7 Days Inn (Chengdu Hongzhaobi)

Story time....

by sugarpuff

Long long ago........The river Minjiang was said to have a very torrential section to it from Leshan eastwards to Jianwei. Waves crashed against the rocks day after day washing the cliffs away. A river like this had long caused great trouble to the communication betwenn the rich western part of Shu and the lower reaches of Two Hu's, Wan and Zhe. In the first year of the Tang Dynasty, Monk Haitong said 'NO' to the evil monsters controlling the river! He thought of digging the cliffs away to let the rocks fall into the currents. If an image of a Buddha was carved, Buddhism would also be glorified! Good thinking Batman!

Once built, the sky became clear and bright as if the Buddha was giving light to the world. In a calm observance of the world, the Buddha denies whatever is unreal and whatever is vulgar,rewards the kind and punishes the evil, teaches people according to his intelligence, and hels those who have momentarily lost their way. Who else could have stopped those turbulent waves apart from the Buddha?Certainly NOT Spiderman!

A corrupt official of that time tried to bribe the Monk by asking him for the money from the Buddha. But the Monk replied "Get out of here you money grabbing b*****d!" No sorry, he didnt say that at all...he said "You may tear out my eyes, but you will never get the money for the construction of the Buddha!" (See, I nearly got it right!) The bad official got angry and threatened him, "Let's see if I can gouge your eyes out then!" The Monk himself took out one of his eyes and presented it on a plate! The bad man ran out in a panic begging for forgiveness! The moral of this story....I leave that one up to you!

Gateway to Tibet (at least in Summer)

by 1W1V

I have flew BKK-CTU-LXA.
In summer, it seems that the only decent way to get into Tibet is from Chengdu.
Indeed, it was easy to buy the ticket and to get the permit.
The price was 3000 Y for a return CTU-LXA-CTU and I think 600 Y for the permit.
I just advise you to try to catch the first flight in the morning even if it is pretty early.
The reason : if there is not enought passenger for the noon flight, Air China will just cancel it and you are stuck in CTU for a day or two because if (like me) you have no luck, the next day flights were cancelled because of the weather !!!
I get my ticket and permit from a business contact I had in CTU but you can get them from travel agencies in Traffic Hotel, Sims cosy GH and a lot of others in town.

Chengdu

by sachara

In 1991 we came to Chengdu for our flight to Tibet. Because the flights to Tibet were cancelled day after day, we had some days to explore Chengdu.

Chengdu has 1,5 million inhabitants and is an important regional centre of industry.

Chengdu has allready an old history. From the 11th century to 221 BC during the Zhou dynasty Chengdu was a capital. During the Han dynasty from 206 BC till 220 AD the city had a flourishing brocade trade and got the name Jincheng, city of brocade or the nickname departmentstore of heaven. In the period from 906 till 960 AD Chengdu was the city of the hibiscus, because a ruler planted hibiscus flowers at the city walls. In the 13th century AD Chengdu, the perfect metropole, was destroyed by the Mongolians.

Nowadays Chengdu is a modern city and the capital of the province Sichuan.

Coming from a cycling country like the Netherlands it is very surprising to see a country with even more bicycles.

There were wide carriageways for the bicycles at both sides of the carriageway for cars.