I wake up this morning with a slight hangover and in a bad mood. To Pizza Hut for brunch where Laurie is still refusing to eat anything but noodles while in China so she orders nothing. She does steal some of my pizza when it comes though.
Brief pizza review: plenty of cheese but no herbs and no tomato base that I could notice. I have beef on part of it, and it’s very peppery, fatty and salty. 6/10.
In the afternoon Laurie and I walk several kilometres around various parks and tourist sites which, in English, are called things like People’s Park, Culture Park and Folk Street. In one, we discover Martyr’s Grove Square where, under a commemorative statue, there are graves of several people who died in 1949. Presumably they were Maoist revolutionaries, but there are no English translations here so 1949 is the only thing I can read. Across the square, there is a group of old ladies and one man doing their line dancing exercises. Folk Street is a copy of a traditional Chinese street of the dynastic era. It was opened in 2006.
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| Martyrs Grave Square |
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| Scenes from Folk Street |
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| People's Park |
Later in the afternoon, I save Laurie’s life. Well, I stop her from walking out into the road just as a car goes speeding within inches of her and there was no way it was stopping. There are a lot of electric mopeds about in the cities in China, and as they don’t make a sound, they are also a bit of a road crossing hazard.
A note in passing: There are lots of billboards in China promoting environmental welfare. Although China is now at least the second biggest producer of carbon pollution, it is also the biggest manufacturer of wind turbines in the world. I don’t think the Chinese government actively seeks to undermine efforts to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. It just doesn’t like being told what to do by western governments.
We will leave Chengdu tomorrow at 9am and drive on toward Kunming, though at least a couple of bush camps will be involved.
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| faux boat restaurant / club |
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