Asia Trip Day 3: Old Chengdu (12/21/17)

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Xuezhu took me to "Wide and Narrow Alley" (Kuanzhai Xiangzi), which is a street that has a lot of old architecture and street vendors. It is definitely a tourist attraction, since I saw many people taking photos in the old-fashioned settings. They were mostly Asian anyways, so I assume they came from different parts of China, or other parts of Asia. I've seen some non-Asian people, but they're quite rare in this part of China. It would be quite difficult to transverse for non-speakers, since most of the older generations only speak Chinese dialects.





She took me to a tea house where there was a Sichuan opera. It had a kung-fu tea pouring act, a stick-feather balancing act, and a face-changing dance. The face-changing is a dance where the guy quickly changes his mask. I think it might be using springs or magnets are something. He would dance by frequently cover his face to fake out the audience. Towards the end he would walk towards the audience to shake hands with them. He extended his hand out to shake him, but then totally faked me out and instead switched faces. I thought that was pretty badass.


      
I saw many street vendors with chopped up meats or vegetables that are mixed up with chili oil. We were out for a few hours, sampling the street food. One of them was small, apple-like fruit on skewers with a syrup coating (just like a candied apple). Another skewer was cumin chili lamb, which had nice seasoning and tenderness.
Chinese Wall-Mart was actually very nice. It had many people offering (aggressively) snack samples

 

 We then returned back to her parent's home with some groceries. We cooked a quick pai-gu (pork rib) soup for her grandfather. We packed it up and then took the metro to the hospital. Her grandfather enjoyed the soup, as well her aunts and mother who hadn't eaten dinner yet. We then ate a citron, which is a rather large citrus fruit. The peel is super thick, and the meat is a little tough and slightly sour. Its so large that you peel each slice to eat the juice pulp directly.



Afterwords, Xuezhu took me a BBQ skewer restaurant for dinner. She said that it wasn't as good as she remembered it, but I thought it was pretty good. The seasoning was chili and cumin. We got a roast eggplant dish with a ridiculous amount of garlic.


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