Lost on a rainy day with lots of help from friendly people.
Our first day in Chengdu was rainy, we only saw Panda products, no real Pandas yet: still, panda products are pretty cheerful. We decided to keep the real pandas for when our other friend met us here at the end of the trip.
It’s probably useful at this stage to explain that I speak some Chinese (mostly travel Chinese), and while at one point I was pretty good, with the help of the phrase book, at communicating most things; on this trip it had been some years since I’d used any Chinese so I really didn’t remember so well. Also, sometimes I had a time lag on understanding things. This got better as the time went on, but day one was sometimes a bit confusing – despite the always wonderful attempts by locals to help us out.
It was raining all day, which is unseasonal, but what can you do? We had an adventure on the subway trains and went out to this great museum which is an archeological site. It’s called the Jinsha Site Museum and I think I found out about it by doing a google search of “what to do in Chengdu.” Here’s a link https://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/sichuan/chengdu/jinsha-site-museum.htm
When they were digging foundations for a new building, they found evidence of a civilisation from around 800 BC with king’s house, a platform for sacrificing animals, lots of burials with burial goods and lots of remnants from the people’s lives. You see the dig and then the artefacts. They’ve also done a reconstruction of what they think it would have been like. That was great.
Exchanging money
We knew which subway station to go to and getting there was easy, but before we went to the archeological site, I had to exchange some money. After leaving the subway station I went to the Bank of China and asked the teller if I could exchange money. She asked the security guard and indicated that we should go with him. We went with the security guard to an ATM inside the bank where he showed me the exchange rates, I said yes, and he asked for my money. I gave him my Australian dollars and he got the Chinese currency out of his wallet and gave it to me! Strangest exchange I’ve ever done.
Jinsha Site Museum
To get to the archeological site there are no signs in English anywhere and so we had to ask people using sign language, maps, some Chinese. They were very helpful and it was fun. First the woman in the bank told us where to go, but her instructions seemed too simple, just go out of the bank, turn right and walk along. We couldn’t believe that we had understood correctly, and that it would be so easy to get there, so we decided to ask someone else. We did and he gave us the same instructions, so we set off.
We wandered along the street, not really believing that we were going in the right direction until we got to a place with a big fence and what seemed to be a park. There we asked another man where the site was. He pointed through the fence. We were there!
We spent quite a few hours there, looking around the archeological site and at the artifacts. They really have it set up well for visitors and there are plenty of English signs and explanations. Also it was all under shelter, so a great thing to do on a wet day. There weren’t that many people there so that made it pleasant too.
We had lunch in the restaurant in the centre, and although they didn’t have an English menu there wasn’t an issue because we were so late that they only had one option left. It was pretty good.
It was well worth the visit. There’s so much history in China, and as development continues they’re finding more and more as they excavate for foundations.
On the way home we got the subway to People’s Park, which is lovely and very green at that time of year. It has lots of really nice Chinese gardens. There were some women there in the covered walkways practicing their ballroom dancing while outside it rained on. Lots of people were playing go or cards.
Then we could see the very big Mao statue so we went up and had a photo. I took some very bad selfies, then 2 men from the country wanted our photos so we had photos with them, one taken by a young police officer. Everyone is taken with my friend’s pale skin and light coloured hair, so they all want photos.
We were pretty tired by then so decided to take the subway back to our guesthouse, so we asked people where the station was. They all said, “Here”, some even pointed downwards. We didn’t know what they meant so we kept walking around and asking people. We always got the same answer. Finally we realised we were right above a giant station, it was just one set of steps below where we were walking. There just weren’t any signs on the entrances saying it was the subway.
Once we went downstairs there was a huge complex of shops and a station so people must have thought we were very obtuse to not know where the station was. We saw a very cute booth selling pandas, and advertising the Panda Sanctuary. The booth was in a little van in the shape of a panda and had lots of toy pandas in it. There are not many things quite so enjoyable as seeing a van of pandas in the middle of a giant city.
When we got back to our station we didn’t know the way to Sam’s Cozy Hotel from the subway so we asked people. They told us the way, my friend kept saying they were wrong, so I asked other people. They all told us the same thing. We followed their advice and here we are! It did prove, though, that we had walked a very long, round-about way to get to the subway that morning, when we clearly also didn’t know where we were going.
It turns out that we are in the area near the main temple and a lovely, smaller nunnery. There are quite a few tea shops and restaurants in the area. We had no idea where we were when we arrived last night and everything was closed so we couldn’t get our bearings. We’re opposite an area that has a few outdoor restaurants, kebabs and so on, maybe a few night clubs, and a bit further on just regular places where locals go to eat.
Sam’s Cozy Hotel is quite basic, but comfortable enough. The staff has been very helpful, not much English but a great willingness to communicate. The woman on the desk this morning organized a Chinese SIM card for me, it’s a lot cheaper than roaming and it’ll be helpful to be able to phone people once we’re out in the wilds.
We had the included breakfast this morning, which was typically eclectic but good, some boiled eggs, a toaster to make our own weird toast (bread in Asia is usually very sweet), congi with various things to put in it, some dumplings, egg fried rice and some cooked vegetables. The women cooking breakfast were very friendly, they seem to be working very hard indeed.
We saw lots of vegetables being prepared by them so decided that, after a very big day out, we’d have dinner here. It was good, very fresh and lots of vegetables.
In the next post we set off into the wilds of China and Kham Tibet.
Best wishes from China and the world of Pandas.
Useful hints:
You can’t google in China so we were using different systems. I found WeChat to be very useful while we were there. It can search, chat, translate, it’s very useful indeed. In one place when we were trying to talk to our hotel manager he would text me on WeChat in Chinese and it would arrive as English!
I also downloaded google translate and Mandarin before I went to China and it worked there. That was a wonderful help and great way to have real communications if you’re not fluent in Chinese. Most of the Chinese people we met had translation apps or WeChat on their phones so that was great.
Also there is no gmail or FaceBook and probably other things that I have forgotten. While we were there something else was banned, although I can’t remember what and in previous trips yahoo has been down. Things can change all the time so it’s best to either communicate using a Chinese system like WeChat or have lots of options in case one stops working, or just accept that you won’t always be in contact. I find that being out of contact can be very restful, especially if it has to do with work.