Well it's nice to navigate a nice small little city (Shanghai - 22 million, Beijing - 18 million, Chengdu - a measily 7 million!). This city is pretty cool and easy to navigate. It only has a very small subway system that's fairly limited to just the north/south corridor so I walked mostly everywhere but near the end of the day I got tired and decided to try my hand at the bus system. What a hoot! Of course, again, I'm the only Westerner on the whole bus and its jammed with people. I sat next to two older Tibetan women who started talking to me in Mandarin thinking I had a clue what they were saying. Of course I just kept smiling and saying "she ye, she ye" which is thank you in Mandarin so for all I know I was thanking them while they were yelling at me for something! I took a picture of them since they were so cute with their Tibetan gear on. I once again had to get my Buddhist fix so I went to the Wenshu Yuan Temple for the God of Wisdom (I figured I could use some of that!) There were some really cool buildings and some really nice gardens where it was really peaceful and quiet (even in this smaller city, everyone honks their horns constantly and it drives you crazy!). One of the funny moments, and I attached a picture of it, was here I am in front of what is supposed to be the most sacred and religious tall pagoda thingy in the Temple that has a Budhha inside and all the Chinese people are staring at and petting a cat rather than paying hommage to the Buddha! I just thought that was a scream. Maybe the cats are really the important ones since they are all over China. After that I went to a place called Jinli street which is a cool street market area with lots of shops and yep, you guessed it... another place with fun foods to sample. They call it "snack street" but I'd hate to tell them that it's a lame excuse for a true "Night Market" like Beijing has. Let's just leave it at "the male sheep in Chengdu are not running scared". LOL. They had a few of the interesting delicacies but nothing like Beijing. Oh well, I'm going to try to get to bed early tonight since I'm going to try to pack in a long day tomorrow of visiting the baby Pandas in the morning and then in the afternoon taking a bus trip down to see this huge 230 foot Buddha that's carved into the side of a mountain. Think Mount Rushmore on steroids!! Again, they gave me 100 years to live, I feel I gotta keep giving back! LOL. Take care. Jeff
The Wandering Italian 