Hongyuan Business Hotel Chengdu

Construction on site is starting to make progress as is my role on this project. Its been a rather pleasant week with site inspections, meetings and some design work here and there。Think I am also getting used to trying to describe things in my baby mandarin – best to not make sentences too complicated and stick to fairly basic words!! I'm getting to know the other colleagues better too, and can just about make out what they ...

... dam, it's not a site you'll understand without a guide to point out the components and explain how they work.

At the entrance there's a gallery of the various notables who worked on the system, including Ding Baozhen, the man who gave his name to Sichuan's signature dish.





Chengdu's iconic entertainment is Sichuan opera, perhaps the best known venue being Shunfeng Yayun teahouse. The ...

... more weeks of class left. Now time really does seem to have gone by fast. It seems to have passed a lot like a normal quarter at UW – at first it doesn’t seem half bad, then it feels a bit hard, and then all of a sudden you’re buried in work and things you want to do. Oh well, at least I’m used to the feeling.

... wasn’t all that hungry. Then they turned off the lights for eight hours. I slept for a while, then read and listened to random Chinese music on the headset until I realized it was repeating. I watched an older Chinese movie that I only half followed about a Chinese martial artist during WWII… I think Jet Li might have done a movie about the same story. They brought us a ham and cheese sandwich at about the seventh hour of the flight, which I ate all of. Then after they ...

... the city. A lot of our friends had already been to Chengdu and suggested this hostel because it's 10 RMB/night ($1.50) and it's clean, convenient and comfy. We dropped our things off and then went to a Sichuan restaurant the hostel workers suggested. Since Chengdu is in the Sichuan province and Sichuan is our favorite kind of Chinese food, we were all excited to taste the authentic stuff. It was ...

... nice pictures of cows. Managed to get there after a few wrong turns and set up the rope, Bari led the route followed by Niamh and then me and then the heavens opened!!! Bari had to climb up in the wet to rescue the top quick draws as neither Niamh or I had made it to the top! He quite enjoyed it in a funny kind of way! We waited to see if it would dry up but it started to rain again so we gave up and got back on our bikes. Decided to go on to ...

... in the Military Area Command. The next morning, the rebels coerced more than 2,000 people to mass at Norbu Lingka, spreading the rumor that "the Military Area Command is planning to poison the Dalai Lama" and shouting slogans such as "Tibetan Independence" and "Away with the Hans." The rebels hit and wounded Sampo Cewang Rinzin, a former Galoin of the Tibetan local government and then a deputy commander of the Tibet Military Area Command. They stoned to death Kainqoin Pagbalha ...

... the time by flirting with Wentao's assistant, Janny. Wentao went over the head of the man in the Foreign Affairs Office, who evidently didn't want to make such a big decision without any backup, and called the dean of the school. Guess what, the dean of the school has guanxi with the Chengdu chief of police! I can see them now, absolutely wasted, arms around each other's shoulders, singing their hearts out into a karaoke machine... The ...

... we were off. Twenty minutes later snaking through the crowds I arrived at my fourth bus station. This one had a line out the door which I quickly bypassed. I found a security guard and asked him which line I needed to be in. He led me right past everyone to the front of the line and two minutes later I was walking out the door, ticket in hand. I felt bad for cutting in front of all those people who had been waiting for who knows how long.......but I got over it quickly!

... was it Grandma Chen?), I ordered the bean curd. Imagine my delight when the meal turned up. A soup, literally, piled high with chillies and peppers. Well it started off OK but pretty soon my mouth and lips were literally numb from the peppers - I managed about a third of it - not bad, considering. Later, wandering around the park it was fascinating to see the elderly residents of Chengdu practicing ballroom dancing. Not the only ...