Chendgu - Leshan Giant Buddha and Sichuanese Opera

Today we headed off to visit the Leshan Giant Buddha.  The Buddha was built during the Tang Dynasty.   It is carved out of a cliff face that lies at the confluence of the Minjiang, Dadu and Qingyi rivers.  It is the largest stone Buddha in the world.  A Chinese Monk named Haitong began building it in 713AD.  He hoped that the Buddha would calm the rushing waters that threatned the shipping vessels traveling down the river.   Rumor has it that Haitong gouged out his own eyes to raise funding to keep the project going after he ran out of money.  Unfortunately Haitong died before the project was complete and it wasn't until 70 years after his death that the Buddha was completed by his disciples in 803AD.

Alex and Connor spotting our exit - it was written in English!

Getting ready to board the ferry to view the Buddha  

 

While waiting in line to get on the ferry we made friends with a young Chinese boy named Eric.  

Eric was fascinated with Alex and Connor.  

He had a great time practicing his English with them - "ok brothers let's go!"

Eric's mom and Eric weren't shy about joining in on our family photos. 

Eric also wasn't shy about using Eddie's iPad!  

Our first view of the Buddha - visitors can hike up the side of the mountain to get a closer look 

The Buddha was truly incredible!  The drainage system that was put in place hundreds of years ago is still in working order.  There are drainage pipes carved into various places on his body that carry away water when it rains so that the Buddha will weather time (and weather).  

That evening we were meant to have dinner at a popular Chinese restaurant.  And popular it was!  There were easily a couple of hundred people in a tiny little restaurant.  If you weren't crammed into a little booth with your dog, your brother and your grandmother, you were hovering over someone else's table waiting for them to finish so you could snatch a seat.  After 45 minutes in line to get our food we carried it away to eat on a bench.

Egg rolls, noodles and ginger dumplings - worth the wait!

After dinner we headed to to a theatre for a taste of Sichuan Opera.  It was a bit of a viarety show - musical instruments, acrobatics, shadow pupets, comedy sketches, dancing...  The highlight was the face changing masks.  It's said that ancient people painted their faces to drive away wild animals.  The actors change their masks more than 10 times in less than 20 seconds - they raise their hand, swing their sleeve or toss their face and a new mask falls from their head piece.

Chengdu - Ancient Town

13 years ago Eddie lived in Chengdu, China.  He's been heartsick to get back to Chengdu since we moved to Beijing just over a year ago.  The pandas, the gardens, the food...  It was with great excitement that we took off on Thursday 4 April to Sichuan Province or the "Heavenly State" to visit the gateway to Tibet.

Our first stop was to Ancient Town where we welcomed the first day of the Quingming Festival - or the Tomb Sweeping Festival.  The Quingming Festival begins on the 104th day after the winter solstice - welcoming spring.  The Chinese also use take a moment to tend the graves of departed loved ones during the festival.

The Ancient Town was crowded with Chinese families sipping lemon and sugar tea, wearing flower wreaths, buying spicy street food and haggling with vendors.

Our first activity of the day was lunch.  The boys first proper Chinese lunch of this visit - and they weren't disappointed!  Chicken, sichuan numbing peppers, rice, jasmine tea, pork, lotus - all went down with chopsticks - which we only dropped about a thousand times.

And because there were so many other things to taste - we ate a bit more!

Although Connor passed on the fried cockroaches, slugs, maggots, worms, crickets and scorpions.  

For dessert we feasted on sugar cane lolly-pops hand spun and molded into Chinese animals. 

Without a doubt the most interesting, unique and strange thing we did was have our ears cleaned by a Chinese street lady.  We were approached by a woman wearing a head lamp and clanging two metal tongs together.  She mimicked cleaning out our ears and well, we were curious.  So in she went with her head light shinning down our ears.  She used all sorts of tools to clean out the gunk lodged in our ears.  It tickled and it felt really funny but it was really nice - and Alex couldn't say he didn't hear us to tell him to brush his teeth anymore!

Connor wasn't so keen on having a total stranger (who only had one eye - though we did count her head lamp as her second eye) dig around in his ears.  He opted for a massage.  

We then made our mark by tagging a wooden leaf with our Clan Flett motto - Life is Good.  We hung up the leaf with hundreds of other wooden ornaments.  It's lovely to know that a piece of us will always be in the beautiful city of Chengdu.  

The rest of the day was spent taking in the sounds and smells of The Ancient Town.  A perfect day - 10 out of 10 as Connor would say.

Being in Beijing

As always, the days are full when Clan Flett gets together.  It doesn't help that Erica is a teacher and even though Alex and Connor are on holiday from school, they get a fair amount of tutoring when they are with us.  During this visit Connor is working on his handwriting and letter writing and Alex is taking practice tests to get ready for the GCSEs.  He and dad have also started their own bookclub and are reading The Kingdom by the Sea by Robert Westall.  Naturally, Alex is 3 chapters ahead of Eddie.  

Alex is really enjoying meeting with his tutor, Alex Schuur, a fantastic teacher from The Netherlands.  Each day they play games (Alex wins every time), do a bit of handwriting, creative writing and journal writing.

While Alex is working with Alex, Erica and Connor get together for a bit of work as well.  Connor's done a beautiful job mastering joined-up handwriting and his putting his lovely penmanship to use by writing letters to friends and family.  

Each day we do lots of exploring and one of our favorite things to do is to have lunch in a different restaurant.  We really enjoyed Musto Gusto in the Sanlitun Village - duck pancakes and spicy hotdogs! Sanlitun Village is a busy place - people selling balloons, kites, flowers and tack.  There are a million cars and bikes and taxis.  It's noisy and it's smelly.  But it's no matter - it's China and it's home to Clan Flett.

For dinner we usually cook at home (or connivence dad and Erica to take us to Fat Burger!) One night we made blueberry muffins, jello and egg rolls.  It was delicious!  

The National Center for Performing Arts (otherwise known as The Egg) was the perfect place to go hear the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra.  On our way there we passed Tiananmen Square - it was all lit up and was beautiful with the red star of China shining in the distance.