We spent 10 days at Sichuan University in Chengdu. Chengdu has 18 million people (compared to 8 million in New York City.)

We stayed in the International Students Dorm. The students had Chinese class every morning and we went on outings in the afternoon. We ate breakfast and lunch everyday in the International Student cafeteria (just across the street) each day.

It was nice to get fairly settled. We had little stores nearby for buying water (all the time) and other items. A free washing machine in the dorm too.

Some highlights of the ten days:

Sichuan Province is famous for spicy food. We had a fancy hot pot dinner. The hot pot had a small mild corner, and a bigger hot one. We cooked meat, noodles, kelp, lotus roots, etc. The power went out (no AC) for a while so it was hot in many senses.

Another famous thing in Sichuan is the face changing opera. We went to a performance in an outdoor theater in the park.

Another afternoon we went shopping at the Jinli Old market, and ate dinner there.

The next day’s outing was to the New Global Center indoor waterpark. The New Global Center is the world’s largest building in terms of “floor area.”

Some interesting things about the water park: they only had about half of the slides open at a time, so lines were long. They had elevators to get to the top of some of the rides. They had a loop-de-loop slide (which I went on). I won the mat slide race and had fun on Flowrider (but they only had boogie boards). They were very particular about rules like no metal allowed on the slides. Life jackets required for the wave pool. Very cool tech for the wristbands for lockers and other purchases.

Lauren was pretty tired of Chinese food, so she researched the best burger place in Chengdu: Red Beard Burgers. It took some effort to get there (busses and lots of walking). But the burgers were great and Lauren loved it. We also stopped at a Carrefour store and bought a bunch of American food (Frosted Flakes, Oreos, Lays, Skittles, Pringles) for Lauren to eat later.

On Friday nights the university hosts English Corner where people wanting to practice speaking English with native speakers come. We met lots of nice people and stayed for four hours (until 11 pm).

We had an outing to the People’s Park. They have a match making alley with profiles (mostly sons). Most of us went to a tea house and got our ears cleaned ($5)–it made my ears feel itchy, they use a tuning fork for some reason, some got cleaning and massage too. We rented a motor boat on artificial pond for 30 min–some rented boats with oars. Lauren and I went to rinky dink amusement park including “pedal coaster”, flat track, but we could spin our little car around, then swing ride like Turn of the Century at Lagoon, nice breeze to cool off, relaxed in shade near lots of old people playing cards.

We had a full day outing to the Chengdu Panda Research Base and Leshan Buddha. We were able to see about 14 pandas including two babies in incubators, then we walked to red panda area and saw several active red pandas.

DaFuo 大佛 is the biggest old Buddha statue–completed in AD 803. Most of our group went on a he boat ride to see it. Ten of us wanted to hike around it. Quite a few stairs to get to the main line if people. We had to wait about an hour to start going down 330 stairs, really crowded and slow going down. We took photos at the base and got to go back up the steps at our own (much faster) pace. Saw several cool buildings too but got very sweaty. Still sweaty after two hour bus ride.

We had a scavenger hunt which took us all over campus, as well as on the subway, and trying to convince strangers to use their app to unlock a bike for us to ride. The subway is only a few years old so it is very clean and nice (but high security–even your water bottle is scrutinized before boarding). And why the emphasis on not littering packaging materials on the subway?

We also had karaoke night. Lauren was feeling pretty sick so we didn’t stay too long (only 2.5 hours).

For a special treat, the parent (and aunt) chaperones went to lunch with their kids at Peter’s Tex Mex restaurant. The door is pretty heavy, so it has some funny signage.

Lauren and I also went to Red Beard Burgers one more time (and Carrefour again). She bought a t-shirt to take home.

The next day our groups got assigned local families to spend time with. We had Dawn, a Chinese/English professor at Sichuan University help us get to the family, they were very rich and lived in the south part of town, they have 3 cars (including a Tesla) and a driver. We ate snacks and played with the baby (and the caregiver who turned out to be the grandma). They also had a cook. We all rode to pick up the 10-yr-old son Ian from his private international school and his friend David. We took two DiDi (like Uber) cars to get back to their apt. We all made jioza together. It was pretty fun. They also gave us a bunch of other food. We gave them taffy and an adult coloring book. The driver and Dawn gave us a tour of town on the way home including the wedding pavilion where two rivers meet.

After the last morning of classes we headed to the train station. Our bus didn’t have enough room, so some luggage got put in the bathroom.

I got some black sesame ice cream at the McDonald’s at the train station. It tastes like ashes to me.

Some other random photos:

The small north gate 小北门 Xiǎo běi mén is barely wide enough for a person to walk through.

Lots of rental bikes everywhere.

Some serious security fencing at an apartment complex.

A portable toilet seat to wheel over a squatter toilet.

The toilet “trough” in the women’s bathroom at train station.

We took a sleeper train to Xi’an.