Sanxingdui (Three-Star Mounds) Museum lives about 40km out of Chengdu, so into a taxi, on to a bus and then on another bus.
At the final bus station nobody had any idea where we had to catch the local bus. The local kids didn’t mind, they we very eagerly trying to sell us Chinese language newspapers, even though we obviously didn’t speak the language. Can’t knock them for their effort though.
We got a ticket for the bus, for about 20cents each, then finally worked out we needed to be out on the street to catch the bus. When it came the ticket lady on the bus looked at our ticket as if she had never seen one in he life. Obviously you normally just pay her direct? After a loud telephone call she indicated that it was okay (this time), and we could get on.
The bus ride down the main street of town was great, if we had more time I would have loved to walk down the bustling old tree lined street.
The museum is dedicated to the remains of an ancient city that may have been the Shu capital about 12th-11th century BC, which was found on the site in the late 80s.
What was amazing about these remains was the quality of the cast metal that this city produced. The guy below was amazing, though they are not sure what he would have held back in the day. What do you think those hands of his were for?
Below is a nice photo from Liz of a cast bird.
The bird above was actually part of one of a couple of metal “trees” that were pretty amazing. Below is a photo I took of one, maybe Liz has a better one somewhere I could put in instead?
Being a tourist attraction type thing in China there had to be food around somewhere. A bit of a stroll around later we found ourselves in a large restaurant with a large party going on, a kids birthday maybe.
Anyway being famished we ordered a couple of dishes to drive away the hunger.
Some Braised Eggplant. This was similar to what we did at the cooking school a couple of weeks ago, but was much better. In fact this may have been the best eggplant I tasted in China, which is saying something.
And some Boiled Beef. This was also very good, although very spicy and oily (both good things in this dish).
We are getting the hang of food in China, where to go and what to order. Unfortunately we are running out of time to use our new skills, sigh!
