Finally, amidst all the unpacking and packing, we managed to take some time out to explore Chengdu. After church service yesterday, we visited one of the cultural sites in the city - Dufu's Thatched Cottage （成都杜甫草堂）. This is the former residence of Dufu (712 - 770AD), a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, when he stayed in Chengdu. (For those who are interested in knowing more, you can visit http://www.dftcm.org.)
The weather was hot, even though there was a passing shower in the late morning. Needless to say, I was a little grumpy with the heat, and my full stomach was protesting against the exploration that we are about to embark on (it'll much rather I take a lazy piggy nap) and we were not equipped i.e. we were in jeans and we don't have any wind-creating device except for the little admission ticket issued to us. Nonetheless, we went ahead and here are some photos taken:
Main entrance
A bronze statue of the famous poet, Dufu
You can view more pictures in my facebook account.
And today we went to another tourist attraction - The Wuhou Shrine 成都武侯祠. This is a shrine to the Three Kingdoms, where cultural relics of that era are conserved and protected. I'm not a big Chinese history fan and I barely know about the whole Three Kingdoms story. I only recognise some names like Zhuge Liang 诸葛亮, Liu Bei 刘备, Guan Yu 关羽, Zhang Fei 张飞, etc...
But after exploring the place, my understanding of the history got better. I may not understand 100% of it, but at least it's about 50% understanding now, compared to like 5% in the past. Big improvement, IMO.
Anyways, here are some pictures. The rest are all up in Facebook.
Main entrance
After we finished exploring most of the significant areas, we headed out to the Jinli Street 锦里街, where it's a row of stalls selling food and souvenirs:
Chicken and mushroom glutinous rice in bamboo
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