On Friday afternoon at 2:30 (sharp!) the whole bunch of us ACC students are heading to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in south-west China. We are taking the train there, which is twenty-five hours and we are flying back. I'm not really sure of the plans, aside from I know we will be visiting a panda research center and climbing Emei Shan, which is one of the four sacred Buddhiust mountains of China. Sichuan also has a reputation for very spicy food, which I'm looking forward to.
Last weekend I went with a few other students and a teacher to Prince Gong's Palace, which is an extremely elaborate former palace of this prince. He lived there in the late 1700's during the Qing Dynasty and built the palace using money extorted from the peasants through raising taxes. He is rregarded as a villian in chinese history. The compound has many buildings, including a few two story buildings, an opera house and many acres of gardens. He also build many miniature foresty areas, so you can walk down winding paths and pretend you're out in nature. They all have names like "pathway to seclusion". He also built a miniature Great Wall that you can climb up and look down on his pond and ducks. He also decided that bats are good luck since bat is bian1fu2 and the word for abundance/good luck is fu2 so there are tiny bats carved in lot sof the railings and decorative carvings around enterance ways. There is even a bat shaped pond. It is quite extravagant.
After visiting the palace, we wandered around the Houhai Lake area and the hutongs. The hutongs are narrow alleyway like places where people used to live (and some still do) in Beijing. Most have been demolished to build bigger roads and buildings (and for the Olympics), but a few have been preserved. Since the hutongs are such a popular tourist destination, there and endless amounts of bicycle drawn "carriages" that you can ride in so you don't have to walk through the hutongs (becuase walking is so tiring). The men that pedal these bicycles are really aggressive about asking if you want a ride. Since we clearly look foreign, they all surrounded us and tried to get us to give them money. There are literally hundreds of them lined up waiting where cabs drop people off. After walking around far a while we took the bus home (for 14 cents).