Dave's 50th

The Wedding

Sichuan Food

The food here is excellent and usually full of chilli. Surprisingly the locals don't eat a lot of rice. Pictured here is Sichuan Fish hot pot, Chilli rabbit legs and Scallops . The women drink fresh soy milk at dinner. The men drink Bai Jiu - like a spicy vodka.

Leshan Buddha

The city of Leshan is nearly two hours drive from Chengdu. It is situated where three rivers meet - the Min Jiang, the Qin Yi Jiang and the Da Du He. The air was hot and humid and visibility was low due to the humid haze. We viewed the Buddha, thousands of years old, from a boat and then climbed to the top of his head!

Ancient town on the Huanglong River

On Wednesday Chang, Tyson and Chang's Dad, Guaungfu, took us to the Huang Long River historic town. Chinese tourists come here but very few Westerners. We enjoyed the shopping, a ride in a rickshaw, a private boat ride and a good lunch of pork and tofu. One of the pictures here shows the traditional way of making soy milk and tofu. They grind the soy beans with a stone grinder.

Pandas and temples

Chang's parents Guangfu and Shimin (pictured with Dave) are keen to show us around Chengdu. So far we've been taken to the Buddhist Wenshu temple and the Panda Breeding and Research centre. The temple is the biggest Buddhist one in Chengdu and we were lucky enough to see the resident monks about to start eating their one meal of the day. They were having rice with incredible amounts of whole chilli on top. The pandas were of course beautiful and obviously well cared for. Tyson and Chang could not come sightseeing with us the first day as they had to do preparations for the wedding. So we were left to try to manage communication with Chang's parents by sign language and my limited knowledge of Chinese! The electronic translators were useful but only at times. However at lunch time we were joined by Fan Lin (also pictured), the daughter of one of their friends. Her English was good as it was her major in college and she was out translator.