Chengdu – day 1

After a good night’s rest, we were met in the lobby by our guide, Shen Tao. What a lovely young man he is. His “American Dream” is to study at Baruch. He hopes to eventually do his PhD and become a professor.
Today we visited Jinsha Site Museum – an amazing museum build over the ruins of the 3000 year old kingdom of Shu. If you are interested in learning more go to www.jinshasitemuseum.com. Later today we visited China Lane (a street of wonderful restored shops and restaurants).
For my friends from SWUFE who kindly visited or emailed with many suggestions before I left NY, you will be happy to know that we ended the day in Huang Cheng Laoma (please excuse me if this is not the correct spelling) supposedly one of the best HOT POT restaurants in Chengdu. Since we had no idea what we were doing, Shen Tao handled the ordering – after I warned him to be sure to order the least spicy option! It was truly delicious and a delightful experience.
Chengdu is a very interesting city. I did not realize how incredibly big it is. SWUFE has a new campus – about 45 minutes outside of the city. Shen Tao tells me he prefers the old campus in the downtown area since it is much closer for students who may be interviewing for jobs here. The traffic is insane. It seems there are absolutely no rules – cars, buses, bicycles and people (even mothers with baby carriages) are all going in every direction – each seemingly oblivious to all the others. Somehow most get through unscathed. Interestingly there is no requirement to have auto insurance. When we asked Shen Tao what happens when there is an accident – he said people just shrug and say “I’m just not lucky”.
The sky has been overcast all day, but I was shocked when Shen Tao told us that it is always this way. He says they never see a blue sky.
Tomorrow we’ll do one more day of learning about Chengdu – and then I begin to work – after all that is why I came.