Day 15: Rocks, Welcome to Chengdu and Pizza!

We visited another mountain of rock carvings and these ones were even more impressive than the ones the day before. These ones had escaped the destruction and were only broken where nature had eroded it. Our guide told us tons of stories and information about the carvings. Who they were and what lessons they told. There were mountain guardians next to a depiction of Lau Tzu, the emperor and empress of heaven with symbols representing long life. Stories of enlightenment and examples of punishment for betraying the family. 

Mountain Guardian and LauTzu Rock Carvings

They place was packed and we very quickly noticed that the local tourists were probably taking just as many pictures of us as we were of the rock carvings. Turns out white people are not that common over there.

Our local guide was by far the least skilled one we had on the tour. His group management skills were poor and his English was even worse. However, we learned that we were his first big English tour so we cut him a little slack, and when you could understand what he was saying he actually knew a lot about everything in the area.

After the rock carvings was a painful four hour drive to Chengdu. Chengdu is a city of about 5 million but I originally guessed much higher as we passed towering skyscrapers and brilliantly lit up shopping centers with expensive specialty stores. Chengdu is the world famous home to the panda and it receives many many tourists every year because of it.

Our hotel was right on a corner just a block off from the main shopping street, fantastic location. Ryan and I ditched the group at dinner. We had seen a restaurant on the way over that we could not possibly resist. Pizza Hut. Turns out “western” food is actually a sort of upscale hip dining experience for the Chinese. When we walked in we were formally seated at a table for two. All the people in there were young, high school aged or in their twenties, all friends and dates, we saw no families or small children.

In the front of the menu were set meals were you could choose a few things for a set price. I thought we were just there for pizza so I flipped straight to the back so see their selection. They had English translations below the Chinese characters for all the meals. I found a pizza I thought looked good and suggested it. Ryan was a little more impressed with the whole scene and wanted to try more than just a simple pizza, he asked if we could get one of the set meals in the front. I had only had a moment to glance at the first line when the waitress walked up. I wasn’t able to communicate that I needed five more minutes to look at the menu so I just jumped right in and pointed at the set menu. We got to choose two entrees from the selection. One of them was the pizza I had picked out before so I pointed to that and then spaghetti also sounded really good. Only after that I noticed just how many other choices we had. There were 6 lines of items and we got to pick one thing from each line! I was instantly overwhelmed with the waitress standing right above me so I tried to toss it over to Ryan,

“I picked the first two things you go ahead and pick out what you want.” I told him.
“No, you pick them out.” He says casually.
“I haven’t even had a chance to read this yet, you go.”
“Just point at things.”
“I don’t know what there is!”
“Doesn’t matter, pick random things.”

Arrg! So I read and ordered at the same time which made the whole process take a lot longer than it should have. Finally when we got it done and the waitress left I gave Ryan a good kick across the table for leaving me hanging, but he just laughed at my ability to get flustered so quickly.

The food came out in no particular order, just whenever it was ready, but let me describe it in a way that will emphasize how much food we actually got. We were served an appetizer of fried asparagus, which was delicious. We each got a plate of a simple salad and a bowl of ham and potato soup. On top of that were the entrees, a personal pan pizza (tasted just like home) and a big plate of spaghetti which was covered in some sort of chili sauce and very spicy. It was fantastic but too spicy to each too much of. We also both got drinks and a chocolate mousse dessert. The total bill came to 147yuan, or when split was about $13 each. For the price of an average meal back home we got three starters, two entrees, drinks and dessert. I love China. They wouldn’t take our tip though. We tried twice to give them extra money and they kept giving it back.

I was proud we managed to successfully feed ourselves in a foreign speaking country without the help of a guide. We also successfully managed to make our entire group jealous the next day as we told the story of the delicious pizza, and it sounded like we made a good choice because no one had been impressed with the group dinner.