Chengdu - Bloody big Buddha and Sichiuan Specialities.
After a severely delayed flight, we finally arrived back in Chengdu - this time to stay. We were taken to our hotel by a our clearly patient guide Lexi, which was in one of the cities many ‘old towns’. This was the fantastic Buddha Zen courtyard hotel, which had a small Zen garden and a four-faced Buddha set in an open air courtyard to back up its name. Our room was more of a suite, with a sitting room as well as bedroom.
Arriving late, we had dinner of the old favourites of Prawn Gong Bao and Double Roast Pork but tried a Pork with sizzling crunchy rice cakes. Then I did a small re-con around the dark street of closing shops in traditional buildings that seemed slightly more Japanese than Chinese, as they were mostly half timbered brown and white affairs, with gently arching but simply embellished rooves that were lit up to make the whole area very photogenic.
The newer parts of the city have a lot of glass fronted buildings that in keeping with the modern China propensity for rainbow coloured lights, are also lit at night in a slightly more garish manner.
The next morning we drove 2 hours to Leshan, home of the world biggest sitting Buddha - carved from the living rock of the cliff that sit above the confluence of 3 rivers that eventually feed into the Yangtze, he was intended to calm the waters and make it safe for the fisher- and boat men who worked on the wide span of water. He succeeded; whether by spiritual intervention or by the vast quantity of rock that was deposited into the water in his carving is left ambiguous.
At first you must climb up to the top of the cliff via a path passing small niche carving of bodhisattvas and giant red Chinese letters, until you reach the flat top, about level with his ear. From here you can climb down a narrow, steep and winding path until you reach the small area in front of his massive feet to look back up at his rather blocky figure. Once photos are taken, you then climb up a second weaving pathway that threads its way through the rock face back up to the top again. From here you can visit the temple also on the cliff top that has some huge and impressively detailed depictions of the 4 guardian kings, before taking the back route through some lush bamboo forest back to ground level. Following another spicy lunch of fish flavour pork strips and chicken Gong Bao (can never have too much of that) we took a short river cruise to see the buddha from the water; also from a certain angle near the shore it is possible to see the sleeping buddha made up of the various tree coverd hills that line the opposite bank. A tall pagoda that also makes up the cliff top temple complex is somewhat unfortunaly placed, meaning that the sleeping buddha seems to be having a somewhat ... ahem ... "nice" dream.
On returning to Chengdu - former capital of Shu - we visited the Wuhou Shrine; this is dedicated to Lui Bei and other Shu heroes of the Three Kingdoms period (remember your Chinese history from earlier posts?) - Here there is a courtyard that has Lui Bei at the rear with his sworn brothers Guan Yu and Zhang Fei either side of his, and then flanked on the by many of the Shu generals including Zhou Yun, and Sun Quan of Wu. Progressing further you can see another larger set of statues of Lei Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei in a dedicated shrine before finally coming to a smaller shrine to Zhuge Liang, the Chancellor and master strategist of Shu.
Lui Bei’s tomb mound is also within the complex - to this day unexcavated - set within nice gardens complete with black swans which while elegant, I can now testify, have a much stronger bite than you might expect.
Immediately next to the Shrine is another of Chengdu’s old town areas, where there is great selection of craft and tea shops as well as a very appetising street of food stalls. I did not partake as next stop was a eat as much as you like Sichuan Hot Pot restaurant; here you could help yourself from a large glass fronted fridge, like the ones you have in stores for cold drinks. They had the usual meat strips, prawns and lots of veg/tofu etc but they also did a few things like ‘muslim syle’ lamb mince kebabs, dough balls and dumplings too. It was very, very tasty, but really, really hot.
The film of chilli oil on the top was nearly black it was so thick so that I basically had a head rush the entire time I was eating it and nearly fell over when I went to the bathroom. It was awesome.
After this we went to see another Sichuan speciality; Opera. This involves actors to be very ornate costumes, and elaborate make up, that is often make up of vivid block of red black and white to give them a somewhat fearsome appearance. They sing and charge about the stage in operatic reconstructions of great battles which are totally incomprehensible but impressive just the same. Prior to the performance we were able to watch the performers get ready, including watching them complete their make up and complex head dresses and hair pieces themselves - and from a crossplayer point of view, I was rather pleased to see many of the warriors were in fact women.
Also in the show there was a shadow puppet master who used nothing but his hands and head to make a variety of animal such as birds, rabbits, dogs and even a galloping horse. There was also a solo called “nine horses galloping” by a man playing the Chinese violin or Erhu, which has its fret less string strung in free air, making the selections of correct notes in the very fast paced crescendo very impressive.
There was a small cabaret section involving a man who gambled too much and his furious wide, who punished him by making him crawl under a bench with a bowl of lit incense on his head that was entertaining, if completely bewildering.
The finally involved the most highly prized skill of the Sichuan opera; the extremely rapid and on stage costume and face changing; here actors completely transform themselves sin a matter of milliseconds using a complete secret technique that I guess involve layers of clothes and masks with elasticised or sprung loaded returners hidden in their hats or behind their back, but it was done with such speed it was impossible to tell. I tried to video it, but such it the swirling activity of Sichuan Opera, you may struggle to make it out.
From here we sadly went home for an early flight to the next day; Chengdu has probably now superseded Xian as my favourite city in mainland China.
Pictures:
Chengdu
Leshan
Video of Sichuan Opera
Arriving late, we had dinner of the old favourites of Prawn Gong Bao and Double Roast Pork but tried a Pork with sizzling crunchy rice cakes. Then I did a small re-con around the dark street of closing shops in traditional buildings that seemed slightly more Japanese than Chinese, as they were mostly half timbered brown and white affairs, with gently arching but simply embellished rooves that were lit up to make the whole area very photogenic.
The newer parts of the city have a lot of glass fronted buildings that in keeping with the modern China propensity for rainbow coloured lights, are also lit at night in a slightly more garish manner.
The next morning we drove 2 hours to Leshan, home of the world biggest sitting Buddha - carved from the living rock of the cliff that sit above the confluence of 3 rivers that eventually feed into the Yangtze, he was intended to calm the waters and make it safe for the fisher- and boat men who worked on the wide span of water. He succeeded; whether by spiritual intervention or by the vast quantity of rock that was deposited into the water in his carving is left ambiguous.
At first you must climb up to the top of the cliff via a path passing small niche carving of bodhisattvas and giant red Chinese letters, until you reach the flat top, about level with his ear. From here you can climb down a narrow, steep and winding path until you reach the small area in front of his massive feet to look back up at his rather blocky figure. Once photos are taken, you then climb up a second weaving pathway that threads its way through the rock face back up to the top again. From here you can visit the temple also on the cliff top that has some huge and impressively detailed depictions of the 4 guardian kings, before taking the back route through some lush bamboo forest back to ground level. Following another spicy lunch of fish flavour pork strips and chicken Gong Bao (can never have too much of that) we took a short river cruise to see the buddha from the water; also from a certain angle near the shore it is possible to see the sleeping buddha made up of the various tree coverd hills that line the opposite bank. A tall pagoda that also makes up the cliff top temple complex is somewhat unfortunaly placed, meaning that the sleeping buddha seems to be having a somewhat ... ahem ... "nice" dream.
On returning to Chengdu - former capital of Shu - we visited the Wuhou Shrine; this is dedicated to Lui Bei and other Shu heroes of the Three Kingdoms period (remember your Chinese history from earlier posts?) - Here there is a courtyard that has Lui Bei at the rear with his sworn brothers Guan Yu and Zhang Fei either side of his, and then flanked on the by many of the Shu generals including Zhou Yun, and Sun Quan of Wu. Progressing further you can see another larger set of statues of Lei Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei in a dedicated shrine before finally coming to a smaller shrine to Zhuge Liang, the Chancellor and master strategist of Shu.
Lui Bei’s tomb mound is also within the complex - to this day unexcavated - set within nice gardens complete with black swans which while elegant, I can now testify, have a much stronger bite than you might expect.
Immediately next to the Shrine is another of Chengdu’s old town areas, where there is great selection of craft and tea shops as well as a very appetising street of food stalls. I did not partake as next stop was a eat as much as you like Sichuan Hot Pot restaurant; here you could help yourself from a large glass fronted fridge, like the ones you have in stores for cold drinks. They had the usual meat strips, prawns and lots of veg/tofu etc but they also did a few things like ‘muslim syle’ lamb mince kebabs, dough balls and dumplings too. It was very, very tasty, but really, really hot.
The film of chilli oil on the top was nearly black it was so thick so that I basically had a head rush the entire time I was eating it and nearly fell over when I went to the bathroom. It was awesome.
After this we went to see another Sichuan speciality; Opera. This involves actors to be very ornate costumes, and elaborate make up, that is often make up of vivid block of red black and white to give them a somewhat fearsome appearance. They sing and charge about the stage in operatic reconstructions of great battles which are totally incomprehensible but impressive just the same. Prior to the performance we were able to watch the performers get ready, including watching them complete their make up and complex head dresses and hair pieces themselves - and from a crossplayer point of view, I was rather pleased to see many of the warriors were in fact women.
Also in the show there was a shadow puppet master who used nothing but his hands and head to make a variety of animal such as birds, rabbits, dogs and even a galloping horse. There was also a solo called “nine horses galloping” by a man playing the Chinese violin or Erhu, which has its fret less string strung in free air, making the selections of correct notes in the very fast paced crescendo very impressive.
There was a small cabaret section involving a man who gambled too much and his furious wide, who punished him by making him crawl under a bench with a bowl of lit incense on his head that was entertaining, if completely bewildering.
The finally involved the most highly prized skill of the Sichuan opera; the extremely rapid and on stage costume and face changing; here actors completely transform themselves sin a matter of milliseconds using a complete secret technique that I guess involve layers of clothes and masks with elasticised or sprung loaded returners hidden in their hats or behind their back, but it was done with such speed it was impossible to tell. I tried to video it, but such it the swirling activity of Sichuan Opera, you may struggle to make it out.
From here we sadly went home for an early flight to the next day; Chengdu has probably now superseded Xian as my favourite city in mainland China.
Pictures:
Chengdu
Leshan
Video of Sichuan Opera