Asia Trip Day 14: Tian Fu Square (1/1/18)

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For breakfast, we walked to a nearby noodle restaurant and I obviously ordered beef noodle soup. Again, very tasty but the soup is quite oily. I can't believe that the bowl cost an equivalent of  $2 USD. If this were in America, I would probably get it every week. It probably is available in Boston's Chinatown because they do have a lot of the authentic Sichuan restaurants, but the cost would be bumped up to $6 or something.

Dirty boots from the farmlands the day before


We took the Chengdu metro to Tian Fu square, and the nearby mall. In the malls, they have both the traditional Sichuan restaurants, as well as more modern ones.



To my surprise, I found the arcade in the Chengdu mall to be far better than the ones in Japan. First of all, it was really cheap. 1 RMB would translate into 2 credits, which means $1 USD would be worth 12 credits. Also, the selection of games were more varied (shooting, dancing, rhythm, racing, basketball, claw, video games) and accessible. The Japanese arcades were obviously tailored to Japanese regulars, who would be able to invest more into a complex game. This is something that I wasn't able to appreciate, given the time and language problems.


Xuezhu played a DDR-type game, however there were additional features added that made it more complex. In addition to the 4 directions on the floor, there was a center direction and motions for the arms. I'm guess it worked by a light sensor that hung over the floor pad, and would sense if there was motion over the respective direction. Another girl stepped in and started dancing with her too. They both attracted a pretty large crowd to watch them. 
It was around noon time at that time, meaning that it was New Years back in New England

We then visited Tian Fu Square, which has a large statue of Chairman Mao. In China, he is revered for the unification and industrialization of the country. However in US education, emphasis is put on the death toll via overwork and famine that was required for such progress to be made. So I guess its the people that survived who have a more positive perception of him. 




We then went to Wuhuo Temple, which is dedicated to the scholar and military strategist Zhuge Liang from around 200 AD. He did a bunch of smart stuff for emperor of the Shu Kingdom. The Shu Kingdom was led by Liu Bei, who had a brotherly relationship with his generals Zhang Fei and Guan Yu. The trio are commonly shown together in shrines, paintings, and statues. I recognized Guan Yu by his green clothing, goatee and polearm, which are commonly portrayed in Asian video games.
 There were the displays that had large figures of notable people of that kingdom. There were any many scenic locations of both nature and architecture. The gardens looked just like how the Chinese palaces are shown in movies (which makes sense because it is one). 


Crepe wraps

After the temple, we visited the nearby street food area. They had many similar items like in the Wide and Narrow Alleys, as well as souvenir shops. Something that wasn't Chinese, but I hadn't seen before was the frozen yogurt. It was yogurt that was spread over a frozen grill, and then chopped into pieces. This made the thin yogurt shards somewhat chewy. I got the mango yogurt and thought it was nice, although it was a little chilly that day. We also got crepe wraps, which were filled with either sweet or savory fillings. One was a mango jam, another was peanut butter, and the last was ground pork. The crepe was very thin and soft, and worked with either type of filing. 


Lastly, we got stinky tofu. Despite the name, it didn't smell as much as I thought it would. However, I suppose its because most other types of tofu don't really have a smell. What does tofu even smell like? I was more surprised when I saw that the stinky tofu was black. I suppose stinky tofu has the same attraction as durian, where you really have to ignore the smell and look of it to enjoy it. But smell is supposed to be like 50% of taste, and  people generally don't like putting gross-looking stuff in their mouth. Anyways, the taste was bitter and the texture was like denser tofu. The taste and color made it seem like it was burnt, even though it was probably steamed. 


We didn't eat too much street food because Xuezhu's mother had been preparing dinner for us. Even though she had been spending so much time at the hospital, it was very important for her to make a homemade dinner for her family. The main dish was fish in pickled vegetables (Suan Cai Yu). It had a mild spice and sourness to it. Instead of the red chilies, Chinese green chilies were used. This makes it similar in appearance and taste to chili verde, which is a New Mexican recipe that uses mostly green Anaheim chilies.

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