06 August 2006
Postcard from Chengdu - July 2005
Sichuan province is best known for spicy food, and pandas. The capital Chengdu’s zoo has the largest collection of pandas in the world, and the HQ of the China panda conservation centre is also in the city. But we have only 3 hours here en-route from Xi-an to Jiuzhai and it turns out the airport is too far from the town to venture in.
The plane from Xi-an is packed (we are the only non-Chinese on board, but they do make all the announcements in English, just for us. Every announcement starts: “Ladies and Gentlemen, can I have your attention please”). We land to find that our next flight leaves from Chengdu’s other airport. Fortunately it is right next door and is a delightful mix of the old and the new: with a pipe shop called “The Charming Gentleman”, a foot massage parlour as well as unlimited Internet access for £3, including video conferencing.
In view of the short time until our flight leaves, we opt to have lunch at the very nearest place we can see: the airport restaurant, which is about 200m from the terminal in an anonymous block building. Downstairs is what looks like the canteen for the airport workers, but upstairs is a huge, clean Chinese restaurant with tables laid as far as the eye can see – imagine a restaurant in an indoor football pitch, with lino flooring and whitewashed walls. If a couple of 747s are ever diverted to Chengdu, people will at least not go hungry. There is only one other table occupied, and there are many more staff than customers.
The food is some of the best we have had this trip: spicy beef in vegetables, sweetcorn with peppers, and fish served in such a copious sauce that “soup” might be a better word. The Chinese have a completely different way of jointing to Europeans, just chopping up the fish or meat in such a way that every piece seems to come with its own small piece of bone, which is quite a challenge with chopsticks. But overall the food is delicious (or should I say “scrumptious”, as we are trying to enlarge our guide Dickkie’s English vocabulary. As it is already extraordinarily deep – he sometimes produces words that George is not sure about – we have to find more and more obscure words). The bill for 4 comes to RMB 54 – less than £1 a head. Yum, yum.
The next flight is also packed and again we are the only non-Chinese or at least the only Europeans. The plane lands at Jiuzhai airport high in the northern part of Sichuan province. The airport is new, but very small. Our aircraft is the only one at the airport, and baggage claim is more a question of grabbing it as it is unloaded. We are at 3,000 metres altitude here, and the temperature has dropped from 34°C to 17°C. The only product on sale in the only shop in the airport is a thick anorak, for RMB 50: £3. A taxi takes us the 70 km to the hotel through breathtaking very green mountain scenery, past yaks and bison, small colourful Tibetan villages with Buddhist prayer flags, all with his hand more on the horn than off (there are so few people here that it is not clear why he keeps hooting, only that they all do).
We are staying at a fabulous world-class resort, called Jiuzhai Paradise. Imagine if Disney designed a Tibetan-themed resort in the Eden project. So, within huge glass domes, there are shops, bars, restaurants, karaoke, massage parlours, exhibitions etc all in houses built in a village style. There are hostesses in traditional Tibetan costume, gardens with large trees, ponds with fish, ducks, even a swan. There’s a spa with 6 swimming pools, sauna, steam room and a complete array of massages (I choose Tibetan, which is a mistake unless you like being hit all over with a yak’s horn). The resort is enormous, with a capacity of 3,000. Here there are foreigners – a few Korean and Japanese have ventured over – but other than one other Brit with his Chinese wife and a German with his Chinese girlfriend – we are the only Europeans.
Although every sign is in both English and Chinese, it is not necessarily easy to understand what is going on, or to communicate (at check-out for example the cashier has to ask a colleague what the word for “credit-card” is in English). Someone should write a book on Chinglish, this Chinese interpretation of English. My favourite sign was in the spa: “Dunk the hot spring 15 minutes of beneficial” it read. We also had a great conversation with a waiter and waitress trying to order a cocktail – George’s eyes had landed on one called “Grasshopper”, but before ordering he wanted to know what was in it. The waitress spoke no English at all, so called on the assistance of someone with supposedly better language skills. Trying to keep the conversation as simple as possible, George pointed to Grasshopper in the menu, and asked “what is it?”. “No”, replied the waiter. We couldn’t think of a suitable riposte (the Grasshopper turned out to be a rather nice minty job).
George, with Dickkie and Doreen’s help, has picked up a smattering of Chinese. His phrase book, faithfully written up in his travel log, consists of:
I’m from London
You are beautiful
Would you like to dance?
How much does it cost?
That’s too expensive
No, thanks
I don’t understand
Goodbye
I’m assured they are not necessarily supposed to be used one after another.
Next stop: Jiuzhaigou, a nature reserve.
The plane from Xi-an is packed (we are the only non-Chinese on board, but they do make all the announcements in English, just for us. Every announcement starts: “Ladies and Gentlemen, can I have your attention please”). We land to find that our next flight leaves from Chengdu’s other airport. Fortunately it is right next door and is a delightful mix of the old and the new: with a pipe shop called “The Charming Gentleman”, a foot massage parlour as well as unlimited Internet access for £3, including video conferencing.
In view of the short time until our flight leaves, we opt to have lunch at the very nearest place we can see: the airport restaurant, which is about 200m from the terminal in an anonymous block building. Downstairs is what looks like the canteen for the airport workers, but upstairs is a huge, clean Chinese restaurant with tables laid as far as the eye can see – imagine a restaurant in an indoor football pitch, with lino flooring and whitewashed walls. If a couple of 747s are ever diverted to Chengdu, people will at least not go hungry. There is only one other table occupied, and there are many more staff than customers.
The food is some of the best we have had this trip: spicy beef in vegetables, sweetcorn with peppers, and fish served in such a copious sauce that “soup” might be a better word. The Chinese have a completely different way of jointing to Europeans, just chopping up the fish or meat in such a way that every piece seems to come with its own small piece of bone, which is quite a challenge with chopsticks. But overall the food is delicious (or should I say “scrumptious”, as we are trying to enlarge our guide Dickkie’s English vocabulary. As it is already extraordinarily deep – he sometimes produces words that George is not sure about – we have to find more and more obscure words). The bill for 4 comes to RMB 54 – less than £1 a head. Yum, yum.
The next flight is also packed and again we are the only non-Chinese or at least the only Europeans. The plane lands at Jiuzhai airport high in the northern part of Sichuan province. The airport is new, but very small. Our aircraft is the only one at the airport, and baggage claim is more a question of grabbing it as it is unloaded. We are at 3,000 metres altitude here, and the temperature has dropped from 34°C to 17°C. The only product on sale in the only shop in the airport is a thick anorak, for RMB 50: £3. A taxi takes us the 70 km to the hotel through breathtaking very green mountain scenery, past yaks and bison, small colourful Tibetan villages with Buddhist prayer flags, all with his hand more on the horn than off (there are so few people here that it is not clear why he keeps hooting, only that they all do).
We are staying at a fabulous world-class resort, called Jiuzhai Paradise. Imagine if Disney designed a Tibetan-themed resort in the Eden project. So, within huge glass domes, there are shops, bars, restaurants, karaoke, massage parlours, exhibitions etc all in houses built in a village style. There are hostesses in traditional Tibetan costume, gardens with large trees, ponds with fish, ducks, even a swan. There’s a spa with 6 swimming pools, sauna, steam room and a complete array of massages (I choose Tibetan, which is a mistake unless you like being hit all over with a yak’s horn). The resort is enormous, with a capacity of 3,000. Here there are foreigners – a few Korean and Japanese have ventured over – but other than one other Brit with his Chinese wife and a German with his Chinese girlfriend – we are the only Europeans.
Although every sign is in both English and Chinese, it is not necessarily easy to understand what is going on, or to communicate (at check-out for example the cashier has to ask a colleague what the word for “credit-card” is in English). Someone should write a book on Chinglish, this Chinese interpretation of English. My favourite sign was in the spa: “Dunk the hot spring 15 minutes of beneficial” it read. We also had a great conversation with a waiter and waitress trying to order a cocktail – George’s eyes had landed on one called “Grasshopper”, but before ordering he wanted to know what was in it. The waitress spoke no English at all, so called on the assistance of someone with supposedly better language skills. Trying to keep the conversation as simple as possible, George pointed to Grasshopper in the menu, and asked “what is it?”. “No”, replied the waiter. We couldn’t think of a suitable riposte (the Grasshopper turned out to be a rather nice minty job).
George, with Dickkie and Doreen’s help, has picked up a smattering of Chinese. His phrase book, faithfully written up in his travel log, consists of:
I’m from London
You are beautiful
Would you like to dance?
How much does it cost?
That’s too expensive
No, thanks
I don’t understand
Goodbye
I’m assured they are not necessarily supposed to be used one after another.
Next stop: Jiuzhaigou, a nature reserve.
# posted by DavidF @ 14:39 
