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INDIVIDUAL VOYAGE THROUGH CHINA DURING 7 WEEKS PEKING XIAN CHENGDU CHONGQING YANGTZE RIVER MOUNTS HUANGSHAN HANGZHOU SUZHOU SHANGHAI PEKING
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
CHENGDU
24.9.1990
www.flickr.com/photos/jeanette
It’s midday. The weather is mild; the sun is shining. We find easily Binjiang hotel. No problem being “not Chinese”. Milan’s passport seems to be OK; they know Yugoslavia (socialist country). They look perplex verifying mine, here is written “Bilish” (Belgium). My God! No idea where that country can be! Some consultations; we keep silent because the Chinese doesn’t like sharpness. Finally they smile saying Bilish, Bilish; we are welcome!
We take a nice room with bathroom; we refresh and soon are outside searching for a snack. Just opposite the hotel, along the Jin River, attractive little restaurants. On one of the terraces a pretty young waitress invites us, in perfect English, to taste the well-known Sichuan’s dishes. We agree her offer insisting on “putchajdjo”! We enjoy the princely dinner – a large dish of fried noodles, black mushrooms with a delicious exotic sauce. Very cheap. The prices, till now, are really low and until now the limit of our diagram of expenses is not exceeded.
Chengdu existed already 770 years B.J-C. In the second century before our era it was the capital of the kingdom of Sichuan. At that period they called it “The City of the Magistrates of the Brocarts” because its citizens manufactured brocart. Much of its traditional aspects didn’t survive the “cleaning” of the years ’50 but numerous superior institutes and its University gave rise to a cultural youth as we note walking on the large avenues bordered with plane trees. Desirous to contact foreigners, girls and boys accost us asking: “Can I help you”. It’s a pleasure looking at the charming girls defiling on their bikes on the wide spaces reserved for the cyclists and not crowded like in Peking.
Loungering all day long, on our way to the hotel, when lampions light, we arrive in a lane where young artists expose their paintings on silk. The gallery is hundreds meters long. I would like to buy a specimen of these traditional china’s paintings but we are too far from our return home. We chatter, interested in the very characteristic pictures. One of the artists tells the legend represented on a silk strip several meters long. They are here every evening they say; so we leave that nice company without regret knowing it’s not an adieu but an au-revoir.
The bicycle trail
www.flickr.com/photos/jeanette
It’s midday. The weather is mild; the sun is shining. We find easily Binjiang hotel. No problem being “not Chinese”. Milan’s passport seems to be OK; they know Yugoslavia (socialist country). They look perplex verifying mine, here is written “Bilish” (Belgium). My God! No idea where that country can be! Some consultations; we keep silent because the Chinese doesn’t like sharpness. Finally they smile saying Bilish, Bilish; we are welcome!
We take a nice room with bathroom; we refresh and soon are outside searching for a snack. Just opposite the hotel, along the Jin River, attractive little restaurants. On one of the terraces a pretty young waitress invites us, in perfect English, to taste the well-known Sichuan’s dishes. We agree her offer insisting on “putchajdjo”! We enjoy the princely dinner – a large dish of fried noodles, black mushrooms with a delicious exotic sauce. Very cheap. The prices, till now, are really low and until now the limit of our diagram of expenses is not exceeded.
Chengdu existed already 770 years B.J-C. In the second century before our era it was the capital of the kingdom of Sichuan. At that period they called it “The City of the Magistrates of the Brocarts” because its citizens manufactured brocart. Much of its traditional aspects didn’t survive the “cleaning” of the years ’50 but numerous superior institutes and its University gave rise to a cultural youth as we note walking on the large avenues bordered with plane trees. Desirous to contact foreigners, girls and boys accost us asking: “Can I help you”. It’s a pleasure looking at the charming girls defiling on their bikes on the wide spaces reserved for the cyclists and not crowded like in Peking.
Loungering all day long, on our way to the hotel, when lampions light, we arrive in a lane where young artists expose their paintings on silk. The gallery is hundreds meters long. I would like to buy a specimen of these traditional china’s paintings but we are too far from our return home. We chatter, interested in the very characteristic pictures. One of the artists tells the legend represented on a silk strip several meters long. They are here every evening they say; so we leave that nice company without regret knowing it’s not an adieu but an au-revoir.
The bicycle trail
Posted by: jeanette / 2:44 AM 
