In Jiajiang...
And finally we're up to the present! We headed south a couple of hours to
Jiajiang, which seems not particularly notable except that it had a cliff
with 2400 Buddhas arranged on it.Should be cool to see...but we haven't
quite made it yet. Today it is storming, and the last two days...well, we
just haven't quite made it yet. But we found a hotel we like, and have just
enjoyed kind of lying around and doing nothing a bit. Or a bit more, as the
case probably is.
The general plan is to see the cliff, head another hour south to Leshan to
see the largest Buddha in the world (carved into a mountain, kind of like
Mt. Rushmore only almost certainly /much/ bigger), and then further south to
Kunming -- another big city where we'll have to run some errands. We have to
"leave the country" -- in our case, that means we have to make it to Hong
Kong -- on June 1, and so after Kunming we're just kind of making the rest
of itinerary up as we go along. Although considering how long we seem to
stay in each town we hit (we've probably been averaging at least a week, and
we been in Jiajiang -- which as I said, isn't particularly notable -- for
three days now and still haven't seen theone sight we came to hit), we might
well not get to see too much more between Kunming and Hong Kong. But that's
okay, nice and slow and relaxing is working our pretty well for us, and
generally the longer we stay in a place the cheaper we can stay in it for
since we find the markets and cheap dumpling places and such. Although
disappointingly, we haven't found any dumplings or buns at all here in
Jiajiang. Weird.
At least in Sichuan, though, duck is /way/ more popular and easier to find
than chicken. I just can't quite get over this fact. Duck for me is such a
rare delicacy that it is almost impossible to find outside of Mr. B's or
something. But here, every street corner has some lady with a cart on wheels
and a score or so of fantastic looking ducks hanging from their necks. You
can also just buy a bag of duxk heads, or rabbit heads for that matter,
pre-cooked and ready to go! What you do with these, I can't quite figure
out...unless you just crunch them up whole, bones and all.
Here in Jiajiang, we've wound up eating quite a bit of unidentifiable
internal organ bits. The first days we played menu roulette -- the menu was
in Chinese, so we just pointed to something and hoped for the best -- and
wound up with noodle soup with...something else in it. I'm guessing it was
probably intestines of some sort. But they were pleasantly chewy, kind of
tasty with the soup, and perfectly edible. Yesterday we tried a hot pot sort
of thing, where they bring a bowl of soup out and a bunch of plates, which
you dump in and cook in the broth and then fish out.there was some great
beef, some greens and spring onions...and then a whole bunch of other
things. Definitely some tripe (stomach), but also a wealth of other sliced
organ bits I couldn't place. Again, almost all of them were just chewy
without alot of taste on their own. Oh, also there was a plate of rendered
fat which you could then reheat and choke down. That was the only thing I
just didn't feel like eating, although I tried one piece.
Sichuan food is pretty tasty and kind of spicy, but unfortunately the spice
seems to come exclusively fromthelayer of spicy oil they dump on top of
everything. Which means everything you eat is greasy as hell (with the
consequent intestinal difficulties posed to those not used to eating that
much straight fat), and if you don't want something as spicy it is almost
impossible to get rid of -- you can't just scrape off the peppers or
anything. But the offal seems to be pretty tasty usually, so that is
something at least.