The Giant Mao

I am unable to access my blog on wordpress directly. Perhaps wordpress blogs are blocked by the Great Firewall of China. I am posting indirectly by emailing a photo to flickr, and flickr will auto-post it to my blog. Hopefully it will work. If it does, someone send me an email to verify that the post was made.

Anyway, the photo is of the giant Mao Zedong statue at the main square of Chengdu. The main square is under major reconstruction. It is supposed to be a public square and park, but it is all fenced off and dug up, right now.

Tomorrow, I am on a bus to Jiuzhaigou. There is no internet access there (unless things have changed in the last four years) so I will be out of touch for over a week. Sorry.

I have a telephone now in China. The number is 136 1804 1074. You’ll have to figure out how to dial into China, if you want to call. I don’t know if Jiuzhaigou has a mobile phone network, so my phone may also be unreachable for a week.

The airports that I was in, in Taipei and Hong Kong, are not the “real” China. They both had special “smoking rooms”, which proves that they cannot be the real China.

You know you are in the real China when your throat starts to get raw from diesel exhaust and cigarette smoke. You know you are in the real China when you have to use a squat toilet. Both of those came true for me last night, after I left the Chengdu airport and came to Sam’s Guesthouse.

My travelling style is schizophrenic. I transitioned from the VIP Lounge and business class flight to a Y80 ($10) per night room at Sam’s guesthouse, with a shared bathroom (squat toilet) and shower. It is pretty shabby, but it is very cheap. Also, the staff at Sam’s is good at arranging for bus tickets, tours, etc.; they have an internet connection; and it is well-located in central Chengdu.