Top Ten Cities in China with the Most Beautiful Women

Woohoo! Chengdu is #3!

China Hush (translation)
Original post in Chinese

3. Chengdu | 成都

Pure as the eye solution
Score: 93

Because of the moist and nutritious soil of Dujiangyan (都江堰), City of Chengdu appeared in this small plain, a gentle and rich, prosperous land. Chengdu girls are particularly good looking.

Chengdu girls have delicate and white skin and they do not seem to like the heavy make-up. Whether she is a working class, or a school girl, they are mostly light on the make-ups, but the natural beauty is truly amazing. Chengdu girls are like the city, vaguely reveals a faint, lazy, leisure scent. Their beauty is like a soft kitten.

Maybe the only drawback of Chengdu girls is that they are not very tall. But it can also be a good thing if you appreciate the petite style. Therefore, if you want to have a romantic story, it is best to find a girlfriend in Chengdu. No wonder that foreign men in Chengdu all have the same sigh “Married too early”.

Jane Zhang is also from Chengdu

Kung-Fu Panda

OK, not really. I think they were more playing than fighting. The video was ~500MB so I had to upload it to YouTube instead of directly to Blogger.

Swine Flu in China

BBC News

China's health minister says the nation is facing a grim situation as it tries to contain a rapid surge in swine flu.

Chen Zhu said a vaccination programme would start this week, prioritising those taking part in events to celebrate National Day on 1 October.

...

Mr Chen says priority will be given to young students aged between five and 19, vulnerable groups such as those with respiratory diseases and pregnant women, and front-line public service personnel.

But he also revealed that the vaccination programme would start with those performing in the National Day Parade.

There are at least 200,000 official participants, plus thousands of security police.

According to the BBC's China analyst, Shirong Chen, they have been pushed to the front of the queue not just because it is a huge public event that carries national pride, but because all the top leaders and dignitaries will be in Beijing.

The authorities cannot afford the political risk of any infection there, our correspondent says.

So there will not be much vaccine left for others on the priority list for now.

Sigh... you can always cancel or scale back the 60th anniversary propaganda show but that will be political suicide for anyone that suggests it. Maybe they should hand out 200,000 surgical masks instead and let pregnant women and the elderly get the vaccines.

There were quite a few people on my CX flights last week wearing masks. I thought the consensus was that masks, especially the surgical ones, are only useful for preventing the wearer from infecting others. Almost all the public workers I saw at Beijing airport were wearing the same flimsy masks too. I'm 100% sure all these people were not watching out for other people's health... that's not the Chinese way.


I did buy a few N95 respirator masks for our trip to China last week but that was more for the smog and air pollution. Those masks are slightly more effective than the surgical masks against flu viruses but are harder to breathe through. The air quality in Beijing was okay so we didn't use them.

Chengdu Tricycle Ride

30 second clip of our very unsafe tricycle ride through the streets of Chengdu. It was electric and got going pretty quick; too bad there's no matching suspension. Half-way through the clip, we rode/drove by a girl sitting on a stool talking on the phone with her legs wide open. Sorry... reflex.

China Family Trip - More Chengdu Pictures

Some more vacation pictures:


Advertising Burberry fragrance outside Pacific Department Store on Chunxi Road.


My dad's friend's relatives came to meet us for lunch on Sunday. They brought us to a Chengdu cuisine place which means lots of little dishes... kind of like dim sum but you get your own plate/bowl. This dish had some tofu (good), some rabbit meat (ok), and duck tongue (not ok). Do ducks have tongues? Is that why they talk funny?


I think each of us got ~25 dishes. There were eight of us so it was a lot of dishes to wash for somebody in the back.


Street fruit vendors. They all seem to have the same fruits: apple, pear, rambutan, and dragon fruit.


The Haiyatt Garden Hotel (no, not Hyatt) is located above a Japanese department store chain (Isetan) in the pedestrian shopping area. In the afternoon, it gets harder and harder to hail a taxi. Whenever one would show up, lots of people would run up to fight it. Being a capitalist country, these guys on scooters would come and offer rides to people waiting, usually at a higher price than the taxi fare. Here, the guy on the black scooter is trying to fit a cello between his legs while the other scooter has a passenger with a violin... train wreck waiting to happen. Fortunately, the two girls were able to hail a taxi so this whole operation was aborted.


I was sitting in a coffee house with my dad for about 3 hours so I took a lot of pictures of the scooter "taxi" brigade.


After the (huge, 17 passenger) van picked up my parents, sister, and Rebecca to take them to the airport, my friend and I walked around the Chunxi Road shopping area for awhile. Here she is eating some type of internal organ (heart?) on a stick.


After watching people fight for a taxi the entire afternoon, I found myself in the same predicament. My friend also bought a piece of luggage so we were carrying it while looking for a taxi. The scooters looked really unsafe but we were tired of walking so we ended up on a electric tricycle. Very unsafe.


The guy charged us ¥15 for a ¥5 taxi ride. Oh well. I got a couple of videos out of it though. Very unsafe.


Macau (I think) from the air

China Family Trip - Pandas!

Bronze(?) statue at the park entrance


It just rained the night before so it was really humid. There were a lot of bamboo growing in the park and we felt like we were in some kind of rain forest.


A lot of exhibits were closed so we didn't see anything for the first 3o minutes. Finally... a panda.


More pandas. We saw four individuals at the adult giant panda enclosure.


The panda on the left was taking a nap for a long time. The panda in the middle was eating bamboo then climbed up to nap too. The third panda (on the right) was the troublemaker. The three of them ended up playfighting for about 15 minutes. I will upload a video later; not sure if there's enough bandwidth on my free HKIA wireless connection.


I'm the dragon warrior!


A lot of people showed up. We stood next to a couple of white guys... Americans by their English and commentary (on the video).


Round 2. The panda in the middle was trying to continue his/her nap when the other two came back to harass him/her again.


There was also a pond (Swan Lake) in the park. There were a lot of koi fish.


Black swans

China Family Trip - PMI Chengdu Pictures

After my trip to Chengdu in August 2007 (lost luggage and really hot/humid weather), I said I wouldn't come in the summer again. This year, there was a solar conference in Chengdu during the first week of September so here I am. Summers are still hot and humid here; at least I have my own clothes this time.


I guess the solar conference is a pretty big deal. The lampposts along the Chengdu Airport Expressway had banners but the words were too small to read at speed. I puked near one of these lampposts during my last trip in March.


I saw a Bentley Continental on the way to work in Chengdu. Someone told me that it costs 3 million RMB, a lot more than in the US due to the 200% import tax.


A bus next to our car while driving to work. This is notable because we were driving the right way on a one-way street. It wasn't just buses, there were lots of other cars, trucks, scooters, and all sorts of vehicles going the wrong way.


This was the car we took to the solar conference. Since a lot of PMI employees and guests were going, we couldn't all fit in the two company cars. Professor Yan called some guy that hires out his car so we took this thing. It was a CNG (compressed natural gas) powered death trap. The driver drove like a maniac and there were no seat belts in the back. I recorded a 8 minute video (>500MB) that I need to figure out how to edit and upload later.


Apollo Solar house/booth outside the conference center. They're part of the company (or the other way around) that supplies PMI with some raw materials. I heard they were asked by the local government to make an extra effort at the conference and ended up spending a few million RMB's.


The solar conference was held at a newly build convention center. There are 9 exhibit halls and this conference only used one out of nine.


Sign outside the Holiday Inn used for registration. We registered then were asked to return our delegate badges. Evidently we had to pay and we didn't. Leon got to keep his VIP badge since he was still speaking at the CEO forum.


Chengdu TV interviewing one of our Swedish guests. I'm not sure if it was pre-arranged or they decided to interview all the white people. Also not sure if they though Leon was their translator but he got to translate anyway.


The CEO forum. The room was packed but I thought the entire thing was pretty lame. I heard only 1/2 the questions posed by the moderator but they seemed to be more political (praising the local government) than focused on entrepreneurship in the solar industry. I think Leon's question was why PMI came to the Shuangliu (Chengdu) area. Hmm, we're not located in the Shuangliu high-tech park and I'm pretty sure none of the audience gives a crap anyhow.


PMI's display. I think we wanted to show our customer's CIGS solar cells/module but ended up with just targets. I was sitting at the table resting and some Chinese guy came up to ask me questions... that didn't go very far.

China Family Trip - Back to Hong Kong

Aah, back to Hong Kong and civilization. I'm here on my 7-hour layover before flying home to LAX. Even though it's supposed to be a part of China, Hong Kong is different, at least the airport. Just at the CX lounge, there's non-spicy food, air conditioning, unblocked Internet, and hot showers (more on that later). I can only take so much bad air and rude people before wanting to go home. Speaking of rude, there's an Indian guy in the next lounge "cubicle" playing some sitar music out loud... oh well.

I'm parked in my usual corner at the Cathay lounge near Gate 3. Unlike other trips, it's actually bright and sunny outside and the sun won't go down for awhile. I really want to take a trip into town and go up on Victoria Peak. However, I heard that the temperature outside is 33°C and probably 100% humidity so I'm hiding out in the lounge. Maybe next trip in November. I also missed an awesome photo opportunity coming in from Chengdu. I usually sit in an aisle seat but this time I sat in seat A which is the left window seat. The flight path into Hong Kong took us around Hong Kong and Kowloon and you could see all the crazy tall buildings. I blew it though by taking my camera out too early and getting busted by a stewardess (cute one though). If I had waited until they all sat down, I would have got some good shots. :(


"Put the camera away." At least she remembered that I don't speak Cantonese.

Anyway, the Chengdu portion of the trip was mostly work. My parents and I arrived in Chengdu on Tuesday (9/1) night on our delayed Air China flight (on a borrowed Macau Airlines plane). Since it was late, we took separate taxis. It was hot and humid and the taxi line was crazy long. In any kind of line in China, there's always people trying to cut in and this was no different. There was one couple that ignored about 20 people telling them there was a line and jumped into a waiting taxi. Sigh...

The only sightseeing I did in Chengdu was when my sister and Rebecca came to Chengdu after their Tibet trip. We spent a couple of hours in the Giant Panda Research Station just outside of town near the Chengdu zoo. It was pretty cool since we got to see three pandas playfighting for about 30 minutes. The rest of the time we stayed near their hotel on Chunxi Road. They're in Guilin now and will head out to Hong Kong in a few days.

China Family Trip - Beijing Day 4 and 5

We're waiting for our flight from Beijing to Chengdu. Since I had my United/Star Alliance card, they let me into the Air China lounge. I'm at a small one near gate C52; it only has some couches and a snack bar. The lady at the counter wanted me to go to the main one since it had more stuff but our flight leaves at a nearby gate.

==========

Yesterday was the tour of Mutianyu Great Wall and Ming Tombs. I reserved a tour online which offered an English speaking guide. The guide went to the wrong hotel in the morning so we started a bit late. His English was pretty bad so we asked him to stick with Chinese and we'll translate highlights for Rebecca. I think I made the right choice going with a Monday tour; both places were pretty empty, especially Mutianyu. The guide said normally the parking lot is full of cars but we got to park right near the entrance.


Entrance to the Ming Tombs. We switch the schedule so we visited the tombs in the morning. There are 13 Ming Dynasty emperors buried here.


Long walkway with a bunch of stone animal and people statues. Some of the animals were lying prone but the sign said "porne." We weren't sure what to expect.


A museum hall at the entrance of the tombs. It has some pretty cool displays but we didn't get to see any dead guys. I visited some "Ming Tombs" 11 years ago on my first trip to Beijing and remember going underground to see some rooms. This tour was very different.


After lunch, we went to the Mutianyu Great Wall. The tour guide brought us to a "Friendship Store" for lunch but we didn't buy anything. I think he was not expecting us to buy anything so we left right after lunch. BTW, we found some yarn/thread in one of the vegetable dishes and told one of the wait staff. A manager came by all freaked out and offered us some gifts in return. We ended up getting some free water. I think the store is for foreigners and they were worried about too many complaints.


We took the tram up to the upper section of the wall. I didn't feel like climbing that much.


Great Wall at the top of the tram


More wall looking north


There were people taking photos on the wall. I couldn't tell whether is was a wedding photo shoot or for a commercial/ad.


More GW looking down the hill back towards the entrance.


Sign at the tram. I like item II.2 the best: no insane people, please. Item II.3 also excludes people who have "habitual abortion", whatever that means.

We left the wall at around 3:30pm and didn't get back to our hotel until 5:30pm. There was a lot of traffic when we got back to town. I think everyone was tired so we all took a nap before dinner.

My sister and Rebecca had to catch a 9am flight to Lhasa (via Chengdu it turned out) so they left early. The rest of us checked out, stored our bags with the hotel, and took a taxi for some final sightseeing. We went to the drum tower first then to Houhai.


Clock tower. A tour guide told us that it still rings at noon everyday.


Drum tower. I think there was a stabbing here last year during the Olympics and the Chinese killer jumped to his death.


Nuage restaurant. I was here last year and it was one of the worst (food and prices) places I've ever eaten at. Didn't know what it looked like during the day.


While we were at the drum tower, some people offered us a 20 minute rickshaw ride for ¥120 (2 people). Instead, we walked to Houhai and found this guy in an electric golf cart who drove us around the lake and surrounding houtong for ¥20 per person. There are a lot of nice houses/compounds.


This used to be where Soong Ching-ling lived. She was the wife of Sun Yat-sen, recognized as the father of modern China. Her sister, Soong Mei-ling, married Chiang Kai-shek, the guy who lost the Chinese civil war to Mao.


Rental boats on Houhai. I think all the "seas" are linked from Zhonghai all the way through Beihai to Xihai, which is past Houhai.


Air China mini-lounge. I stole a few cans of soda since that was all they had.