Wenxi Times Hotel Chengdu

... liaison for this project. The rest of the guys are part of the contractor’s team and don’t really say much to me as I think their Putonghua is not too good and I don’t understand their Sichuan dialect either. On site, they’re currently laying the foundation so not much in the form of architecture to see, Mr Yang tells me that hopefully in 2-3 weeks time the main structure will start to be up. Apart from ...

26th July

Hello all

Well, we awoke at 6am for flight from Jiuzhaigou to Chengdu. Had a very uneventful taxi ride with a driver although he clearly had swine flu, but at least he, unlike most the Chinese, used tissues when he hacked up all over the place. We met a Chinese student in the airport who slinked up to us to try out her English while I locked in to a particularly aggresive massge chair, she told us she lived in Chengdu and that it was a "beautiful ...

... I walked out of the restaurant I felt better, so I must have been allergic to something in the steam – I was sitting with the steam blowing into my face.

I was really tired after dinner so I just went home and watched TV. There was a really awesome Japanese drama on that I want to watch with subtitles when I get home. Satomi really likes it too. Once that was over I played on the computer for a bit, and then went to bed.

... Trees and flowers still lined the streets, but the air was drier, and the scenery from the airplane was all reds and yellows and browns. The next thing I noticed were the signs. All through the China we had previously traveled in directional signs and street names-and even some businesses-have Chinese characters and the pinyin Romanization of the words, using the same letters as English. But in Urumqi, there were the characters-still 85 percent indecipherable even after ...

I have not set up the email list yet, as a starting note. It shouldn't be that hard, but I've been distracted with finals (which went well), the Beijing/Xi'An Trip (of which I leave in about 12 hours), and halloween at the english school! I felt that this was the perfect time to take pictures of my class. I got all dressed up as one of their new vocab words (black cat) and biked over to McDonald's, where they were having the party ...

... moved to Chengdu. After a nice nap, a few of us went out to see the night life and had a good time. The next day, we bused over to the Panda Breeding Center. We got to see all kinds of pandas. We were especially lucky because just five days before we got there, babies were born. They can't have been bigger than 3-5 inches long, and completely devoid of hair. We saw lounging pandas and caged pandas, and were given the opportunity to interact with them. To hold a ...

... enclosures, with adult, teenage and bubba pandas....they have to be the cutest and lazyest animal alive. Slouched on their back eating bamboo is all they do...they clearly don`t have enough energy to waste on making new pandas. The numerous school children about was also very amusing as they love to wave, point and say hello to westerners....Matt took full advantage of this and was pretty much treated ...

... just stares back at them and suddenly they realize what they're doing. Its interesting how culturally diverse Canada is and how accepting many of us are. Most of us would never plain out stare at someone just because they are of a different race. Maybe its because Jes is a giant! Anyways, we walked back to our hostel, paid for our tickets and our last two nights and hit up some lunch. I have ...

... after watching Thai Chi, flag dancing and ball room dancing being practiced in a local park, Kathryn and I braved our first street market brekkie....I had a pancake with egg, spring onions, housin sauce, much chilli and crispy 'stuff' on it.....sooooooooooo gooood AND all for 7p!! Sorry this is all in a really random order - memory not as good as it used to be etc etc....but another random event that springs to mind in Xi'an was after a delisious supper when ...