Jinsha Site Museum

A new museum opened up on the west side of town - signs for it are all over. It is built on an actual site where ruins and artifacts from the Shu kingdom were discovered a few years ago. The architecture of the place is really impressive; I love how one of the buildings illuminates the ruins with natural light.


There are quite a few jade and bronze artifacts, and some of gold. For such enormous grounds, it is a pretty small collection however. A pottery display:


Directional signs are in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, English, and French though the displays are only in Chinese and English. (Pretty good English, for a museum, though it assumes you know the time periods of dynasties.) They had some touch screen stations in the exhibits that explained some of the artifacts in more detail. I could not find any English on those and was disappointed since they were well illustrated and easy to navigate.


I asked about English guides at the gate but did not have the hour to wait for one to be available. It normally costs 80 yuan to get in but I got a ticket from my manager.

Still Alive

Juggling three blogs means I have dropped the ball on this one for awhile, but will be doing a few updates this week, which is the labour day holiday. This is one of the many plastic surgery clinics in town. Above the reception desk, which I wasn't brave enough to photograph, was 'beautiful chest' in lovely gold letters.

Fusen Mei Jia Market

One of the bus routes by my place ends up at a market north of the third ring. I've always been curious about the market so I got on that bus today to check it out. I had been picturing a food or clothing market so was a little disappointed when it turned out to be a building materials market. The "Mei Jia" (Beautiful Home) in the name should have clued me in. Walking around was pretty interesting nonetheless - the market is kind of a cross between a suburban big box cluster and an enormous Home Depot store.



This foreign couple were spokesmodels for Baroque brand flooring, and were attracting quite a bit of attention.

Tazishan and Baihuatan Parks

Tazishan Park is towards the southeast corner of the city in an area that has no particular character - much of it seems to be under redevelopment. This has been the hardest park for me to find so far. This gorgeous building, which is on top of a hill, was my main compass. (Name starts with Nine Heaven. Sorry I don't know more about the building; the descriptions were all in Chinese.)



Modern graffiti over the writing on the walls.



There were tons of middle school students around the building. I am not sure what its original purpose was but now it is an arcade.



Baihuatan park is at the south end of Qin Tai Lu, and is one of the nicest parks I have found here so far. You can pay two kuai to feed these enormous goldfish:



One part of the park has a bonsai display, which is neat but lacking the balance and delicacy of really good bonsai. (Displayed a bit clunkily as well.)



Four of my classes were cancelled last week but I am starting three new ones - one Business English at a university and two smaller kids' classes - and therefore still feel swamped with work and lesson planning. One of these days I will get faster at it.

Another Strike in Chip Flavour

One of the things we transplanted North Americans miss about home is familiar snack foods - chips that taste like chips. (You can get Pringles with pretty much the same zombified potato flavour as at home, but they are not that appealing of a chip to being with.) I could get into the local potato chips sold on the street which are covered with 花椒(huājiāo、 sichuan pepper), but they always taste stale, as do the Chinese brand chips sold in stores. I tried some Classic American Flavour Lays, which had enough preservatives not to be stale but tasted like they had chicken soup mix sprinkled on them. Only then did I realize that the ingredients actually listed chicken extract. Just recently I noticed that the chemicals on the back of 'Texas Grilled Barbecue' flavoured chips looked very similar to those at home. Maltodextrin, hydrolized vegetable protein, disodium guanylate - yay! I bought them only to find out they were equally weird tasting, sigh.

手语 (shoŭyŭ、 sign language)

A couple of weeks ago I noticed three people using sign language at a bus stop and last weekend got the chance to learn a few words. Chinese sign language is quite different from ASL – it seems to be based on the characters. It reminded me of the Chinese habit of drawing characters in the air to clarify words, when people are learning someone’s name or when they are speaking with someone who has a much different accent. 你好(nĭhăo) (hello, lit. you good)– point to the person, then give a thumb’s up. 我(wŏ, I/me), point to self. 吗(ma, the question particle), like drawing a question mark in the air. 想(xiăng, think or desire), twirl finger beside head. Very cool.