Seriously fun
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China Daily, December 1, 2011
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Clockwise from top: A card game in the mammoth Liu estate; a dinner table decorated with a miniature garden and pandas; a partitioned hotpot; a typical Sunday morning for a Chengdu family in the suburbs; a view of the Jinjiang River with the Shangri-La Hotel and Hejiang Pavilion. Raymond Zhou / China Daily |
A weekend getaway in Chengdu with Raymond Zhou reveals the usual enjoyments, plus a few surprises.
Chengdu used to bill itself as "a place you come to and do not want to leave".
For most people, this is more a temptation than a feasible choice.
It takes a special personality, which I sum up as "being serious about having fun", to make the capital city of Sichuan province your permanent residence.
However, a short trip to the land of spicy cuisines is at most a guilty pleasure.
No matter how busy your schedule, you've got to give yourself a break from time to time.
And do not use the excuse that you have access to authentic Sichuan gourmet elsewhere. It's not just about what you eat or how numbingly fiery the dish is.
It's something in the atmosphere, which I had the fortune to experience on a recent weekend and will recount with utmost honesty.
Saturday
6:30 am
I woke up before the alarm had its chance to rouse me.
Outside the large window, it was milky white.
"Is it a foggy day, or am I in the moon palace?" I thought.
As I lifted my body out of bed in a 33-floor room in the Shangri-La Hotel, the high-rises on the other side of the Jinjiang River loomed - dimly lit.
"It's just overcast - a usual day in Chengdu," I realized.
Hunger gnawed at me, but the Horizon Club Lounge might not be open.
As my eyes darted around in search of edibles, a figurine in the shape of two pandas chewing bamboo shoots jumped into my view. It's not an ornament, I figured, because it's placed next to the fruit basket.
It turned out to be chocolate, which tasted sweetest in this odd hour of stomach protestation.
I nibbled at the bamboo shoots first, and then bit off chunks of it. As I got closer to the cuddly animals, I hesitated.
"It's not right to gobble up a national treasure, is it?"
Flashback to Friday
The previous night, I was glued to a centerpiece on a dinner table in Shang Palace, a Level-2 restaurant that features Sichuanese and Cantonese cuisines.
Instead of a lazy Susan or a floral arrangement, the center of the table was a miniature garden with small bridges, pavilions, and, of course, giant pandas. Sure, it would be a misnomer to call them giant. Teeny-weeny would be more accurate, and lovely as expected.
"Chengdu is the hometown of the panda, you know," my host explained. "And the display is a reflection of the city's ecology, without the modernity, though."
You cannot escape the endlessly huggable but libido-deficient mascot.
A walk around the lobby would bring you face-to-face with renderings by avant-garde artists Guo Jin and Guo Wei of a panda on a tree and another in a Lady Gaga-like posture.
A dozen more paintings adorn the walls, saving me a trip to the artists' village or a gallery, or tempting one on further explorations of the city's vibrant art scene.
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