2025-12-02 Chengdu

 A full day of sightseeing

After an early breakfast we bundled up Isaac and headed off to the Wenshu Monastery, a Buddhist complex near to our hotel, and wandered around before the crowds came.  A very large complex, it houses lots of temples with Buddhist statues and paintings, and there is a large number of apartments/cells for the monks and pilgrims that come from all over China.  Many of the pilgrims volunteer (to gain merit I suppose) at the monastery, and they provide guides, information and hand out cups of tea and incense sticks for the devotees (all free). 

There is a large Tibetan presence too, as Chengdu is the largest city to Tibet, and many people come from there during the winter to get away from the bitter cold, and I guess to work here as well.

Following the monastery, we walked around the surrounding area, which has been gentrified, and has lots of tea houses, tourist tat, but also art galleries and has a a large theatre.  We stopped at a coffee house, where a coffee for one person (30 yuan) cost more that our lunch for three (28 yuan, or about $4.50); coffee is really expensive here; probably a bit more than in Australia.  In contrast, everything else seems a lot cheaper.

Isaac crashed out at the coffee house, still not having recovered from the flight, so Penny and I did a wander while Pippa looked after the snoozing child for about 30 min; then he was cruelly wrenched awake so we could get some lunch at a famous street food place - very popular, with a line of people queueing up, but relatively fast moving, for a crisp panini type bread bun filled with your choice (I had a noodle and vegetable mix, wth chilli oil - chilli oil is the Sichuan signature item, and comes with everything!) - everything is cooked to order whlle you wait by a super efficient team that have been doing this for years.  My panini cost 7 yuan, just less than $2.

It was on to the metro to the Tianfu Square to see the big Mao statue in front of the Science and Technology Museum, and to check out some of the shops below the square in the combined metro station and shopping area (lots of high end outdoor clothing shops like Anta, Uniqlo, Polo, as well as Xiomi, Huwai, Apple, Starbucks and McDonalds).  After a fast browse there we perambulated around the square and Pippa was collared by a Tibetan family who wanted to take a picture with her!

A visit to the Panda Post Office (a tourist trap run by China Post, where you buy all sorts of Panda stuff and post it back home if you want) then to Kuangxiangxi Alley, a former old area of the city with traditional houses, now pedestrianised and transformed into the most touristy area that we have seen thus far; we were there on a Monday at the start of winter, and it was heaving - it must be crazy at peak times.  We wandered through art galleries and bookshops (these were peaceful) then into the street with the crowds and touts trying to flog everything from tea, toys, cultural shows, food of all types and so on.  We took in a mini 'show', mainly to see a performer do the face changing that is a feature of Sichuan opera - this was pretty cool, and I was glad to see this - but we also got for our money (18 yuan each) a shadow show, a traditional dance, and a repeat of the kung-fu tea ceremony.

Evening dinner was wolf's teeth potatoes (we would call them crinkle cut chips) with vegetables and chlli oil, 30 yuan for three ($7.50), at a street stall near the hotel.