Sichuan trip!

Last week I spent the week in Sichuan province with my classmates. Sichuan is right above Yunnan, where I visited on my last journey. Sichuan is known in China and throughout the world for several things, including pandas, food, and beautiful women. We flew to Chengdu, the capital city, but we couldn’t stay there because there were many Tibetans rioting in the streets in response to the recent violence and unrest over in Lhasa. Apparently Chengdu, along with Sichuan province, has a considerable Tibetan population. Obviously, our program directors didn’t want us getting involved in that messy situation, so much to my dismay, we only saw Chengdu as we were leaving it. Our first stop that afternoon was Qingcheng Mountain, a famous and important Daoist mountain in China. We took a cable-car up and down the mountain and visited the village located on the rear side of the mountain. Then we had the chance to sample Sichuan’s most famous food: Hot Pot. Hot Pot requires a special table with a large circular basin in the middle that acts as a stove. A large pot of oil and spices is placed in this basin and the burner is lit. The liquid starts to bubble and then you add various foods, like meat and vegetable, to the bubbling liquid and wait for these foods to cook. It doesn’t take long for the food to cook, and you simply use a spoon or your chopsticks to fish around in the pot for a piece of food. Hot pot is hot in terms of temperature, to be sure, but it is probably called ‘hot pot’ because it is SO SPICY. Sichuan allegedly has the “hottest hot pot” in China, so naturally, after one bite, my entire mouth was searing. Hot pot is not for the weak-stomached.

Day two of my adventures was great because it featured China’s most famous residents, the Giant Pandas. We visited a world-famous panda research and breeding center outside of Chengdu, and we had the opportunity to take pictures with pandas, which was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Pandas are funny creatures because all they do is sit around and eat bamboo, or sleep. They are so big that they have to be constantly eating to stay alive because the bamboo is digested slowly and its nutrients are hard to extract. In any case, I have learned that pandas are very serious when it comes to eating. One panda tried to take another panda’s bamboo and a panda-fight ensued. During the photo session with the panda, one of my classmates tried to take some bamboo from the panda – a bad idea considering that the panda had a piece of bamboo in each paw so that it could eat contentedly and would not attack us.

During my travels I also saw a dinosaur museum, an archaeology museum, and the Dazu grottoes, which are rock carvings made directly into the stone cliffs. Our group also travelled to Leshan to see the world’s largest Buddha statue. Finally, we arrived in Chongqing, a city so big that it became a municipality about ten years ago. China has a couple of large municipalities like this, including Beijing, which don’t belong to any province, but are independent like Washington D.C. Chongqing is interesting, in my opinion, because two major rivers converge here: the Yangzi and the Jialing. This reminded me so much of Pittsburgh. However, I will say that I would not recommend that foreign women venture out into Chongqing alone. I am used to getting attention because I am a foreigner here, but I encountered some people in Chongqing that went beyond fascination and crossed-over into downright creepy and inappropriate – a man on a motorcycle followed me all the way down the street, yelling in Chinese and gesturing for me to come with him. Obviously I escaped from that situation as quickly as possible, but I figure that’s China. Every day is an adventure here and you never know what to expect. All that I know is that I love China and I am sad now when faced with the prospect of leaving.