Like most of my time here thus far, last week was full of new chinese adventures. I have gotten into a routine of getting up for my early class then going back to bed and sleeping, eating and lounging the rest of the day away until my evening classes. Thursday I decided to change this routine.
Chengdu is home to one of the most famous Daoist Temples in China, Qingyang Gong. After studying Daoism for a semester I was very eager to visit this temple, especially the vegetarian restaurant there. After making one successful attempt to find this temple a week ago (we went to the Tea house then ran out of time), Lexi and I mounted our bikes and headed out for a Daoist adventure. After finding the park where the temple was located we wandered around for about 20 minutes asking people in our broken chinese where the temple was before we finally found it. Since arriving in China I have visited many temples, but I appreciated this one the most because I understood alittle bit about the deities and shrines. The three purities where are the most holy place, near the rear of the temple and Lao zhi had his own circular shrine right in the middle of the temple. Being an active Daoist temple I was also able to identify the monks roaming around by their hair (tied up in a top knot), their hats and their clothing. It was a beautiful temple. We finished our visit there with lunch at the vegetarian restaurant. They actually had a English menu and almost everything was vegetarian so we could easily order. We ended up with a delicious lunch of a spicy doufu peanut dish, bamboo shoots, noodles (wonderful when mixed in the doufu sauce), and shredded potatoes. Yum! After lunch it was time to head back to the dorm for taiji class. I am happy to report Juanita behaved wonderfully on this whole journey and no repair work was needed when we arrived back on campus.
My culture experiences continued Thursday night when I gathered up a few from our group and met up with our chinese friend Candy for a few games of Mah Jong. I learned this game on the cruise on our way to Chengdu, but I learned Shanghai rules which are very different from chengdu rules. Candy helped us learn the Chengdu way and we enjoyed quite a few games on the fancy electric mah jong table. The game was also very beneficial in helping me learn my chinese numbers so I killed two birds with one stone, learning a local popular game and learning important chinese words!
The cultural experiences continued on Friday when Tiara decided that Erin, Lexi and I all needed new Chinese hair styles. So we called up a chinese friend and asked her to take us to a salon. We walked in to one of the many salons that surround the campus and being the only blond in the group, I was immediately surrounded by hairstylists touching my hair. We found it interesting that almost all the hairstylists were male and had the same hair style: long, reddish hair styled in an afro. Our Chinese friend Suzy worked her way through our group explaining to the hairstylist what each of us wanted. Lexi wanted a bob, Erin wanted her hair died darker, Tiara wanted a trim and a blue streak and it had been decided on the bike ride over I would attempt an Asian perm. With that established Suzy left us and we were taken into the hair washing room where we laid down while getting our hair washed and our heads massaged. We then headed back to the salon where we preceded to spend the next 4 hours. Lexi's haircut took very little time and my cut and perm took no more than 2 hours, but Erin's hair had to be died twice and Tiara's hair had to be bleached five times before they could put in the blue and cut it. I didn't exactly ended up with the chinese perm I was hoping for, I got more of the american style, but I love the cut and am quickly adjusting to curly hair. It was quite comical because throughout the whole process the hairstylists would try to talk to us in a dialect none of us could understand. Thinking they were trying to ask us questions we would call suzy to interpret, only to find that they were just trying to chat. In the end everyones hair turned out great and we went out to a delicious dinner of BBQ skewers and eggplant to celebrate. It was yet again another successful cultural adventure.
Saturday brought yet another adventure. At the early hour of 9:30am, sporting my new hair I boarded a bus with the rest of my group to visit the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Center. Throughout the course of the morning we saw Pandas of all ages. We learned that pandas have to spend 14 hours a day eating bamboo to get enough energy to survive and they prefer to eat laying on their backs. At the nursery we learned that newborn pandas are only the size of a cube of butter, but grow quickly after birth. The month old pandas we saw were about the size of a small stuffed animal. We also saw red pandas, which I think look more like raccoons then panda bears and are not quite as cute. Besides not being able to sleep in, our Saturday panda adventure was another fabulous Chengdu Cultural experience. 
I look forward to more Chengdu Cultural experiences, but am also excited to experience Tibet culture as we travel there this coming Saturday. Sorry for the length of this blog and keep an eye out for more to come on Tibet!
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