every city we have been too is how they also seem quite environmentally conscious on transport too. They make public transport so cheap (20p anywhere on the bus or the tube) that everybody uses it. If they don’t use that then they ride bikes and there are great facilities for bikes everywhere. A lot of people who ride bikes have electric bikes so no engines chucking out lots of fumes either. This has surprised us as we are also lead to believe that China is the worlds worst polluters. Maybe they are when in comes to industry - we cannot speak for that, but they do seem to make the efforts elsewhere. In fact on some issues like these they are streets ahead of our country. So, our overall impression of China is good. We didn’t know what to expect - the old saying “expect the worst and hope for the best” has certainly been true here. All we can say is that we didn’t expect to like it and we really do. It was from Chengdu on our second day that we visited the Panda Centre but you can read about that separately. The next day Jody woke up with the start of a cold so we rented a bike each for the day and gently made our way across the city. We ended up at Wuhou Temple but as it was quite expensive to go in (and the fact that we are all templed out) we walked along the streets to the side. It was extremely pretty and the shops all sold very traditional Chinese crafts. We couldn’t work out if it was built for purpose or original but whatever it felt authentic and was lovely to walk around. We stopped and had a cup of tiramisu ice-cream which they serve to you upside down - to prove how thick it is as it sticks to the cup. It was just what Jody needed for her sore throat. Lets hope it cures it. Later in the evening Bryan went out on the guided bike tour of the streets of Chengdu with a group of seven people, he got to go around the non tourist route of Chengdu. Still all very clean and very pretty. Finally getting back to the hostel at around 11pm. On Thursday we took a public bus to the Pingle Ancient Town. it is a very pretty traditional Chinese village about 2 hours away by bus. Again we were not sure if some of it was ‘just for tourists but as we were the only 2 white people there, it probably isn’t. It had lots of very pretty shops selling many traditional Chinese crafts. Lots of handmade wooden toys and shops selling silk dresses. There is a huge river dividing the town which can be crossed using 2 very pretty stone bridges. lots of children were in the shallows of the river playing with their ‘super soaker’ water guns and we both got wet a few times as we passed them. The buildings were beautiful, traditional wooden with terracotta tiled roofs and a lot of them were guest houses so it would be a lovely place to stay. We only had about 5 hours here so we made our way back to the bust station, up a road with a stream running down through the middle of it. Lots of little pretty bridges crossing it too and it reminded us of Bourton-on-the-Water. Our last day in Chengdu was spent working out how much money we would need to get us through Tibet so we didn’t take too much money or end up with not enough as there aren’t any cashpoints in Tibet! Our train is at 9pm so shopping for food for the train and sending a last minute parcel off are both on the agenda too. Some words of Chinese we have learnt (our spelling - say how it reads) she she - Thank you Ni ha - hello Me far - rice Su shi - vegetarian Lazy Bones Hostel Room rating: 6/10 bed not comfortable but nice bathroom & shower Location: 8/10 - great - fairly central, 50 paces from the tube Staff: 8/10 - very friendly & helpful Value for Money: 7/10 - £16 per night per room Other comments: very clean & cheap nice food Stay again? yes Overall area experience: 7/10 Chengdu is a large city and very hot. Very modern and very clean