• The Pandas, of course
• There are several nice renovated streets in Chengdu. We loved Jin Li, Qin-Tai and the 3 alleys near our home.
• Parks – there are several great parks in Chengdu. Huan-Hua-Xi (near DuFu), the parks near Qin-Tai, Yongling, Tazishan (with the beautiful birds-cage)
• The arts and curios market
• The giant Buddha of Leshan (about a 2 hours drive from Chengdu, but a beautiful place!)
• Getting a hair-cut and massage
• Visiting computer-street and those crazy huge ‘computer markets’
• Wenshu temple

And here’s a list of our favorite restaurants. Obviously this will mean nothing to you, because we don’t know the names of most of them. But still:

• Our ‘home’ restaurant, on the corner opposite to the TCM University’s back gate. There was even a waiter that knows a bit of english!
• The nice restaurant next to the ‘home’ one, where they had great fried potatoes and Japanese Tofu
• The bookworm – a very pleasant place, with good food and lot’s of things for Abigail to play with
• Tandoor – the best restaurant in town, excellent north-Indian cuisine
• Dodo’s cafe
• Street food – Bao Tze, Xing-Ren Tang, Sweet potatoes, Brown boiled eggs and corn
• The restaurant just across the street from us – nice food (the potatoes were good) and a bowl of living roaches (or crabs, or whatever) that Abigail liked to talk to, and the locals liked to eat
• The new restaurant in Xian-Nan-Lu (just near the piano shop)
• Hotpot at Changshun upper street
• Ramon’s fancy place, across the university
• The yellow ‘sterile’ restaurant in Xian-Nan-Lu (where Esti and Lea liked to eat)

Slip carefully...

I have no idea what they are talking about...

At the TCM University

It's civilized to get close to urinate...

Thinking of making things easy for other before urinating

Someone forgot his spaces...

Give the little grass the right of way

Train Tinckets

Finally, here’s some beautiful poetry written on a package of hair bands:

This band world famous

This post is dedicated to Shay Fodor and the rest of the ol’ TripTouch team…

It’s not just that you don’t have brothers. Your parents do not have brothers, too. So you don’t have an uncles or aunts. And you also do not have any cousins. In fact, there’s almost no family – certainly nothing in your own age group!

I understand the need for such a law – China’s population is big (1.4B or so) – and if it grows too much, they won’t be able to feed themselves (China does not need to import any food, currently, and it matters a lot to them). But it’s oh-so controversial…

Interestingly, China has a new law now, that if a couple are both from one-child families, they are allowed to have 2 babies. A slight improvement…

It got me thinking. We’ve spent 2 months in India back in 2005, and here we are 2 months in China already. I have to say that India is simply better: the food, the colors, the nice English-speaking Indians, the non-stop chaos, the weather, the food. The minute we walked into that Indian restaurant, Michal said that she feels “at home”.

It’s not a fair comparison (a trip in northern India vs 2 months in Chengdu, and with Abigail) – but still. I guess I’m more of an India person than a China person.

Today I had 3 tasks to do after lunch – Pay our gas bill, get a hair-cut, and recharge the Chinese SIM (it’s prepaid). So I went to our apartment building lobby, and asked for help – not that anyone can speak English of course, but I had the gas-payment slip, so no worries. After a short debate, one of the nice employees (I think there are about a hundred employees in our 3-building complex) went to the back, and returned with his motorcycle, and took me off to the gas-company office. Almost all the motor-cycles here are electric. It makes them very quiet and efficient which is nice. It also means that you don’t hear them when they zoom past you on the sidewalk (the sidewalk in China is a place where it’s less likely that a car will go by).

Paying the gas-bill was easy – the lady in the counter looked at it, and said “twenty”. I was impressed with her seemingly good English, handed her a 20-yuan note, and got back 8. Happily I told my new motorcycled-friend that I’ll walk back home, no need for a ride back.

On the way back I stopped in a ‘hair-salon’. Michal said I need to cut my hair because I’m starting to look ridiculous. This place was huge – with several dozen employees, and a lot of things happening. After a few laughs (in which I realized that this is probably a women-only place) they agreed to cut my hair. Someone takes you to wash your hair, which is a 15-minute affair complete with a nice head massage. I can get used to that. Then the barber came, he was very nice. He cut every hair with great care, talking to it and measuring it before cutting. It was a long process – but finally we’re over, and after another short wash (no massage this time! damn) I paid and went out. It was expensive – 58 Yuan!

Charging my phone was easy – just go to a place that sells phones (you recognize them by the long list of numbers displayed – these are new pre-paid SIM cards), and give him your phone after you dial some number – he’ll understand that you’re out of money and sell you a calling card.

Now I’m back home. Wondering how it will feel getting back to Israel, and not having those great experiences every day…

But now I’m mostly taking photos of Abigail. Suddenly a nice lake or building just isn’t enough. I’m not sure how this happened. It might be because it’s more difficult to reach nice places now, with her on the back. Or it might be that almost everything seems to involve Abigail these days (I really take pity of the people we have to hang around with these days).

Anyway, here’s a new bunch of photos from Chengdu. And yes, most of them are with Abigail…

The weather in Chengdu is usually simply a mist – part humidity, part pollution, 100% gray and depressing. I’ve taken a lot of photos, expect some soon…

We went to the great-wall, and did some site seeing in Beijing, but we didn’t like the city very much. It’s a huge city, and it’s impossible to get from one place to the other on foot. The streets are wide, and the traffic is terrible. It’s not a hospitable city, at least not to us.

We’re hoping Chengdu will be better. We want to find a nice flat (I hope it will not take more than a few days), so we’ll have “our own place” and start to get into the daily routine.

Abigail is also getting excited, and has started to read Mao’s little red book: