Yellow Dragons and Jumping Snakes
It is Saturday again and we are off to the countryside. The university has been very good at providing us opportunities to see Sichuan beyond Chengdu. Today we are traveling out to Huanglongxi or Yellow Dragon Stream. It is an old city that has lots of shopping and some old temples. As we walk to the town site we pass an amusement park – there are kids' rides and animal rides and ATV rides. All seem exciting, but nothing can compare to the thrill ride that is Chengdu traffic so we move on. Each of the shops has an interesting assortment of things to sell – but after a few blocks it seems like a bit of a fractal image as the shops seem to repeat themselves. I want to dispel the myth that all Chinese people do not look the same, but after awhile the Chinese shops sure do.

We tour through the old part of the city that has a restored court where trials, decisions and beheadings would take place. It is still used in movies made in China. Our class monitors point out some clothing we could put on if we wanted to look the part of the local governor or mayor. We spend the next fifteen or twenty minutes amusing the locals while Judge Russell condemns several people to death by beheading, relegates others to the stocks, and doles out several fines before he is forced out of office – something about lunchtime.

Our meal is largely made up of wild foods – the greens are grown on the side of a local mountain, the mushrooms came from the wild, the fish were caught in the wild as well – everything is wild right down to the fly in Margaret's soup (which is good because I hate the taste of those domesticated hatchery flies). It was really quite a good meal – although it is hard to eat in the heat …have I mentioned the heat?

In front of many of the shops there are basins full of fish and other such stuff. As we walk down one street one of those 'other such stuff' jumps out in front of Greg. With little reaction the old man sitting next to the basins reaches out and grabs the snake to put it back in the plastic basin. We discuss whether that may have been something we just ate down the road – but leave it as an unconfirmed item. We now take pride in the width and breadth of our 'stuff we ate' list.


We spend the rest of the afternoon touring shops and going on a boat ride before going to a temple upstream. As we walk up to the temple we are struck by the number of 'shoot the balloon with a pellet gun' games are in front of this peace-oriented temple. More that a few people suggest this might be a good thing to set up in our home churches when we get back. I dissuade this missions fundraising initiative - as someone who regularly fills the pulpit I don't relish arming any possible critics!