VHanded lalala: Lost in China Day 3

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Lost in China Day 3

Continue from previous incident.

I wasn't suppose to be here, none of us. We are suppose to crossing desert, weird town, enjoying the perfect boredom without internet and cellphone signal.

The fact is, we are still in Chengdu. Not too bad, at least we have the time to visit places that we missed.

The familiar view from our guest house window.

First destination today is 宽窄巷子, literally Wide Narrow Alley. 300 years of history, the alley is combined of 3 parts which are Wide Alley, Narrow Alley, and a Well Alley. The allies inherited old
Qing Dynasty architecture, which now already merged well with tourism, snack shops, classic theater, souvenir shops, and and and, Starbucks.

Find the odd.

A number of people are selling something call 老冰棍 (Old Ice Stick), in a polystyrene box. Out of curiosity, so I approached a boy and asked:

什么是老冰棒？

the epic reply is: 老冰棒就是小时候的味道啊!

Meet the original Panda 1000

Entrance to Wide Alley

Is just this wide.

This is special. They called it ear picking. Kind of like lock picking, the sifu has an arsenal of tools with various shapes. The purpose is not just to clean your ear, but to make you feel comfortable and relax too. Some ancient art...

The place below is call 龙堂戏院, a Chinese Opera Theater. We were attracted by it, because the Sichuan Face Changing Performance will start in half an hour. How can we missed this stuff? The Face Changing is not an whole hour show, so they added several other performance like Long Kettle, Chinese joke opera, knife throwing(?!) performance, and finally face changing to end it.

Moral of the story, do not have eye contact with those people. If not because of this video, I thought it was real stuff.

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Next, after a quick lunch, we went to 锦里古街。This place has been around since Three Kingdom era, with a slightly merchant/tea house/whorehouse feel, just like how you see in most Hong Kong/China drama. Buildings had been modified to be restaurants, snack stops, souvenir shops etc.

This is magical, walk through that gate, and immediately feel like passing through time tunnel.