The rest of my trip to Chengdu was very good. I saw some old classmates and had tea with one of my old teachers. I went back to my favorite park Wen Shu Temple and ate at the vegetarian restaurant. While we were waiting for the restaurant to open we sat in the tea house and played with an old temple cat ( Read more... )

My trip to Leshan went well. The main tourist objective of Leshan is its giant Buddha, which was really giant. In 2004 I went there on the way to E'Mei mountain with my classmates and we drove by the Buddha on a boat to save time. Seeing it up close was much more rewarding ( Read more... )

I went to the Panda Breeding Research Institute this morning, it was much cooler the second time around as the pandas hadn't yet gone into there daily food coma. The highlight of the trip wasn't watching a Chinese lady play with baby pandas, a close second, but the amazing informational video about panda breeding in which a terrified first time ( Read more... )

I went to the Qing Yang Daoist temple yesterday. When I lived in Chengdu I always had this vague plan of going there and playing chess with the Daoist priests, but was too lazy to put it into action. It had all of the stuff that China temples have; giant statues, clouds of incense, and old people getting hopped-up on kungfu tea. While wandering ( Read more... )

I am in Chengdu, again, on a quest for hotpot. Arivail should be meeting me shortly and we will begin sampling the bounty of Sichuan. I had forgotten how distinct the Sichuan dialect is, on the train up I shared a car with several young teachers from Sichuan who were thrilled by my mispronunciations of Mandarin which they took to be Sichuan dialect ( Read more... )

For the October holiday I went with a group of teachers from my old job to a near by beach for a few days of sunburn and hangovers. It was an odd place, at once beautiful and gaudy. I woke up one morning to see hundreds of red baseball caps from a Chinese tour group flouting in the waves. People in speed boats would zip through the swimming area to ( Read more... )

Yesterday for the first time in many weeks I sat in a coffee shop and read a Chinese Kungfu novel. It dawned on me as I was doing so that I was happy.

Peggy

One day. When I am playing was playing with my friends, a space ship fell down. An alian got down from the space ship, and says:"Hello every one! My name is Mr. Brown!" We are very scared. I ask:"Can you take us to the space, sir?" Mr. Brown says:"Of course, I have nine spaceship!" We should:"that's great!" We go in to the space ship. Mr. ( Read more... )

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Tyler ( Read more... )