Xiling Mountain, Exploring Chengdu, October 19-21

Xiling Mountain, Sunday, October 19

We had found short write-ups on Xiling Mountain, which is reputed to be Sichuan's number one ski resort. Mark and I decided to drive up for the day to check it out. It took nearly three hours until we parked, but the last hour was in beautiful mountain scenery. Our driver was concerned because he had taken the wrong road - one leading to the back of the mountain rather than the resort. SInce our main goal was to get in some hiking, we were happy where we were. (Unbeknownst to us, our friends Jane and Jerome also went up to Xiling Mountain that day, but on the right road. They took the first of two lifts up the mountain, but it was cold and fogged in at that point, so they came back down.) The path we took was paved, though with far fewer stairs than at Emeishan, so it was easier both up and down. It went up a narrow ravine, first on one side, then by suspension bridge (with wooden plank floors) to the other side. Some of the bridges were very bouncy. We saw some very nice waterfalls on the way. We hiked up about an hour and 40 minutes. About half way up we got out of the light fog into sunshine - it was actually warmer than where we parked the car. We would have liked to have gone further, but we had made dinner plans.

We took out Calvin and Phil, two men we got to know at the Shangri-La Hotel. Calvin has to return to his home in Calgary in a few days, so this was a farewell dinner. He is Chinese and has been a great help to us in terms of getting around and finding places to eat in Chengdu. He took us to a restaurant where we ordered our fish and seafood while it was still swimming around. Next we chose the vegetables we wanted (already picked and cleaned, but still very fresh). It was a very nice meal.

Brocade Museum. Monday, October 20

I had made arrangements with Vava, the Croatian woman I had met in my cooking class, to get together to try to find the Sichuan Textile Museum. She is a warm, wonderful person who enjoys walking around and exploring - we had a great time. We had my driver drop us off by the Curio's market near Dufu Cottage. We walked the stalls, then found an upstairs areas which houses dozens of small artist's studios. Some were doing classic Chinese landscapes and animals, others were doing more of a Western style. We then walked along for over an hour looking for the museum, which wasn't where the map indicated it should be. The problem was that we were looking for it by the English name which had been retranslated into Chinese. It was actually the Brocade Museum. It is mainly a showroom for the Brocade factory - every item on display was for sale - but it was nicely arranged and there was no pressure to buy. A pleasant young woman who speaks quite good English took us around. The most interesting part was three large looms for making brocade. Two women were operating one of them. One of them sits at the loom and throws the shuttles back and forth. They other is perched six feet up over the middle part of the loom, where she pulls on strings, each of which lifts certain warp threads. She had to be skillful in selecting the strings, plus it looked like it took a fair amount of effort to pull them. It takes years of training for women to learn to do this, then more to learn a specific pattern and to learn to work with each other. It takes 100 throws of the shuttle to make 1 cm of cloth. The warp has thousands of threads of threads. It will take about three years to weave the entire warp. Most of the brocade produced by the instrument is made my machine; this special hand-woven brocade is extremely costly. (It is interesting to watch, but the silk doesn't appeal to me as much as the more rustic cottons of TImor.)

Sichuan Art Museum, Tuesday, October 21

Christine, whose husband works with Mark, came over this morning to first see the apartment, then go to the Sichuan Art Musuem. It turned out to be more a gallery than a museum - two areas of mainly landscapes, then a large new exhibit of calligraphy. The exhibits were a bit disappointing, but there was a wonderful book store on the first floor. Christine and I spent over an hour looking at books of paintings, many at very low prices. I bought two 24"by 18" books of teaching demonstrations of landscapes - for 15 yuan each.

Christine then took me to Long Taofou, a new dimsum chain. She order the set menu at 22yuan (less than $4 for the two of us), for which we got wonton soup, noodles, and perhaps eight different dishes of sweet and savory dumplings and snack food. It was very busy and noisy, but the food was wonderful and we stuffed ourselves.

On Thursday I'll be flying to Guiyang with Wanda Hake, who lived in Beijing for five years and is very interested in textiles and folk traditions. We'll be using a tour guide she knows to go to two fall festivals for the Miao ethnic group. We'll come back by car (her driver will meet us at the border to Sichuan province) on October 30. So I'll be out of touch for a while.