Tize and Fan took us on a bus to Bao Guang, a Buddhist temple in the outskirts of Chengdu. They have a hall with 500 sculptures of gods. That’s a lot of gods.
We ate lunch at a vegetarian restaurant inside the complex, and then sat in the tea garden for a long time.
By the time we got home, it was time for dinner. After dinner, Julia and I went out to check out the nightlife. A taxi driver dropped us off at the river bank and told us to cross the bridge.
There were a few dozens of bars on that little strip, all had avid young men at the door trying to convince us to come inside, and all the bars had live music. The smaller bars had a single singer singing with playback music. The big bars had a full band.
We sat in the outdoor seating area of one of the big bars. It’s official - we’re old enough for the music inside to be too loud for us. We couldn’t read the menu so I pointed at a picture in the menu that the waitress confirmed that it was Chinese beer. I got a Budweiser.
A couple of guys sat down at the table behind us. One of them couldn’t stop staring at me. He asked Julia some questions about us, because he found the whole situation very confusing, but then he was distracted by the ear cleaners. Many of them were walking up and down the boardwalk, and our new friend decided to treat himself. He called one of them who came over and started examining his ear with a flashlight, trying to come up with a price based on how disgusting the ear was. Throughout the process, he kept staring at me, but now I was also staring at him.
- “I’m sorry,” he said to Julia. “I have actually never seen a foreigner before.”
- “That’s O.K.,” Julia replied. “He has never seen anybody getting their ears professionally cleaned before.”
Unfortunately, the price offer was too high and the deal was canceled. We left to another bar, a much smaller one, with a duo of a singer and a keyboard player. I tried getting a local beer again, and this time ended with a Carlsberg.
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