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nd of mad the bottom line of haggling is you really just need to be happy with the price you got if it s something you want walking away is a really good technique though i ve found that for stuff i don t even want i ve got people chasing me down to give me a lower price while at the muslim market in xi an an experience and if you ever get a chance to go walk all the way through once figure out what you want and then go back and bargain i was looking for a mah jong set for a friend most of the sets were plastic and not very nice some were what looked like bamboo and bone but since i m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination i couldn t be sure the only thing i had to go on was the memory i have of my parent s mah jong set which is actually quite nice with lovely images on the tiles so i used that as a comparison against the sets i was seeing in this market most of them were nowhere near as nice as the one i remembered they had fewer tiles the tiles were smaller the bone layer was very thin and often they looked they weren t attached very well to the bamboo plus the pictures were often not very nice and not pretty and were small and hard to see so i finally found one i could potentially consider purchasing and it came in quite a nice wooden box so i asked how much and he started off at something like 500 yuan which was ridiculous and 60 to boot so of course i said playing the haggling game of course that it was too much he offered something slightly lower pointing out the nice wooden box not please note anything redeeming about the actual mah jong set and told me it was a good bargain i didn t particularly think so and we went back and forth a couple of times i then decided it was too much money for what it was and not very nice so i told him i wasn t interested and i walked away he started hollering numbers at me as i walked away 250 200 ok 100 it was quite a drastic reduction i was not tempted by shoddy merchandise no i walked away and bought shoddy merchandise somewhere else don t ask me what i don t remember i found shopping at the markets a little stressful because for me shopping is a tactile experience i just have to touch the second you touch something the merchants are on you trying to sell it to you the big thing at the muslim market was silk pillow covers i don t know if they were actually silk but some of them were quite pretty whenever i looked at them because i wanted to see what they had to offer in the way of color and design the merchant would come over to me and give me a running commentary on what each pillowcase design was bamboo birds red dragon these were all things i could plainly see and yet i got the information i suppose it is part of the patter it s not unlike car shopping i guess in the case of car shopping you get the rundown of all the features 50 million horsepower 20 cylinder engine sushi chef in the trunk gps system and satellite tv on the dash with silk pillow covers you have far fewer options so the salesperson is reduced to pointing out the obvious posted by jessica hodgson at 8 00 am no comments 28 july 2006 13 july 2006 pandas it began pouring practically the moment we left the hotel to go to the panda reserve i think pandas are native to this province partly because a lot of bamboo grows here i m speaking from my vast biological and plant knowledge here at the preserve they are doing a lot of research and are trying to repopulate pandas in china they have a nursery for newborn pandas and throughout the park you can see lots of pandas at different stages of life there weren t any infants there that i could see and in don t hink they are born until later in july or in august they also had red pandas which were definitely not as appreciated as the other kinds of pandas no red panda stuffed toys in the gift shop to be sure however the red pandas are adorable about the size of small to medium sized dogs they look a lot more racoonish than i expected with long fuzzy ringed tails we saw a few of them scuffling and playing but i wasn t fast enough with my camera between the umbrella the tissues the bottle of water and the camera which i was trying desperately not to drop it was very hard to get the best pictures then we were off to see some serious panda they were just so cute and magnificent at the same time i was interested to note that we all spoke in hushed tones around the pandas as if we didn t want to disturb them i got a couple of pictures of some sleeping so cute but the highlight was getting the chance to actually touch the panda for a donation you can get into the panda area while he is sitting on what i can only describe as his little panda throne and chomping away on some bamboo you can crouch behind him pet him and have your picture taken how cool is that you can t get anywhere near them at the national zoo i m so spoiled now i can just see it i ll make catty remarks about how you can t touch the pandas whenever i go kidding anyway it was a phenomenal experience and i don t care that it was wet and i had a bit of a cold because i will never be able to do something like that again and to think i almost didn t do it posted by jessica hodgson at 7 47 am no comments du fu s thatched cottage du fu was a tang dynasty poet 712 770 who was actually born in a different province but left to travel around china he was captured by rebels and he eventually fled to chengdu where he lived in a thatched cottage for four years where he wrote more than 200 poems it s actually a park with lots of walkways a beautiful pond and a tea garden there was a big pagoda called the ten thousand buddha tower and some really interesting statues that may have been petrified wood may have been some kind of stone or wood but were at least pretty cool it was really pretty there but it was so hot that day it was sort of hard to enjoy the day i wandered around with another fulbrighter for most of the day and then towards the end of the afternoon we sat and had popsicles yes we each had two in the tea house a poem song of the autumn wind and the straw hut an autumn wind ripped clear three layers of thatch from my hut spreading it over the river along the banks into the marsh or driving it up into branches of tall trees over from the south village ran a bunch of boys seeing me old and feeble stealing the thatch in front of my eyes hauling it off to their bamboo grove i shouting at them until my mouth was dry throat sore then going inside with a sigh leaning on my stick the gale stopped but black clouds gathered hastening the night i looked at my bedding quilt now as cold as iron all torn with the restless feet of my children rain streamed through the roof like unbroken strings of hemp drenching all and i pondered on how much sleep i had lost since this rebellion began hoping the night would pass swiftly wondering in my dream whether it would be possible to build an immense house with thousands of rooms where all who needed could take shelter a mansion as solid as a hill not fearing wind or rain then thinking how if only such could be would i be content to see my poor hut demolished with i myself frozen to death posted by jessica hodgson at 7 11 am 1 comment 26 july 2006 12 july 2006 sichuan normal university we arrived here about 9 30 am and got a brief introduction from a student of the english department her english was excellent the campus is one of several and there is another one that is under construction this was our first full day in chengdu and i think we were wholly unprepared for the heat and humidity ok i was unprepared for the heat and humidity what is interesting about the campus is that it is almost like a university college town all enclosed within the unversity walls we didn t get a chance to see any classrooms they were doing student registration i think or dorms but we did get a chance to see the buildings including a primary school a nursery school and housing for retired teachers who still do work research on the campus it was very hazy that day because it was so humid so my pictures have a misty grayish or greyish if you will quality they had a wall that displayed the history of china they also took us to the second campus but like the first we didn t get a chance to see anything other than the outside it may be a key university of the western provinces but it is hard to tell because we didn t see any classrooms talk to any teachers or any other students here was my favorite building of the school posted by jessica hodgson at 10 49 am no comments random thoughts on chengdu and i do mean random chengdu is the capital of sichaun province and while my guide book says it s a smaller city than xi an it seems a lot bigger it actually reminds me of new york although i couldn t really say why even if pressed maybe it s because the buildings are tall here in contrast with the buildings in beijing which are wider than they are tall in many instances and the area we are in has lots and lots of high end stores including a japanese department store called seibu which is across the street from our hotel it might also be the sort of sour milk smell one has in cities in the mornings during the summer that makes me a bit nostaligic for nyc or it could be dementia who knows it s incredibly hot and humid in chengdu it s a subtropical climate you only have to stand outside for 10 seconds before you re drenched in sweat i bought a pretty blue fan in the muslim market in xi an that ve been using a lot driving or rather riding on the bus in chengdu has been an experience on the way to the sichuan province ed dept the bus driver had to ask for directions a bunch of times and did about four or five u turns which on a bus is pretty impressive as far as i can tell you can t really make left turns here but you can do u turns we got up to about 15 i think the other thing that is terrifying is that cars don t give right of way to pedestrians that seems to be par for the course in china there are thousands of bicycles and modpeds in the streets and buses and cars actually seem to keep going to make sure they occupy every inch of space they can on the road they will get incredibly close to the next vehicle think inches no centimeters when our bus driver executes u turns frequently it looks as if there s going to be an accident because there are cars behind us and on all sides the lane markings also seem to be somewhat optional i will say this for chengdu for all the busy streets there are a lot of great pedestrian overpasses that go in all kinds of directions so that you can wander from one side of the street to another without worrying about getting hit by a car this is definitely an improvement over xi an where there aren t even traffic lights or walk don t walk signs the intersection that we had to cross from our hotel in xi an to get inside the old city walls was the most hair raising intersection i ve ever had to cross and we did it multiple times on a daily basis posted by jessica hodgson at 10 29 am no comments leaving xian for chengdu in the sichuan province 11 july 2006 we got our wake up call at 4 30 am which is just so very early in the morning i suppose i could comfort myself with the idea that it was 4 30pm the previous afternoon on the east coast xi an had no traffic at all at that time the city was barely waking up at the airport check in was so easy and there was hardly anyone there either which was in stark contrast with the beijing airport we arrived at the chengdu airport around 9 30 am i think and we were all definitely ready for a nap no question we got on our bus and were taken into the city and we checked into our hotel which was right across the street from an enormous crowne plaza holiday inn i didn t realize those two companies were connected i never really thought of them as being in the same class of hotels our hotel is right around the corner from a pedestrian mall shopping area basically it s outdoors as if they took all the stores in a mall and removed the walls and roof we went to lunch and our first sichuan food experience was not a success let me start by saying that sichuan you may be more familiar with it as szechuan province is very hot and the food is as well because as our guide explained in order to get the sweat you have to eat the hot spicy food however they don t just do hot spicy food in sichuan the very first dish they put down in front of us was chicken feet then they followed that with a bowl of tripe um yum i did not taste the chicken feet i ll be honest they looked like chicken feet and were plae white and kind of pimply i was willing to try stuff because hey half the reason we were there was for a cultural exchange but they were chicken feet someone in our group did try them and she said that they tasted just like you d expect them to like knuckles again mm yum there was also some kind of pale green bumpy thing which they said was bitter herb one person at our table tried it and he said it was really bitter indeed there was edamame which i actually kind of liked i didn t know they were a form of soy bean until later but that was definitely something to try again in the future there were a number of very spicy dishes that were so spicy that i couldn t eat them and there was a dish of what they called bullfrog which i actually thought was pretty good it s hard to describe it but it has a similar texture to crab although the flavor isn t quite as strong there were also a number of dumpling type foods that were quite good they also had a bunch of bean curd paste things that were really sweet although they were brought out in the middle of the meal generally the chinese don t really do desert although they do have these sweet courses in the middle of the meal you always know the meal is over when they bring out the watermelon however that hasn t stopped haagen dazs from opening several stores in china one in chengdu and one in beijing that i saw there could have been more but i didn t see any after the meal we went to the sichuan province department of education even though we thought we were going to have a free afternoon i don t know if i said it but in china there are three levels of control over education national provincial and local cities villages in all honesty i didn t get a whole lot out of the meeting with the dept of ed folks because i was so tired but also becuase there were translation problems our guide jim didn t know he was going to have to translate so he was unprepared to do it plus it s really hard i would imagine i also think that some of the numbers and details we got weren t entirely accurate what i did learn that was interesting was that sichuan has the second largest tibetan population outside of tibet and 75 of the population in this province is rural they also have a much smaller teacher student ratio about 1 to 22 which is more than half what it was in beijing or xi an where it was about 1 to 50 or 60 i wonder how much of the rural popul...