Chengdu

The second half of our long vacation was spent in Chengdu.  Unlike all of our other vacation destinations, I'd never been to this city, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  Our train to Chengdu from Xi'an was a bit confusing.  We had two tickets stapled together, but the train number was the same on both tickets.  We weren't sure if this meant we'd change trains or just change cars at a certain point.  The first tickets were for two hours on hard seats and the other tickets were for 14 hours on hard sleepers.  An hour into the journey, everyone starting asking what we were supposed to do once we got to the change ticket station.  Soren and I didn't know any better than anyone else and I just said, "We probably need to find someone who speaks English to help us."  By saying this, I was hoping that some Chinese person nearby would step up...which didn't happen.  I was also hoping that one of the teachers would tap somebody on the shoulder and ask...which also didn't happen.  Feeling burdened with head teacher-ness, I knew I had to figure something out.
I decided to get up from my seat and look around the train for likely English speakers.  Moving from my seat was actually somewhat of a relief.  I was sitting by a middle aged Chinese couple who insisted on putting their bare feet next to me on the seats.  And they didn't have pretty feet.  Standing in the aisle had its dangers, though, considering some dude was smoking a gigantic pipe next to the bathrooms (seriously, this thing was a chimney).  But I continued to look around for someone that might be able to help us.

It was getting close to midnight, I was tired, I was confused, and I was losing patience.  Finally I just belted out, "DOES ANYBODY SPEAK ENGLISH?"

I don't know who laughed harder: the ILP teachers, or the Chinese people on the train.  But it worked.  A guy behind me said, "I do," and before long he helped me figure out our tickets...sort of.  I figured we'd just show our tickets to a guard when we reached that stop and they'd point us in the right direction.
It all worked out in the end.  The guards had us get off the train, walk to our new cars, and re-board.  Most of the teachers were in the same car, but I was in my own, and Maddie was in her own.  Fortunately we spent most of the time sleeping, so it wasn't too lonely.

We arrived in Chengdu on a rainy afternoon and set out to find the bus to our hostel.  The instructions told us to get on bus 27 or 57 and to get off at the WouHouCi temple stop.  Sounds easy enough, right?  WRONG!  We got on bus 27 and realized rather rapidly that we would have no idea how to identify the right stop.  I asked a random guy on the bus where to get off.  He spoke enough English to let us know that we had 7 stops until we needed to get off.  7 stops later, we got off.

It was a rainy corner and nothing around us looked anything like a temple.  We decided to get back on the bus and try a few more stops down.  That ended up being a bad idea and we got off a few stops later to try and flag down a couple taxis. We got the first taxi with relative ease and sent four of the girls in that one with the hostel address and phone number (a couple guys nearby were nice enough to let the taxi driver borrow their phone so that he could call the hostel for directions).  Heather, Soren, and I waited behind for the next taxi.

Suddenly a bunch of people started to appear out of nowhere to steal our taxis.  It was still pouring and we were getting grumpy.  It seemed that every time we tried to flag down a taxi, someone else would sneak in and snag it.  Taking all of this into consideration, I feel no shame in in what happened next:  Soren and Heather were stationed up the street a ways and I was positioned by the corner.  After a few minutes a taxi started to pull up to drop people off.  I waved my arms in the air like a wild woman and managed to attract his attention.  He pulled up a few feet in front of me.  Then, some dude with a gigantic box in his arms made a bee-line straight for the taxi.  Soren hollered at me to get there before him, but I was already on top of it.  Just as the guy was reaching for the door handle, I braced my shoulder and aimed for the box.  You can imagine his surprise as a small white girl rammed into him to defend her taxi.  It was kind of awesome.  I felt a little bad afterwards, but seriously dude?  That was MY taxi.

When we all finally got to the hostel we were pretty pooped, so we set up our tour for the next day, ate dinner at the Café, and settled in for the night.  It was a cute hostel and we were all able to stay in the same room. 
The next day we went to see the Leshan Giant Buddha.  Never heard of it?  Neither had we, but it was amazing.  And there’s a cool story to go along with it: So the Buddha’s carved out of a cliff where the Minjiang, Dadu and Qingyi rivers meet. It was a really dangerous place for passing ships and resulted in many shipwrecks and deaths. In 713, a monk named Haitong started construction on the project in hopes that Buddha would bless the turbulent waters and make the passage safer for shipping vessels.  Funding for the project was cut and so Haitong gouged out his eyes to show people how serious he was about it.  Although it was a strange tactic, it worked and they commenced with construction.  But when Haitong died, all work on the Buddha stopped. It wasn’t until about 70 years later that the Buddha was finally completed.  The best part of the story is that the massive construction resulted in so much stone being removed from the cliff face and deposited into the river below that it altered the currents by the statue, making the waters safe for passing ships.  Praise to Buddha!  Awesome, right? To me, it shows just how much God loves his children, no matter who they worship. Just because Haitong wasn’t Christian, doesn’t mean he wasn’t inspired by God.

Getting into the spirit of things

A few of the Buddha

The Buddha from below

The ILP group and Buddha

We were able to set up a tour with the hostel to go see the Buddha, so we had our own private bus.  The Buddha was amazingly big and beautiful. There were many other Buddhas and writings carved into the walls. There were also many temples and towers to visit. Once we got our fill of hiking and taking pictures, we headed back to meet our bus driver.  He took us to a small restaurant for lunch and it had the best Kung Pow Chicken.  Seriously, I could’ve had 3 more plates of it.  On the ride back to Chengdu, the driver put Breaking Dawn: Part 2 in, so we watched and laughed as we drove back. 
That afternoon was spent at the WouHouCi temple and that night we went to the Opera!  Well…not a whole Opera…it was more of a variety show.  There was some Opera, slapstick, puppetry, hand shadows, clothes changing, and mask changing.  It was so cool!  And we got the same bus driver that took us to the Buddha, so we bonded with him a bit (he thought it was hilarious when Soren did aerobics with the Chinese ladies in the park).

At the WouHouCi Temple

At the Opera House with our bus driver

The next day was quite a debacle.  The plan was to go hike a mountain, but after losing our way, and getting on the wrong bus, and wandering around aimlessly, we decided to scrap it.  Instead, we visited a beautiful Tibetan shopping area for a while.  It was super cool, but we didn’t buy much there because it was expensive.  Soren and I broke off from everyone else for a while and found the main square of Chengdu.  It provided a beautiful view of the city and was just a nice place to be.  The square had two large fountains that were part of a bird’s eye view yin-yang.  But I have to say my favorite part of the square was the music.  I thought I recognized the first song from Kenny-G’s Christmas album, but since it wasn’t a very “Christmasy” song, I decided to let it slide. When the first song ended, the next one started up: “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose…”  Yup.  Definitely Kenny G’s Christmas album.  Well done, China.  Well done.

Brian! are you seeing this?? It's the Ocarina of time!

Soren in the square

Me and Mao

The Tibetan shopping area was a lot like Diagon Alley

That night the girls got massages and Soren and I went clubbing.  Oh yeah…clubbing in China.  Things were just opening when we arrived and we poked our heads into a few of the clubs: fancy, good music, lights, bar…but no dance floor.  We went there for the dancing!  One club had a pole, but I thought it unwise to let Soren near that because he probably would’ve discovered his inner pole dancer and given everyone a good show. We decided to wait an hour or so before actually staying in a club, so I got my nails done and Soren got a hair cut.  We ended up at “The New 88.”  I got Coconut Juice and Soren got a Sprite (livin’ on the edge).  Despite the lack of a dance floor, we found a little space to get our Night Club Two-Step on before we left.  Overall, it was just kind of fun to be there.

In the morning, we went to the Panda Reserve outside of Chengdu.  Now let me say something here: I’d never been a fan of Pandas.  I’d never seen what the big deal was.  They’re black and white bears…so what?  But seeing them so close up?  THEY ARE ADORABLE!  I’m obsessed with Pandas and I love them.  I want one.  In the next life, I will have a pet Giant Panda.  I will.  Mark my words.  

Soren and the Pandas

Isn't he so cute?

The rest of that day we wandered around Chengdu, looking for other things to do.  We found an awesome park full of tea houses where tons of people sat at tables playing Mah-jong.  There was also a small amusement park there where we did bumper cars, a carousel, and some kind of spinney ride.  It was a lovely time.

And that was pretty much it for Chengdu.  We had a 16 hour train ride back to Xi’an, where we spent a few more hours shopping, and then we had a 13 hour train ride back to Nanjing.  We were all very glad to be back home.  Travel is exhausting…plus all those hours standing and sitting caused my ankles to swell up to three times their normal size.  Yikes!

Saying goodbye to our hostel