Day 10: Chonqing - Chengdu - Sep 29, 2009

It was arranged for the public bus to Chengdu to stop and pick us up from our hotel - I can't see this happening anywhere else - a public bus, already half full of locals being made to stop and wait for us to come out of the hotel and board the bus.

My seat was next to a young university student, who was very pleased to get to spend four hours talking to me to practise her English. My cold was not too crash hot, with lots of sneezes, and though some other Chinese people nearby pulled out their facemasks very quickly, my girl "Star" didn't take any notice. I could easily have slept and sneezed the whole way, but she wasn't going to let me!!

That night we went to have a buffet dinner in the city centre, which actually turned out to be the biggest hotpot restaurant ever. I was glad that we'd had hotpot the night before, as we all now knew what to do. There must have been 50 different choices of fish, veges and of course there were some odd foods - we ate beef tendon, tripe, bean curd and lots of interesting mushrooms. Some of the things that we saw on offer, but didn't eat, were monkey brains (that's what we were told, but they were definitely brains of some sort!), chicken feet, calves hooves and live fish. Yes, live fish! There were some bigger ones in tanks that obviously they were killing fresh from the tank, but I saw one lady walk past our table with a plastic bag with a couple of small, sardine-size fish swimming in it. I'm guessing that boiling broth is a fairly quick death for a little fish, and I wasn't entirely surprised to see it. Everyday there seems to be something "different" to observe here. The place was absolutely packed with Chinese and like everywhere else we've been, we were the only foreigners - to the point that one lady came over with her toddler to point us out to him. He seemed mighty scared of us - even friendly waves and handshakes didn't really do it. Oh, the last observation for the night - whatever the Chinese don't want they throw it on the floor - food, drink bottles, chopsticks, serviettes - the place was an entire mess. When we left our two tables, there was not a thing on the floor :-)

Afterwards we dashed off to see a Chinese show that consisted of various acts:

1. Opera - Hibiscus in autumn

2. A love story opera "Shooting Eagle"

3. Acrobatic show, with an incredible girl who juggled a table with her feet

4. Instrumental solo on the Erhu - from Mr Wan

5. Stick puppet show "A Beautiful World"

6. Opera play "Rolling Oil Lamp" where a man tried to outsmart his wife

7. Handshadow show by My Wan

8. Spitting fire people, and the amazing changing face opera, which was totally magical and the highlight of the evening (I've bought the DVD, as you have to see it to believe it)

9. A poem about plum fowers by Mr Shou