Saturday, June 24, 2006
On to Chendu
We flew from Guilin last night, arriving in Chengdu about midnight. The hotel in Guilin was entirely inadequate for blogging, and while the Chengdu Sheraton has lots of cheap high speed Internet access, once again I cannot see my own blog. Worse, the Blackberry is "refusing data connection," so I can't even look at it in miniature.
We have to leave early this morning to see the pandas -- that's pretty much the reason to come to Chengdu, at least if you're a touristy Westerner. It is, however, the third largest city in China, at least according to my guide. If he is typical, this place has second-tier city syndrome in a big way. The midnight ride from the airport involved a constant stream of local trivia in broken English -- the only thing I got was that Chengdu has "more tea houses than any city in the world." I just wish Starbucks were here selling its Chai.
Anyway, here are a couple of representative photos from Guilin, with more to follow when I get some time. The three of us (remember, Daughter is at camp) on the big bike ride through the countryside:
And the actual countryside:
UPDATE: Apologies for the obvious typo in the title of the post ("Chengdu"), but if I change it incoming links will be lost.
2 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Jun 25, 08:34:00 AM:
You might want to zip up to Dujiangyan to see the water system that Li Bing (256 BC) had built, and that are still in use. An engineering marvel, it diverts high-stage water from the Minjiang River down to the Chengdu plain, which prevents flooding, de-silts the remaining flow, and turned the plain into the breadbasket of Sichuan.
By , at
Sun Jun 25, 10:38:00 AM:
My experience is that blogspot.com is nlocked inside China. It is not Sheraton's problem.
