Lorena in China

Now Amy is living in Leshan near Chengdu she already warned me that I might find it difficult to find as many vegetarian dishes as I do in Beijing, I found this out on Saturday night when we took at trip to get some dinner at Jinli ancient street. As there are less foreigners in this area of China in seemed that less people could understand English so I had wrote down on a piece of paper NO MEAT in chinese characters to show waiters. We was walking down the street and went into one restaurant and it didn’t look promising but we asked and they showed a very limited selection by limited I mean 1 side of potato things, so we thought we’d try the next place we showed the piece of paper before entering this time and straight away they said no we walked across the street and the people shouted over from the other restaurant not there!

It was proving to be difficult but we tried another place as we walked in we showed the piece of paper and she just pointed up to the board which was in chinese so Amy and I looked at each other walked out. FINALLY we went to another place and showed the piece of paper and he said ok and took us inside I was very happy! When he gave us the menu and by menu I mean a piece of small paper with only chinese characters on it, me and Amy were laughing and told the man to choose for us because we had no idea! Luckily we ended up with no meat or fish, one of the dishes that he had ordered for us had a strange spice on though that made our mouths feel like they had tingly, vibrating pins and needles in it which was weird.

This is what we ended up with..

Going to see the pandas was something I really wanted to do whilst I was in China and this weekend I got to go!

Anyone visiting China who loves animals I would definitely recommend going here, it was amazing. We got to see so many pandas in large enclosures with no glass and vey close up. The pandas looked really happy and very well kept which was so nice to see especially after visiting the Beijing Zoo which was horrible!

We saw the baby pandas too that were in actual cribs, they were so cute, when they were sleeping then when they woke up they were trying to walk and kept falling over 🙂 We wanted to hold a panda whilst we were there and we had read online that you could but we found out when we were there that no one could hold them for 2 weeks as they have just had there injections, I was a bit gutted when we first found out but the great day we had definitely made up for it!!

Heres just a few of the many photos we took at the Chengdu Panda Research Base.. (check out the Photo Galleries for more)

Amy has now moved to Leshan to work in a school there to cover, so we decided to have a weekend in Chengdu because we were going to go anyway to see the pandas and this worked out perfect timing to be able to go!

So I set off on Friday afternoon to Beijing airport and boarded my plane, I noticed that I was the only foreigner on the whole plane! I arrived in Chengdu just before 10pm and got a taxi to my hotel. I noticed that Chengdu was warmer than beijing and had more trees and less high-rise buildings. I also felt a little less safe than I do back in Beijing I’m not sure if that’s because I’m used to Beijing now or not.

Flying over Beijing..

I woke up early on Saturday morning, left the hotel and made my way the the bus station I got on a bus to Leshan where Amy is staying, it took around 2 hours I think, I was falling asleep on the bus and when I woke up I looked around and wondered where I was there was so many trees and lakes (this isn’t what I’m used to at all living in Beijing)!! When I arrived in Leshan I met Amy at her hotel and we made our way to the Giant Leshan Buddha.

The Leshan Giant Buddha was HUGE! It’s the biggest Buddha in China and I think it is the 2nd biggest Buddha in the world! We walked right to the bottom of it. During this visit was the worst case of “I feel like a celebrity” I’m not kidding you when I say Amy and I were literally the only foreigners there I think I saw about 3 others the whole time we were there, due to this we were stared at ALOT and asked (most of the time not even asked) to have photos of/with us. When we were lining up to go down to the bottom of the Buddha I was even handed a baby to hold over the barrier to have a picture with!!!

Here’s a picture of the Giant Buddha..

We then got a lift back to Chengdu and checked into a different hotel, when we arrived at the hotel they asked for our passports because to be able to stay in a hotel they need to see your passport and visa. Unfortunately Amy had forgotten her passport as nether of us had thought about her needing it! This meant she wasn’t aloud to stay at the hotel with me even though the room was booked for both of us. Luckily someone from the company lived nearby and she was able to stay there for the night.

We then went to Jinli Ancient street to have a look around and grab some dinner. This street had little shops and stalls as well as restaurants and bars. it was nice to walk around and have a look!

This is the street..

In Jinli Street there was a Sichuan Face Changing Opera performance so we decided to go and watch it. First there was a women pouring water into a cup through a long teapot and holding it in different ways to do so. The next part was strange and we didn’t really understand the point in it. It was literally a lady using over the top hand movements to pour hot water into different pots and pour in out again, that was it. 5 minutes left and me and Amy were wondering where the actual face changing opera was.. then a man entered the stage and definitely saved the show, his masks changed very quickly, it was very impressive and made it worth watching the weird tea lady before haha!

Our host families had told us that they wanted to try English pie so Amy and I decided that we would try and cook dinner for them! We cooked them meat and vegetable pie, vegetable ratatouille, mash potato, peas and broccoli. We also bought some Malibu and coke for them to try!

Amy and I were nervous about making the pastry but it actually turned out pretty good, unfortunately once we had made the pie and it looked lovely we realised that it couldn’t fit in the oven (as a lot of chinese families don’t have oven so when they do there quite small) so we had to attempt to cut it in half and put it into 2 dishes which didn’t make it look as nice, we made sure that we showed them the picture of how it did look before!

The English meal was a success and they all seemed to really enjoy it apart from little Ryan who told us it wasn’t yummy haha!

Halloween isn’t a big celebration in China. However, some people do celebrate it and I got invited to a Halloween party by a friend of Cindy’s who was hosting the party for her daughter’s friends and they wanted a foreigner to come and tell them about what we do on Halloween and play a game with the children.

At the party the children bought their pumpkins they had decorated with them, we did facepainting, games and the children got lots of candy. They also learnt the dance routine to that Korean song (I can’t spell the name of it!). The night before Halloween we carved a pumpkin. On Halloween night Elena and I also went trick o’ treating, she got A LOT of candy!!

Amy and I woke up early on Saturday morning and went to the opening of a new Apple store in Wangfujing for you Dad!

Heres some of the pictures.. (we thought you’d appreciate them :))

As you walked into the store the staff were lined up in two lines greeting you by clapping, cheering and we even got a mexican wave as we walked through!

I was sooooo excited for my mum to be coming to China! When she arrived at the airport I couldn’t believe she was actually here (I squeezed her till she couldn’t breath – in a good way!!!).

We had such a great packed week together, we visited Behai park, Houhai lake, the Lama Temple, the Great Wall, Tea houses, an Acrobatics show, the Temple of Heaven, Silk Market, Nanguxiang Alley, the Summer Palace, a Jade and Pearl factory, the Forbidden City, the Drum and Bell towers, the Ming Tombs and 798 art park! I felt like a tourist for the whole week!

The first night that mum arrived my host family cooked a big dinner with lots of beer and friends, they made mum feel so welcome! The second day was the moon cake festival we went to Behai park in the day and then came home for a family dinner where mum got to try a BUG and traditional rice wine (Bijou) which she wasn’t keen on (she described it as paint-stripper haha!) but the food was delicious! Throughout the rest of week we packed in a lot of the touristy spots and some places that I love going to too. We went to see Wangjing Acrobatic Theatre they were amazing, it was so exciting!

The Great Wall was fantastic, we went with a tour because I live quite far from the Great Wall and it would have been difficult to get to alone, our tour was brilliant we got to go to The Great Wall, The Ming Tombs, a Jade Factory, a Pearl Factory, a Teahouse and got lunch included too! We got a chairlift up some of the Great Wall so we was able to see some of the amazing views and then climb further up once we had finished we tobogganed down to the bottom of the wall, it was so much fun!!

I’m so glad mum got to meet my Chinese family and hope that Dad and Ben can meet them next time too!

Throughout my time in China so far Amy and I have dealt with a lot of staring but yesterday we had a very intense one, a man was walking past giving us the biggest grin and kind of stopped to stare so being friendly I said hello to him in Chinese, this made him smile even more and stopped completely just grinning at me and Amy, we smiled back for about a minute awkwardly but then decided maybe if we started talking he would walk away, this wasn’t the case he continued to stand and stare, after a while I had to say goodbye to him in Chinese in hope that he would walk away, he did then finally get the hint to continue walking but not completely away he walked for about 5 seconds then stood turned around and continued to beam his smile at us! Was definitely the longest stare I have encountered so far haha!!

Last week whilst mum was staying with me in China we went to see the temple of heaven on the Friday, as we were lining up waiting to buy our tickets we saw BTV BEIJING film crew (this is the main news channel here). They approached us and asked us if we wanted to answer some questions and then they took us on a little tour around the temple of heaven! We felt like we were famous for the morning haha!

Here’s the link from the news reporter if you want to watch us, we both talk on it too (we’re on at about 1min 24 secs):

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDU4MDc2ODUy.html

So I went into what looked like an off-licence, when I got inside it was a big shop with lots and lots of different alcohol but in the middle of the shop there are tables and chairs with people just casually drinking the spirits they have just brought out of the bottle and people are just standing around smoking and drinking!

I think an off-licence in China is more like a social gathering rather than just buying some alcohol and then drinking it elsewhere like back home!