Pics of Chengdu

Taxis were not expensive, the taxi-drivers I encountered, though not English-speaking were gracious, honest and helpful… like using their mobile phones to find out where I was going when all I had to communicate with was a telephone number...

There is no better way to get acquainted with a city than traveling on its public transport. You would never know Chengdu is a city of 13 million people until you ride the city buses…


Don’t worry about being left behind at the bus stop, no matter how full the bus, there is always room for more passengers. No need to shove and push either, just place yourself somewhere in among the waiting commuters and when the bus door opens, you will instantaneously be thrust forward by the crowd’s simultaneous impetus to get on… or off…



At first it was indeed challenging trying to avoid walking around in circles, boarding buses traveling in the opposite direction AND recognizing the bus stop of my destination by designated landmarks. Chairman’s Mao statue in down town Chengdu is unmistakable…




But useless attempting to remember the street with the “Bank of China”, a particularly large buildings, a tunnel, or counting bus stops, Bank of China branches and huge buildings are everywhere, cities in China are metropolis even when they are small. Actually during my wonderings of discovery through Chengdu’s city center I thought of Vancouver or Brisbane’s claustrophobic down town malls as pimples on a Sumo-wrestler backside by comparison



As street names in major Chinese cities are indicated in Chinese characters and English alphabet, on my third day I coveted a city map. I searched and found a book shop where I exhibited a talented charade-performance, and with the uncanny intuition peculiar of a bookseller of substance, the vendor promptly produced a map for my inspection.



Regrettably any grand elation generated by our successful communication was of short duration, “CHENGDU” was the only English word on the map among 5000 street names in Chinese characters… After trading the indecipherable map for two illustrated art books I resumed walking the unfamiliar streets… I was lost again… going around in circles in the vicinity of Wenshu Temple…

Past crowded food stalls and vendors of new antiques, past un-refridgerated butcher shops and shopkeepers sitting at sidewalk tables eating noodle-soup, past shops with incense sticks of many colors, stacks of paper money, alabaster urns for ashes and all manners of unfamiliar funeral paraphernalia…


I crossed a street and stepped into a Buddhist nun’s monastery. The monastery was a complex of shrines and courtyards crowded with women prostrating, lighting candles or offerings aromatic incense. Inside a spacious hall furnished with tables and chairs nuns served food to a full house. I had seen Buddhist monks with begging bowls in the early hours of the day, and here were nuns very busy managing an evidently humming and profitable restaurant…

"Women hold up half the world!"

..so said Chairman Mao

Exiting the nunnery I walked towards an intersection busy with buses, pedestrians, bicycles stop lights… I turned the corner, raised my eyes to inspect the hazy sky and… lo and behold… the golden arches of MacDonald’s restaurant were right there winking down at me.

I knew THAT sign… And knew where I was going…MY bus No.5 ran right past it… What luck! “I am really lucky…” I said to myself, “To what avail is a taxi when I’m unable communicate or show the driver the written Chinese address I left behind? And who needed maps anyway…? MacDonald’s here… “