Our hostel was in the small Tibetan part of the city. Walking around that area there were many men dressed in monks clothes that would come up to us with a picture of a burned down monastery accompanied by an explanation in Chinese and Tibetan. They would get fairly pushy, stroking your arm, and one even rubbed my belly. All this seemed kind of fishy, but we gave some money to one of them, and then subsequently tried to explain to all the rest that we'd already given their friend money and to leave us alone. The first day we had lunch at a Tibetan restaurant and they would walk inside and harass us. The Tibetan people working in the restaurant didn't take too kindly to them, which made us even more suspicious of what was going on. (There was also a shop we walked by where anyone could by monk's robes)
So basically we were good little tourists in Chengdu. We went to a mausoleum/museum/gardens commemorating Guan Yu, Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, who were these important guys during the 3 kingdoms period in China (~200 AD) who took an oath of brotherhood. Rememberance day in China (at least at int'l schools) is about these kindof guys. We also went to a Buddhist monastery where monks still live though its a tourist attraction, to a Tex-mex restaurant, and to see the pandas.
2 comments:
Tex-Mex in China? Is it the same idea as Chinese Food in Texas?
It didn't taste too bad, but I'm no Tex-Mex connoisseur. At least there was cheese in my enchiladas, which made me happy :)
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