Eric's Beijing Diary

Heading up into the mountains out of Chengdu. I flew to Chengdu from Beijing last Saturday. When I got the Dreams Travel youth hostel they told me that there had been torrential rains in the mountains, so I decided to delay my trip for a few days. It's very cold in the mountains. When it gets cold and wet and rainy, it can be quite unpleasant.

Monday evening, I had dinner with Leander and his girlfriend. He goes by Joel now and his company is growing. Leander was one of the students who stayed in Beijing during Spring Festival when I first came to China ten years ago. Leander and his classmates were in the IC design class at the Software College. Most of them are now doing IC design, but Leander started his own company.

The next day, one of my English majors from the past school year sent me a message. He was on his way to Chengdu and he had seen my post on WeChat (everyone in China has WeChat). So he and his classmate took me to a local hotpot restaurant. You really need to do this when you come to Chengdu.

The next day I had dinner with Mary and her classmate. Mary is a young traveler I met last summer in Manzhouli. She had seen my posts on WeChat and told me she was studying in Chengdu. I meet a lot of people in my travels, so I was not sure who she was, but I told her to meet me and we would have dinner. She brought her classmate along, and we wandered through the classic streets in Chengdu looking for street food. Turned out to be a rainy evening, but we made it work. We managed to find a shelter just big enough to protect us from the downpour, and I was eating the little bit of street food I had managed to buy. I was fine. I told them I didn't need to eat that much. I have been eating quite well this week, and it doesn't hurt to eat a little lightly after all of that. But Mary was worried about me so she went out into the rain and bought a biscuit for me so that I would not go hungry.

Labels: Kindness, Travel Sichuan