Solar Eclipse, Giant Buddha and Chengdu
on Tina's Journal (China), 23/Jul/2009 09:47, 34 days ago
I flew into Chengdu on Tuesday evening. Luckily I manged to get a reasonably priced flight from Lijiang. The first thing I noticed was how stifling hot it was probably because I had previously been at a higher altitude and Chengdu is at about 500m. I met up with some guys I had met previously, Sarah, Tim and Paul at Sim Cozy's, a nice hostel but really busy and I haven't seen so many western travellers gathered in one spot for ages. Five of us set off at 05:30 the next morning for Leshan to see the solar eclipse outside of Chengdu city because we thought it would be less smoggy and also combine a trip in to see the Giant Buddha carved out of the cliff there. It's a two and half hour journey and all the way we could see the sky wasn't clearing and at one point it started to rain. We got there about 8am ready for the total eclipse at 09:09. The sky didn't clear so we never actually got to see the sun eclipsed, however it was absolutely amazing to experience the gradual arrival of night darkness and full'night' lasted over 4 minutes. I felt completely disorientated but I was also awestruck and emotional as it felt like something very special was happening.'Dawn' to full daybreak happened so quickly it felt somehow like a new day beginning! It was wonderful to have the opportunity to experience such an amazing phenomena.Following this we then visited the Buddha which was pretty impressive. It is a gargantuan structure at 71m high cut out of the cliffs overlooking the river. The river itself is quite murky and surprisingly quite rough. I was quite glad that we didn't take the option of a boat trip to view the Buddha, I think it would have been a bit unpleasant.Today I have explored a the centre of Chengdu visiting Tianfu Square where there is a massive stature of Mao. The city itself is pretty much the same as any other Chinese city, rather smoggy and congested. I spent a few hours walking around drawing the attention of a couple of young students who wanted to practice their English. Despite being quite popular with Western Tourists you don't actually glimpse that many in the city. I cannot upload any photos having problems either with my SD chip or the computer sorry :-( Once I get back I will but them together in a picassa album and e-mail.