We last saw our intrepid heroine learning mahjong among curious onlookers.
After mahjong, we broke from the hangers-on and our guide, Daisy, took us on a walk around the neighborhood. She said a writer named Sanmao first made Pengzhen famous, long before TikTokers arrived on the scene. I’ll have to see if her writing is available in English.
I was only sad our itinerary didn’t include a meal here. But then again it’s not like I would have swapped out any of the meals we did have. For instance, hot pot dinner that night was also a hit.
Did I love the duck intestines? Too chewy. 
But I did love pretty much everything else. Later I saw shops selling “all in one” hot pot kits which appeared to be various spices embedded in…a block of solid lard? Look, I’m not claiming hot pot is heart healthy. Just that it’s tasty.
I was so full that I kind of hoped that Daisy had forgotten about an earlier conversation during which I asked if we would be trying the Sichuan rabbit head I had read about. She told me it wasn’t on the official itinerary but that we could definitely try it since Chengdu had over 50 rabbit head shops and one of the best was right near our hot pot restaurant.
Sigh. She did not forget.
Being a rabbit head novice, I was perplexed at how to eat my snack. “Crush the skull, chew the meat off the bones, and suck out the brain,” I was told. I managed the first two points but blanched at the third so you can decide if I’ve “really” tried Sichuanese rabbit’s head.
The next morning we were off to a local wet market. Yeah yeah, American news has been full of stories about these ever since COVID started. The reality at the ones I’ve been to is not actually that different from your average American farmer’s market, although some of the fresh meat is…fresher? Not alive, but more obviously related to what it looked like when it was.
Though this was none of our first experience at a wet market, we still saw things we didn’t recognize and our poor guide basically had to act as a parent for eight toddlers asking, “Daisy, what’s this?,” and “Daisy, can we try that?” at every turn. The great thing was that she was prepped with some pocket money (or the app-based equivalent) so that yes, we usually COULD try that, be it a rabbit’s head or some century eggs.
Those century eggs were added to the lunch prepared for us at a tea farm, where we also tried our hand at tea-harvesting. It turns out picking tea is slow and tedious and I am not good at it.
You can only pick the very newest of the new shoots of a massive tea bush. Older leaves are too bitter. As we each brought our harvest to the tea master he would respond with “fēicháng hǎo” (very good) or “kĕyĭ” (that’ll work). I got the “kĕyĭ.” 😐
He demonstrated how to prepare our harvest, letting us try our hands at drying and rolling, ending with us drinking an actual pot of tea picked and prepared by our group (with a lot of his help).
For our final night we headed to Leshan, a “small” Chinese city of only about three million people. Don’t worry, even though it’s such a tiny city, the food was still plentiful and our final night’s dinner was a feast.
As good as the food is, tourists mostly come here for a glimpse of the Leshan Giant Buddha, the world’s largest stone carved Buddha (it didn’t used to be the biggest, but after the Taliban did their work in Afghanistan…)
Carved during the Tang dynasty between 713-803, this dude has been standing guard over the confluence of the Dadu and Min rivers for over a millennium. We were scheduled to visit in the morning, with the option of a float-by viewing from the water or an up-close viewing requiring some gentle hiking.
But recently, the local tourist authority added a new option: a one hour nighttime river cruise and light show (“of course they did a light show, the Chinese always do a light show,” harrumphed my Chinese tutor). So our group opted to do both the nighttime cruise and a daytime hike.
Is it kind of cheesy? Sure. We all enjoyed ourselves though, with help from a few bottles of wine we brought onboard.
The light show whet our appetites for the next day’s up close visit. After checking out the head, the walk down to the feet was optional. I opted in, a decision I vividly remembered for the next few days thanks to the lingering burning sensation in my upper thighs. Still worth it.
I will say that while both our evening and morning visits were very chill (minimal jostled elbows amongst those fighting for the best views), you can tell from the tourist infrastructure around the site that this is not always the case. Daisy admitted this was the fewest people she’d ever seen. So to post-COVID visitors–no guarantees it won’t be a madhouse. But impressive nonetheless.
Can you handle a last batch of food pics? For our final meal we sampled offerings from two food stalls (sweet skinned duck and chive dumplings) and a sit down restaurant specializing in boboji, cold skewers of cooked meat, tofu, or veggies, that are served with big bowls of dipping sauce/oil.
And then…alas, we were off to the airport, with mutual invitations and promises to visit one another if ever we’re traveling to the others’ cities.
My Sichuan getaway was just as fun as my Xi’an long weekend and the food was…maybe even better? I should probably do a side by side taste test of Xi’an’s biang biang mian and Chengdu’s tian shui mian and decide for sure. In the meantime, I’m ready to book my next tour posthaste because feeding myself is absolutely NOT AS MUCH FUN as letting Lost Plate do it.
Chengdu Souvenirs: Panda with Beer Koozies
But as fun as it was, it also made me a little sad. I kept thinking about the people back home who would thrill to eat this food, explore that market, squeal at the cuteness of those panda bears, play mahjong with that lady.
While other countries open up to vaccinated travelers, China’s onerous quarantine requirements still make welcoming tourists nearly impossible. Who knows when or if I can ever directly share China experiences with friends or family from home? I’ll just keep hoping!
In Foreign Places 