That’s One Big Buddha

Bags packed we prepare ourselves for the grueling 25 hour smoke and lugee fest that lay ahead of us aboard the hard sleeper train to Chengdu.  I guess we must explain that the "no smoking sign" holds no merit what so ever and since everyone is smoking, everyone develops phlegm, and in the Chinese culture they believe that it is unhealthy to swallow it.  So players start your hacking! However, it has been said that with recent outbreaks of new diseases like SARS and H1N1, people have been a little more restrained on the spitting. The train was over an hour late which made the natives even more restless and queuing quickly dissolved into frenzy as people (holding tickets with assigned seat mind you) try to make their way thru the turn styles. 

But we find our 6 bed bunk and hunker down for awhile.  We attempted our pathetic excuse of Mandarin but our older roommates just found us amusing and intently watched us play a couple games of chess.  In our defense, the Chinese language is extremely difficult.  There are over 20,000 characters in the alphabet, compared to our measly 26.  On top of all of that, there are 5 tones which totally change the meaning of a word.  For example, "ma" depending on how you say it can have 5 different meanings, you could accidently call someone's mother a horse! And for the icing on the cake there are up to 9 different linguistic groups in China.    

Chengdu was more of a base for the next couple days, but most of our time was spent on the outskirts of the city.  We sampled the Sichuan "hot pot" cuisine, which is like a spicy fondu, though it is much more challenging trying to fish the food out with chopsticks.  We also enjoyed a "Sichuan Opera," however it was actually more of a variety show than opera with acrobatics, music, and dancing.  Then we sheepishly laid around for a while, spoiled with a soft bed, which is rare on the Asian continent, and 100's of DVD's at our disposal.   

Not too far from Chengdu is the city of Leshan which holds a really, really big Buddha, 71 m to be precise.  His name is Dafo and he actually holds the title of biggest stone Buddha in the world.  His toenails are bigger than your head!  With such a description one would think that he would not be too hard to find, but somehow we became VERY acquainted with Bus No. 1 in our drawn-out pursuit.    Finally locating something that resembled a ferry pier we bought our ticket and sailed our way out with the other 30 photo op crazed Asian tourist.  They love having their picture taken in front of things and throwing up hand signs.  Though we spent a small fraction of our day admiring this awe inspiring image carved into the red stone cliff we still think it was worth the effort.  So long Bus No. 1!