The day the heavens opened - Day 16Oct 3, 2009
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We decided to start the day in true Chengdu spirit and take it easy. Really took our time to wait for the rain to stop. It was the first time we had every experienced rain in China. We took the bus into the city centre and hoped to spend the afternoon relaxing in Remnin Park (The Peoples Park). It is suppose to be the biggest park in Chengdu, however you can walk round the whole thing in 10 minutes. We were trying to find the Chamber of Horrors (apparently a scary experience of their version of hell). Unfortunately, we couldn’t find it but there are lots of teahouses and a very nice one in the middle the lake. Teahouses in China are the equivalent to a pub somewhere else, very social and popular. Even in the drizzle the park was still full of life, people were sat round at every spot drinking tea and playing games. You could even hire a rowing boat and paddle round the pond. When the heavens opened and the rain fell heavily people retreated under shelter and had continued singing into their portable Karaoke machines, they were clearly happy whaling away. We decided to sit under shelter and join the tea drinkers. The fact that it had been raining non stop all day didn’t seem to affect the general mood and there was a busy atmosphere for hours.
With no sign of the weather clearing we decided to brave it and went for some dinner at a recommended restaurant. Sichuan (the province we were in) food has a reputation of being spicy, so Claire was looking forward to it, Nicky not so much! Our walk to the other side of town was long and resulted in us getting drenched (we had to be over that side of town as we had planned to go to the Sichuan Opera). We did what we usually do and pointed to some Chinese writing on the menu in hope that what arrived wasn’t too risky. The centre of the city (Tian’fu Square) had huge flower displays, mosaics and water fountain displays in celebration of the 60 years. The water fountains were set to lights and music and it was funny see the Chinese tourists trying to have their photos by the fountain then getting soaked when it sprayed out into the crowd.
The Sichuan Opera was great. It consisted of several short sketches; Song, instrumental, puppets, hand shadow puppets, comedy and very clever mask changes. Before the show we were speaking to a young Chinese girl, she was interested in England and we gave her advice. People from the seats around us were trying to listen in; as always, they appeared to be interested in what we were talking about. At the end of the show the girl leant forward and said welcome to China, with that she handed us each a panda cuddly toy (we had told her we didn’t get a chance to see the panda breeding reserve just out of the city) and a Chinese red tassel with a mask ornament from the show attached. With that she was gone, we were gob smacked. That would never happen in England, we think she must have stepped out during the show to buy them.
