Tags @GreatRail #GrandTourOfChina
A rainy day in Chengdu today and since our scheduled visit to the giant Buddha at Leshan has been cancelled (it’s being renovated and is draped with scaffolding) made the decision to tour some of Chengdu’s street markets. Szichuan food is known world wide for spices and chilli so I thought we should see what all the fuss was about.
We started with a visit to a small flower market.

Then moved on to several food markets where the usual Chinese variety of frankly, rather strange foods was on display.

Chilies were drying in the spice shop

The noodles lady guessed very quickly that we probably weren’t going to buy anything and so got on with doing something more interesting.

I’ve no idea what this is but it was steaming away in the afternoon chill and smelt rather good!

With the discovery of a bowl of steamed pigs snouts it seemed like a good time to move on.

Finally, we drove by a giant statue of Chairman Mao in his traditional pose. The locals like to say that he is trying to flag down a taxi, and that so far he’s been unsuccessful for 30 years!
Pandas tomorrow, and we have a very early start. Then a train journey and we board a ship tomorrow evening for a cruise down the Yangtze. As you do. Good night China