Kuan Zhai Xiang Zi (March 1)

I woke up at noon to Mabel's call. She asked me if I wanted to join her in going to Kuan Zhai Xiang Zi (an "alley" with ancient-looking buildings that have been converted to restaurants, shops, cafes and teahouses). I met her oustide of my apartment complex and she, her husband and I drove to Mabel's cousin's apartment because Mabel wanted to drop off some fruit that her mother had told her to give to her cousin for her birthday. Mabel asked her if she wanted to join us and she came with us. Her husband was to join us after he got off work.

Kuan Zhai Xiang Zi

Some traditional clothes

These kids were trying to grab the balloons from the clown. It was quite funny to watch, but I felt bad for the clown.

This was pretty cool. The wall had a picture on it, but part of it was substituted with actual objects. For instance, in this picture, the birdcage and part of the table are real.



This German shepherd (according to Mabel and Wang Jian) is famous because he helps his owners (who own a restaurant) move chairs by using his mouth. I don't think he does this anymore since he's pretty old now.



Cool animals on the wall






Mabel holding up her tomatoes for some reason...


A German restaurant! One of the dishes is German sausage with fried rice (which should be potatoes) for 39 RMB.

Chinese and German flags


Preparing for the show







A couple of other performances.

As we were walking around, we began to get cold and looked for a shop to sit down and drink some coffee or tea. We heard someone singing and saw a crowd forming in front of one of the shops. We stopped to see what was going on and saw two Filipinos, one singing and the other playing the guitar. We stayed there for a while to listen to them.

Singing a Chinese song that Mabel knows...



Singing "Beautiful Girls" in which I participated with my horrible singing abilities. I can't believe I'm posting this. No one else knew the song and they were all staring at us. It was a really odd yet funny experience.

Naturally we had to have our picture taken with him. He and I started talking and I found out his name is Ernie. He's from the Philippines and is in China working for coffee shops using his voice to attract customers.

He asked us to have coffee there, but we said we didn't want to sit outside. He said there was a room for us to go to, so we followed. There were people in there studying and surfing the internet. We ordered our drinks and talked. Suddenly, Ernie also became our waiter as he brought us our orders. A couple of minutes later, he returned with his guitar player and sang some more songs for us.

I think these are the song titles....

"I Love You More than I Can Say"

"I'm All Out of Love"


"Waiting for You"



A nice motorcycle outside of the room.


From Kuan Zhai Xiang Zi, we all went to hot pot, a Sichuan specialty in which you deep fry vegetables and meat in a spicy oily broth and then dip it into sauce in the bowl in front of you. It was pretty spicy and oily. I also had a lot of trouble keeping the food in my chopsticks while waiting for it to cook in the broth. This is something that everyone has to try though when they come to Chengdu because it's what it's famous for.



The spicy oily broth


The kitchen

After hot pot, we dropped off Mabel's cousin and her husband before I was dropped off at my apartment.