The alarm woke me at 5a, but I didn’t get up until 6, when I rode the bike in the most beautiful (and least populated) gym I’ve even been in.

Then I met Claire for a day of sightseeing. We started off at the Jinsha Site Museum, which was terrific, way better than I had anticipated. It’s comprised of an active dig site with a soaring modern building over it and a museum with tons of artifacts, on gorgeous grounds.

It’s very cool to see the digging active then walk over to the museum and see the kind of artifacts that they’ve uncovered.

It was nice to see lots of children running around. I’m mystified why there were so few at the Panda Center.

From Jinsha we took taxi towards the Wuhou Shrine, but it was noon and we were hungry and had Sichuan snacks on Jinli Street, another relatively new street built on the site of one from the Qin Dynasty, about 2,000 years ago.

Blown sugar animals

Claire and I at Starbucks

Then we went to the Shrine, which built in the Three Kingdoms Period (220 -280) to honor Zhuge Liang and was combined with a Temple to Emperor Liu Bei at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty when it was all rebuilt. Today it is a beautiful oasis in the midst of the busy city, with lush greenery and traditional Chinese buildings and red walls.

After the shrine we took an insane taxi ride – the kind I’ve heard about but hadn’t experienced. Since I’m still alive I can say it was fun. The cab was a Jetta that was so old and abused it didn’t look like it should even go. The driver was amazingly agressive, at one point squeezing between a construction truck and bus with about 2″ (NO EXAGERATION) on each side, right up to the back of a soot-spewing truck. I’m just not a good enough writer to describe the experience, but it was a lot like an amusement park ride. Except it was real.

We ended the day at De Fu’s Cottage. Amazingly I can’t find a decent link for it.

The city of Chengdu is trying to develop a focus on tourism, but they have a ways to go. For example, I love this sign in the airport, just before baggage claim – what could it mean? Baggage check.

Anyway, the Du Fu Cottage site was very much like the shrine – a big pleasant compound with traditional buildings, gardens, and walls.

After that Claire headed off to meet some friends and I went back to the hotel to write three days worth of posts, do some work, and work out again with the goal of going to bed early in preparation for my last, packed, day in China. I intended to venture out for dinner, but it got late and I ended up ordering Indian curry and naan from room service, for about $12 delivered, at a 5-star hotel.