Feats of Engineering

We were hot and exhausted after our panda adventures and went to a very good Sichuan lunch in a nice place with unfortunately poor air-conditioning and a distinct lack of ice for their drinks!

We were originally slated to visit a museum after lunch but decided to change our plans and go see a 2,200 year old irrigation system at Dujiangyan instead.  In the temple at the top of the project, we saw a model of the whole system with an island built out of rocks placed in baskets in the middle of the river, called the fish mouth.  The island has since been rebuilt out of concrete.

The whole river diversion project was pretty impressive and the 2 mile walk would have been lovely if the weather had been slightly cooler.  As it was, many of the Chinese tourists were taking golf carts around, which zipped by us on the path at breakneck speeds, honking all the way.  Mei, who really wanted to ride the golf cart, would moan every time one zipped by!  This meant that our walk was not quite as relaxing as I would have anticipated ;)

There were a couple of fun swinging rope bridges for us to cross, which most of us enjoyed (Pooh was, of course, completely freaked out!)

Dinner that night was hot pot, a big Sichuan specialty - we had two pots of soup (one spicy, one not). The big difference for me was that we had an attendant cooking everything and serving us the whole time.  We later went down to a different level of the building and watched a brief show of face-changing, something that Sichuan Opera is famous for.  The masked performer basically tilts his head quickly and his mask changes - he did this about 10 times with 10 different masks, showed us his real face, then finished up with one final mask.  It was pretty cool to watch!