We arrived in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan on the evening of Sept 30th. We were greeted by Christine at the airport... By now we feel like we've known her forever, but we actually met at the Chengdu airport for the first time ever! It turns out that my friend Liz from Stanford used to live in Chengdu and was a classmate of Christine's in Mandarin classes. Now Liz lives in Beijing but was nice enough to put us in touch with her friend Christine.
Our hostel in Chengdu (Sim's Cozy Guesthouse) is really really cool. Compared to our hostel in Hong Kong, the room is huuuuuuge! We still don't get a bathroom or a queen bed, but at least there is space to unpack a bit from our packs. Besides the room being luxurious, the hostel also comes with a full bar, restaurant, travel agency and lots of travelers.
Yesterday we met with Chris and her host family's 10-year-old daughter, XiXi on the western part of town, near the university where Chris studies. It was a cold, rainy day, so we decided to head into her favorite teashop (Wen Cha). We spent 2.5 hours and some money in here, Mr. Todd would be proud! She poured us loads of tea, explained lots of finer points of tea tasting. We tasted a jasmine green tea, a Sichuan green tea (this one seemed to be made of FRESH leaves), and some pu erh... It was the perfect way to spend a rainy cold morning.
After tea, we had some Gung Pao chicken and some sweet and sour chicken! Yes, they are served at every Chengdu restaurant!
After lunch we borrowed a couple of bikes from Christine's friends and set out on a 30-minute bike ride to a nearby market via the university (SW China U of econ and finance, we think). Ayse gets stuck in mid-crosswalk on a surprise light change...what's Chinese for 'Frogger?' Everyone laughed and honked at the tourist!
In the evening we went to the Sichuan 'opera'--a stage event of music, dancing, acrobatics, puppets, etc. The highlight was some impressive foot-juggling, and a really great shadow puppet show. The performance was only marred by a loud, obnoxious tourist in the row in front of us...from Sacramento of all places.
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Oh, I can't wait to get all your tea tips! (Um, tips as in "knowledge," not as in "the end parts of the leaves.")
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