Chengdu part 1

A trip to Sichuan 四川 during my time in China was pretty compulsory for a foodie: 食在中國，味在四川，'China is the place for food, Sichuan is the place for flavour'. My weekend with Caris and Rosy to Chengdu 成都, the capital of the province, definitely lived up to its foodie expectations, and we were also surprised at how much the city offered.

Given that it is one of the big gun cities of China, we all found Chengdu to be pretty calm and collected place. We stayed right in the centre of town near TianFu Square 天府廣場, and on the first night spotted people doing aerobics out in the open, you can imagine Paul Merton getting overexcited and joining in.

We'd all seen pandas before, so avoided what most people come to Chengdu for, and instead went to Qingcheng Shan 青城山 about 60km from the city centre. Despite the rather steep entrance fee (Y90) and steep hills, this was a gorgeous place to spend some time wondering around the holy Taoist mountains. The area also boasts a natural oxygen 'high' - apparently the ions mean that the oxygen is more pure than normal - I've forgotten too much GCSE Chemistry to really understand.

Despite it being the place for Chengdu daytrippers, we managed to find some really good food here. The area is famous for its preserved pork 臘肉, very morish, but really very fatty too - yes, the picture below is of slices of pig fat:

We also had some very good (but rather ugly so I didn't take a picture) gingko chicken soup 白果燉雞. Accompanied by some simple stir-fried wild vegetables, we managed to have an entire meal in Sichuan with no chillis!

That evening, then, we had to go and find something to tease our 麻辣 tastebuds. We ended up at 公館菜 on 青華路. Outside, it boasts that it is 成功人的選擇, 'the choice for successful people', and we were all mightily impressed by its authentic Sichuanese fare. And we had all the following for Y70 each. First off, some cold dishes - the first was some kind of shredded bamboo shoot 筍, lovely flavours of sesame oil and the deep-fried broad beans on top:

Next, one of my favourite Sichuanese dishes, 夫妻肺片, which should be pig's lungs in a spicy numb sauce, but this one seemed to actually be meat, tasty, but disappointed there no actual lung:

Best dish of the night was the duck - I'm not sure what the Chinese name was, but it was basically duck with the crispiest skin ever, with a layer of glutinous rice at the bottom, which had been fried also so that there was a crisp bottom too. There is still some leftovers sitting next to me which I'm trying desperately not to tuck into:

We also had fried shredded potato with salted duck eggs, some regional wild mushrooms, and dan dan mein (of course). The mein here though was super disappointing - no chew to the noodles at all! But at least we felt like we'd ventured into some new ground in Sichuan food, and not all of it mala! The restaurant is also quite cute in getting each table to participate in a dice game - they give you 8 dice, if you manage to throw a certain combination, you get a discount! Rosy somehow managed to throw five 3's, and got us 20% off! Woo!

Non-food wise, we also went to visit 杜甫草堂, which when literally translated to 'Thatched Cottage of Du Fu' does not sound very exciting. 杜甫 Du Fu, as I discovered (I know so little Chinese history) is a Tang dynasty poet who lived in Chengdu for 4 years, and during this time, built a modest thatched cottage. The site is now an important Tang archaeological site, and even if you know nothing of Chinese poetry or archaeology, the grounds are so gorgeous and comfortable, it was a joy to wander around. Chengdu can definitely disguise itself from being the frantic Chinese city.