SECOND HALF OF WINTER TRIP
The next morning I had planned for a van to pick us up and drive us to the outskirts of Leshan – a town two hours away which reportedly has the largest Buddha sculpture in the world. Monks carved this Buddha out of a large rock face. Unfortunately Celia felt sick and got back into bed after breakfast. Her symptoms didn’t seem like Covid – but as Covid is running rampant in China it seemed most likely it was Covid. Unfortunately after much effort I was unable to get my hand on any home tests before leaving Beijing.
Dan, Morton, and I took the van to see the Buddha. After buying tickets at the gate, we walked a half an hour under these beautiful arched trees along the River to the small mountain where the Buddha is carved. Then we needed to hike up for a path for another 45 minutes. Along the route are all these small buddhas that had been carved into the rock faces and on the other side are beautiful views of the river as we climbed higher. When we got to the top there was an ornate temple/monastery at the height of the Buddha head. It is pretty amazing. After spending some time checking out the top, we then followed another path which took us down to the Buddha’s enormous feet.
We continued hiking along the many paths, coming along beautiful bridges and monasteries.
When we were thoroughly exhausted, we found a road and sent our driver our location. He picked us up and we had him drive us into the town of Leshan. Our tour guides didn’t mention the actual town – I think it was too small to be significant – it only has 6.5 million people (!!) but the concierge at the hotel said it was a nice city – definitely worth walking around in. We ended up exploring a lovely area but had a little trouble finding a restaurant that had food without meat that wasn’t too strange. We finally found a little place with three seniors sitting outside making dumplings (zhaozi). They couldn’t understand my Mandarin at all – which was discouraging – but I was finally able to order some mushroom zhaozi for me and some random meat ones for the guys.
That evening we were too tired to do much. The restaurant in the hotel was closed due to covid and the room service just seemed way too expensive to justify. The restaurants right around the hotel didn’t look very appealing. We ended up finding a subway (the sandwich shop) near by – Morton’s favorite! He got a sandwich and we bought another for Celia. Dan wandered off to find something else. When I called him he was at a Poppa Johns – the U.S. pizza chain that I have never before been to – nor ever wanted to. But I met Dan there. He had already ordered a vegetable pizza. We sat outside and ate it. It lived up to my expectations. The Pappa Johns was connected to a Dairy Queen. The choices were different than in the U.S. Dan bought a sunday. I think it was also pretty terrible but it was funny to be half way around the world eating at restaurants we know from home.
Friday I had planned a Sichuan cooking class but since Celia was still sick I postponed it till Sunday. Morton, Dan and I headed out to check out a few neighborhoods where I thought might be interesting to walk around. In the first, around Yulin Road, we found a bagel shop – we were very surprised. They only sold the bagels as sandwiches – which was disapointing as I thought it’d be great to bring Celia one. Morton got one sandwich and it was surprisingly good.
We walked through this cute, more affluent neighborhood, then headed over to the Tibetan Quarter and wandered around an interesting market.
That evening the boys and I went to a Chinese brew pub – which was definitely going for the feel of an American brew pub, ate, drank, and played cards. I was excited to order a salad (not so easy to find at a restaurant here) but a little disappointed that my “Kale Salad” was made with romaine!
The next day Celia, still sick and Morton feeling – not sure if a little sick- or just a little run down. The pool opened, so we spent half the day lounging.
Dan and I then headed out and found a little hole in the wall restaurant on our way to the Chendgu history museum. Food was fine and museum was much better than I expected. Kind of wondering if some of the artifacts were actually real – what they had from so long ago seemed a bit hard to believe to have survived so pristinely. Dan thought that was a crazy idea. I’m not sure – but it was impressive.
The museum was on a large open square with a couple large sculptures that almost look like Olympic torches and a gigantic sculpture of Mao with an outreached saluting arm – felt reminicent of when I went to the Soviet Union many, many years ago.
The next day was Christmas. I delayed both our cooking class until Tuesday – and our departure from Chengdu as Celia was still not feeling well. Chongqing would have to wait until another trip.
We again spent the morning at the gym and hanging out at the pool. Chengdu is famous for their tea so that afternoon Dan and I headed out to have tea in The People’s Park. The strolled in the lovely park for a little while and then sat down at a table where everyone was having tea. Most of the patrons had a tea pot on the table on a little fire and they were cooking snacks on the grate that help their tea pot. We ordered some tea but when we tried to order snacks it became clear that we could only order through TikTok. We had no idea you could order TikTok. After downloading the app and failing at figuring out how to order food, I approached a young couple and tried out my Mandarin to ask for help – the snacks looked so cute – it felt like I’d be missing part of the experience without them. The young couple were very sweet and I was excited to have some success with my Mandarin. The woman eventually offered to just order for us on her TikTok account and we just transferred the money to her through WeChat. We sat eating our snacks and drinking our tea until the sun was going down and we were thoroughly freezing.
On the way home we saw a line outside a large window. When we looked in there were an assembly of men making some kind of rolled meat buns and the line was to buy them. We figured this was the place to pick up the kids dinner.
The next day – Celia was still sick. This was our last day to explore as the following day was the cooking class that I kept postponing so Celia could join, and after that we really had to return to Beijing. Dan bribed Morton to join us on the exploring promising to stop at a mall Dan had seen that had many activities he thought Morton would enjoy.
We started off at Wangjianglou Pavilion Park. The temples there were not that impressive but the park was beautiful and all the bamboo was really amazing.
Then we headed to the Wenshu Monastery and wandered back to the hotel, exploring yet another lovely and different neighborhood. Last stop – the mall. Morton was not as excited about it as Dan had expected but he did play a little Claw Machine.
When we got back to the hotel Celia was feeling better and was hoping to take a taxi to the place we had tea. We bundled up and started to head out to the tea house but then were told the tea house had closed for the evening. The hotel concierge told us of a similar place. The directions led us to a mall. We wandered around the mall with no luck. I finally went into a medical office of some sort in the mall and the woman at the desk pointed me towards the door outside (we were on the fourth floor). We walked out the door at the end of the hall and found ourselves on a terrace with a large tea house. This was a fancier experience than in the park – not quite what we’d hoped for, but we had a nice time.
The next morning we finally made it to the Sichuan Cooking Museum! I had organized a tour guide and a cooking class. Hua, our tour guide (and Hua means flower) took us through the museum, explaining the history of Sichuan cooking, how it changed over time, how the very early advances in irrigation effected their cooking, and the different vessels they developed to cook. It was a little more of a tour than we realized we were walking into, but it was really interesting. She then taught us to make three traditional Sichuan dishes, Baozi (which we made in the shape of panda heads), Mopo Dofu, and Kung Pao Chicken (or vegetables for Celia and I – we still do not know what the vegetable was). It was super fun – a definite highlight was pouring the liquor into the Kung Pao dish and burning it off.
That evening we explored yet another cute neighborhood on the opposite side of the Anshun Bridge where we had gone out for hot pot. Not very Chinese, but we couldn’t resist a cute Mexican restaurant we came across. We couldn’t remember the last time we’d eaten Mexican and it ended up being really good.
Our last morning we woke and headed back to the Yulin Road where we had found the bagel shop. We got a breakfast of bagel sandwiches and then wandered through the neighborhood before grabbing our belongings, checking out of the Ritz Carlton and flying back to Beijing. Despite Celia having Covid, we had a good trip.
Oh! And if you read this – I’d love to hear from you! I believe the comment section is now functioning.