And all the rest

There are so many things to see in Sichuan that four days can hardly scratch the surface. I've covered pandas and Giant Buddha as well as a bit about food and downtown shopping, so this time I'll write about the rest of the trip, which involves various things around the city of Chengdu.

One of the famous sites in the city is the Wuhou Temple (武侯祠), which is not far from the center of town. This complex is built around the large tomb of Emperor Liu Bei (刘备) of the Shu Kingdom (221-263) and mostly honors his premier, Zhuge Liang (诸葛亮), one of the most famous strategists in Chinese history. “Wuhou” means “premier” (in the sense of the government official, not any of the other meanings of the word) or “chancellor”.

Liu Bei's tomb has not been excavated – it's just a large circular mound with trees growing on it, presumably with a burial chamber somewhere beneath it.
That's the burial mound on the right. There is a circular wall built around it, which I think dates from about 1700, when the original construction was rebuilt by the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty.

In the garden area outside the circular wall is a wonderful garden of miniature trees.
We think of bonsai as a Japanese art, but like many things, the Japanese learned it from the Chinese.
There is also a museum devoted to the arts of the Three Kingdoms period.
And here is the statue of Zhuge Liang.
One of the fun things about this complex is the carved animals that decorate the railings.
Each of them is different, and there are a wide variety of animals represented, both real and mythical.

Immediately adjacent to the temple complex is Jinli Street (锦里路).
This street dates to the Qin Dynasty (221BC-206BC), when it was one of the most prominent streets in the city, but there is virtually nothing left from that time period. It was reconstructed in 2004 for a taste of Old China. I'm pretty sure the Qin Dynasty didn't have Starbucks (新巴克).
There are shops and booths selling a large variety of local handicrafts and other goods, plus some imported things from Tibet, India, and so on.
This man is making elaborate shapes out of sugar.

And of course there's an area devoted to food.
This is the latest entry in the “too cute to resist” category:

Another site in Chengdu is the Yongling tomb (永陵), where Wang Jian (王建 847-918) is buried.
Like Liu Bei's tomb, it features a large circular mound. That's what you see with trees on it above the faded red doorway. The path to the opening is guarded by statues of animals and men. Photography is not allowed inside, so here is a link to a bunch of pictures. You can actually go inside this mausoleum, which was raided over the centuries of many treasures but still holds a lot of history. The most interesting thing is that the sarcophagus is decorated with carvings of 24 female musicians and dancers, providing a wonderful glimpse into the music of the era.

Moving even further back in history, there is the Jinsha (金沙 or Golden Sand) site. In 2001, during some new development, workers stumbled upon many old artifacts, and when experts were called in, they found remains of an extensive settlement dating to the Ancient Shu Culture around 1000BCE. Careful excavations were conducted, and thousands of items were found. Archaeological work has stopped now, and the main site has been enclosed in a large building.
It's only about 5k (a couple of miles) from the center of town.
They've built a raised walkway across the site so you can see many things close up, and there are signs indicating where the most famous items were found.
One thing that is really surprising is that thousands of elephant tusks were found, apparently buried in a ritual manner. It seems that elephants were common in this area 3000 years ago. There certainly aren't any around now.

A short walk from the excavation site is the museum.
The circular skylight at the center of the building is designed to resemble one of the most famous items found there, the Immortal Sun Bird Disk.
At the bottom of the central shaft the design is repeated, for a really lovely effect.

Here's another of the famous artifacts.
This is one of the most artistically designed museums I have ever seen. All of the displays are beautiful, undoubtedly modern but also suited to the ancient items presented. The ambient light is very low, making it really difficult to photograph, with dramatic spotlights on the items.
This beautiful gold foil disk presents such an evocative image that it was chosen as the symbol of China's ancient heritage. It is part of logos you see around the entire country.

The Jinsha site also features a cultural center where there are shows with dancing and so on, but it was closed when we were there. Jinsha is related to another famous site called Sanxingdui (三星堆 or Three Stars Mound), which is even older, but is farther from town, so we didn't have time to see it. Next time... Both sites represent a period of China's history that is not very well understood. For example, it is unknown what happened to the people who lived here 3000 years ago.

The last place in Chengdu we visited was the Wenshu Monastery (文殊). It's located not far north of the center of town.
It dates from the Tang Dynasty and is today the home of the province's Buddhist organization.

I particularly like this statue:
Note the monkey underneath the elephant feeding it. And yes, the elephant is carrying the world on its back. The globe is fairly detailed with the Earth's continents, so I'm sure this is not an ancient thing.

There are beautiful gardens behind the temples, and at the back is this amazing building:
There you go, Chengdu highlights in words and pictures.

Buddha is really big in these parts

During four days in Sichuan, about 3000 years of history can easily be witnessed, if not completely absorbed. Remains of cities dating to 1000BCE can be seen within the city; it is the birthplace of Taoism, and has long been important to Buddhists as well, with many sacred sites and spectacular temples.

Several of the main attractions in the area are located a couple hours southwest of Chengdu by bus, near the city of Leshan (乐山 or Happy Mountain, though “happy” in Chinese doesn't sound so frivolous as it does in English). The bus ride takes you through a vast agricultural area, a patchwork of flooded rice paddies and other crops, some of which I've probably eaten but didn't recognize.
You can occasionally see water buffalo in the fields helping with the work. This kind of farming does not lend itself to massive mechanization, requiring instead large amounts of muscle power from humans and animals.

Leshan is home to a bit over a half million people, pretty small by Chinese standards, but only a little smaller than Seattle. There are very few high-rise buildings, but the usual assortment of fashionable stores can be seen on the mostly narrow streets. It sits at the confluence of three rivers, and in ancient times the currents near here could be pretty treacherous. So in the year 719 a monk named Haitong devised a plan to carving a great homage to Buddha out of the cliffside in hopes of calming the waters.

Construction took ninety years, and Haitong did not live to witness its completion, but it did indeed calm the waters, probably due to the huge amount of rock cut from the cliff and dumped into the river.

This Buddha, called 大佛 (Dafo), which simply means “big Buddha”, stands 71 meters (233 feet) tall. In English, the name is rendered sometimes as Giant Buddha and sometimes as Great Buddha. No matter what you call it, it is pretty amazing, quite worthy of its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

To see the whole thing, you have to take a boat on the river for ¥50.
The boat will cruise past the statue, turn around, and then pause for several minutes right in front of it for photos. If you want, there's a photographer on board who will for a fee take “professional” pictures of you with the Buddha in the background.
From here you can see the long zigzag stairway that goes from the top of the cliff to Buddha's feet, and the roundabout path on the other side to return (though not in the same picture).

To get from the boat dock to the Buddha, you can take a taxi or ride a city bus. The bus gives you a really interesting view of some really interesting parts of town you wouldn't normally see (and the local tourism committee probably wishes you wouldn't).

As is usual for attractions in China, there are a variety of ticket options available, and the descriptions on the sign are only meaningful if you already know what is there. We opted for the full package for ¥120 each, figuring it would get us into everything we could possibly want.

From the park entrance you start up the hill and pass a number of interesting things, such as the White Tiger Lair.
There is a sign with a legend about a dragon and a white tiger, and they also have a dragon carved wrapped around a little pond nearby.

You go up a bunch of stairs...
...to find yourself at a temple complex.
There's a bunch of renovation going on, and it's very crowded between the construction fences with all the people lighting their incense and so on.

At the top of the hill there is an old pagoda that doesn't seem to get much attention.
Well, since you're here, you can't really choose not to go down to Buddha's feet. You start out level with his head.
At the top you can look down.
Yes, it's a long way down.

This is what it looks like about halfway down:
And near the bottom you get a good look at the massive feet.
When you get to the bottom and look up, this is what you see:
When you go out the other side and climb the stairs back up the cliff, it gets kind of confusing. We entered a separately ticketed area which was covered by our everything passes. We walked a long way along a path and saw something kind of curious.
As some kind of good luck charm or something, people wedge sticks into every possible crevice. I don't know the significance of this.

Eventually you get to the cave of the Thousand Arm Guanyin
This is followed by a whole bunch of carved Buddhas, all replicas of famous shrines around Asia, including some from Japan and India.
In English, the name is something like The Asian Buddha Theme Park, but it doesn't seem to have any rides. I think it would be great if if did. Imagine learning some of the famous stories in 3D seen from a hurtling roller coaster!
If you noticed that's not Buddha, give yourself a gold star. It's Shiva, in a replica of a famous statue in India. It may be a Buddha Park, but they're not too strict about what is allowed.

After returning from the Buddha Park to the main park area, we wandered around trying to figure out how to get to something new. The maps were very confusing, and there was no clear best path. We saw a few more temples and ended up at the main exit.

We hopped back on the #13 bus and rode past one of the things we had tried to find in the park, a famous bridge.

Notes on getting around: There is a frequent bus between the New South Gate Station (新南门站 Xinnanmen Zhan) in Chengdu and Leshan for ¥43. Leshan city bus 13 will take you to the dock where you can get on the boat (there are several different companies offering what seems to be the same service for ¥50). After you get off the boat, route 13 will also continue on to the Great Buddha. The Leshan city buses are kind of run-down compared to the Beijing buses I've ridden, but they offer a great inexpensive (¥1) way to see a bit of the city as you ride around the streets. When you leave the Great Buddha park, cross the street and catch the 13 bus back into town – it will take you right to the bus station. I do not recommend buying the added ticket to the Asia Buddha Theme Park unless you really want to see a bunch of replica statues.

Panda Express

Lots of catching up to do here, and I'll start with what's fresh, which would be an extended weekend in Sichuan. Chengdu, like most cities in China, is a big city (around 11 million people), though it certainly seems small compared to Beijing and Shanghai. Maybe that's just because it has fewer tall buildings.
That's the view from the 31st floor of the Sheraton, which is right in the middle of the city. The haze is only partly due to the weather.

Not far from the hotel is a big public square.
As with other Chinese cities I've seen, there's lots of construction, as well as a lot of stalled construction projects where there doesn't seem to be any work going on. You can't see it in this picture, but there's a big opening in the ground behind the golden spiral thing (I think it's a fountain, but there was no water going) with some below-ground shops and an entrance to the future Chengdu subway.

Adjacent to the square is a major shopping area, which was pretty busy – no sign of economic downturn here. There's also a lot of public art.
I liked these sculptures of shoppers mixed in with the real shoppers. Looks to me like the guy in the red shirt is using his mobile phone to take pictures of the pretty girls.
The shopping is a bit less glitzy than Wangfujing in Beijing, and features more Chinese brands and fewer international ones.

One of the things Sichuan is famous for is food, and (within China, at least) hot pot is the most famous dish.
We had four different kinds of meat, so we got a pot divided into four sections. It was at a restaurant that apparently doesn't get many foreigners, so the staff felt the need to take care of all the cooking for us. I've had hot pot in Beijing often enough that I would be fine, but it was fun having them help. Arrayed around the pot are a variety of mushrooms and vegetables waiting for the meat to get done. It was very spicy, but not overwhelming. Very tasty, though I'll admit my stomach felt a little jumpy the next morning.

Of course, you can't go to Sichuan and avoid pandas. Graphically, they are everywhere, featured on signs, logos, and almost every available space.
The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding is not too far outside of town, and actually features both giant pandas and red pandas.
Giant pandas mostly sit around munching on bamboo. This day it sprinkled on and off, but was relatively warm.
Here are some of the red pandas. They're more active than the big ones, and more social as well. And they don't spend so much time eating.
Yes, there's definitely something about pandas. I know they're not the gentle cuddly giants they look like, but they sure are cute.
Here are a couple of the sub-adult pandas. It seems they've already learned all they need to survive: they can sit on their butts with their bellies up and gnaw on bamboo.
The baby pandas were all indoors, and the lights were kept really low, so it was very difficult to get a good picture.
Added later: I forgot to mention that the Panda Center started one of the recurring trends of the Sichuan trip: map confusion. The reserve is arranged with a maze of paths, and the maps are not all oriented the same way, so it is very difficult to navigate. There is also no good path for seeing everything without having to backtrack. Entrance ticket is ¥60. We paid a Chengdu taxi driver ¥60 per hour for the trip and to wait for us while we went in - we spent about two and a half hours inside - and return us to the city. A little more research (and more helpful hotel staff) might have allowed us to use a city bus, but having a driver wait was certainly convenient.