Welcome to beautiful Chengdu! I left my Shanghai apartment at 5am, and by 1pm was in the capital of Sichuan Province. Chengdu looks like any other Chinese city--lots of big, boxy, dull boxes with little three and four story buildings thrown up in between--but it did have a distinctly more diverse population. Lots of faces that clearly did not come from the Han Chinese majority. The diversity did not extend to foreigners. I saw one or two other non Asians the entire day of walking.

With only one day in Chengdu, I set out to loop around the city center. Right next to the hostel was a preserved part of the city centered around an old Chinese Buddhist temple. Preserved sections of old Chinese towns are one of the themes of my trip. They all are about the same, though. Reduced car traffic, open air stalls selling a variety of junk, and lots of people walking around.

Guy making jewelry.

The Chinese are not known as dapper dressers, but there are exceptions to every rule.

The inside of the Chinese Buddhist Temple. There were actual worshippers there that day. Pilgrims would come in with bundles of incense, walk to the lantern (middle-right) where they lit the incense, then they would walk to the box in the center-left where they placed the incense in the sand as an offering.

After the temple, I wandered the streets of Chengdu. Shanghai has the great luxury for foreigners of having us be completely ubiquitous that even Chinese children pay no attention to people who are from the West. Out in Western China, it is very different. Whispers of "Laowai" or "Waiguoren" are pretty easily heard.

Chinese Chess. It is pretty incredible how much entertainment old Chinese men can derive from a single game of chess, cards, or Maj Jong. Seriously, two guys playing chess will entertain at least a dozen other men.

We ended the day going to see "traditional Sichuanese opera." It was more like a variety show, but we got to see the famous Sichuan actors who breathe fire and can change their masks very quickly. But my favorite part of the variety show was the guy who came out and made different shadows. He was very adept with his hands.