Mahjong Master

I slept better last night. The group that kept me up the other night have left thankfully and been replaced by a quiet new group. Met Simon and the others at the reception of the hostel and we start the day with learning Mahjong, I love board games, cards, dice – any games reall,y and mahjong is no different. I do struggle with the Mandarin element; the game involves voicing the tile you discard each round and I struggle even though Simon has given us all a cheat sheet where we have all the words written down. The mahjong set is being played every time we have passed it although Simon says it isn’t normally an early morning game. It is very popular though this morning, as we amass a number of Chinese on lookers during our hour or so of playing. It is a good game; it reminds me of rummy or the tile game with letters or numbers, Rummikub. I get lucky with my starting hand a couple of times and end up winning two out of the three games we play, which makes me enjoy the game even more. The victories are sweeter because last night I was sucking at cards and I am the first to admit, when it comes to games, I can be a bit competitive!

Riding high on my victories I head out with the group for some sightseeing. Our first stop is a metro ride away; we are heading to Wenzhou Gate and the Buddhist Wenzhou Monastery – the best preserved Buddhist Temple in Chengdu, a walled-in community of temples, gardens, and shrines originally built in the Sui Dynasty (581-618). A beautiful place, painted in vibrant decor adorned with various statues and sculptures – a pleasure to walk around. It is an active monastery that, like the visit to the Giant Pandas yesterday, is very busy. However, here there is a difference; in this house of their god, people seem to be calmer, less pushy, willing to wait their turn to burn their incense and pay homage to one of the many statues of Buddha or other symbolic people and/or creatures. Here we also encounter Yin and Yang symbols; the famous mixing of light and dark, good and evil. Although not a religious man I do enjoy visiting religious monuments especially historic ones. After all religions in their many different forms do tend to have one thing in common, wealth and power, and thereby the means to embellish themselves with art, architecture, land and beauty. This monastery also has a tea garden which the group decides to give a go; after all, I do love my tea. We change our minds though when we realise the wait is a rather long one.

Mahjong – a game to be taken seriously

Having skipped the tea garden, we head out of the monastery in search of lunch. We stop at a local take away to get some rolls referred to as Chinese burgers, although I would draw more similarity to a pitta bread. Inside we have one with pork slices and another with a vegetable mixture which I, weirdly for me, enjoy more than the meat one due to its pickled and spicy nature.

After lunch we get the metro to the Sichuan Museum were Simon leaves us to our own devices for a couple of hours. I enjoy walking around several displays about the history of the area although I struggled only being able to read the occasional sign which had an English translation. I was therefore left with little context for the actual displays, but a pleasant experience all the same. Towards the end of the two hours Erika and I were sitting on the stairs near the reception, our assigned meeting spot, and were approached by a group of school children. At first we had assumed they wanted a photo of us as, like in India, we had found ourselves being as much as a tourist attraction for the locals as the attractions were to us. However after some back and forth on a translation app we realised they wanted to interview us for a school project. They asked us about a recent video that has gone viral in China about a jade teapot in the British Museum that turns human and seeks the help of a journalist to find its way home to China. First released on China's version of TikTok, Douyin, it has been played 270 million times on the platform.The video’s popularity has re-sparked debates over the UK’s refusal to return historic goods to China and the number of culturally and historically important pieces we keep from their homes. A rather awkward thing to be asked about while sitting in a museum in China. But we answer to the best of our abilities and the kids seem happy enough with our answers, so hopefully we helped them get a good grade!

Wenzhou Temple

Chinese burger

Leaving the museum, Erika asks Simon if we can visit the Qingyang Taoist Temple on the way back as it is next to the metro station. I am glad she did. It again is another amazing temple to view and I delight in seeing the differences between the two religions and their iconography. I have to say though the blending of different religions throughout Chinas history is very evident. Many of the temples take on similar architectural styles and colour schemes. This Taoist temple even having a statue of Buddha in the same main hall as the Statues of Tao and his generals, although it is on the back side of the display. Like in many cultures the lines between different Chinese religions, regions and ethnicities seem to have been rewritten many times throughout history, so much so they have become rather blurred. Simon, our guide, says it is funny to see so many people diligently praying and wishing in the temples when he doubts many of the people here follow any religious guidances at home. They just come to pray and ask for things, but in the words of Simon, “I don’t think that’s how this is suppose to work.”

Qingyang Temple

Once we are all religioused out we jump back on the metro to our hostel for a quick freshen up for what I have been looking forward to all day – the world famous Sichuan Hotpot. A shared meal in which those partaking sit around a table with a pot full of boiling soup with a fire underneath. We order a pot with a spicy and none spicy side, although I have to say so far I have been finding the spice levels in China rather lacking. With the pot in place we also order a plate of raw meat each and an array of different uncooked vegetables to be individually dunked into the soup and cooked before consumption. The meal is pleasant although, once again, the spice levels aren’t where I would like them to be. It is a meal that follows an eating pattern I am starting to notice in China. Unlike in England and other countries where one orders a single plate with a variety of things on it for themselves, here people order plates full of different singular elements and then all share. I personally am not the biggest fan of this style of eating as for someone who likes to eat a lot and personally enjoys the blends of different ingredients together I tend to find the meals leaving me still hungry and slightly unsatisfied. Still it is a fun experience and the bits I did manage to eat, I enjoyed, although I did struggle with the chopsticks over the boiling soup. After the meal we ended today similar to yesterday a game of cards on the roof before a relatively early night. After all I am still rather sleepy.

Sichuan Hotpot