Travelling south-west out of Chengdu we passed mile after mile of high-rise flats including the biggest building in the world, and proceeded through some rather boring landscape of Sichuan Province. During the morning, we took a short boat ride to see one of the biggest Buddhas in the world, carved to assuage the water demons which made the river too turbulent for the boatmen.
In the afternoon we entered a mountain range which is the eastern extremity of the Himalayas with dramatic vertical cliffs and deep gorges and spent the night in a car park at the small town of Doushazhen which is inhabited by people of the Yi minority, as well as Han Chinese.
We were invited by the owners of a Baijo (corn wine) distillery to see their establishment and try a sample. The road passed through two large squares, the first of which was filled by hundreds of young people (as a minority the Yi were not subject to the one child policy) and the second had people (all women) square dancing. We then entered a magnificent main street with hundreds of glowing red Chinese lanterns, and turned off down a dingy side street with a funeral taking place at the bottom. A Taoist monk was singing while other monks clashed cymbals, and the mourners walked clockwise round a shrine with a bowl full of ashes. The distillery was fascinating although the Health and Safety jobsworths in Britain would have given it a hard time.
We then went back to the van and had a meal of egg-noodles and stir fry vege and mince. Delicious. During the meal we were visited by two very young and very charming police man and woman who wanted to see our passports and write down all the relevant info. At least they chased the swarm of curious kids away. Twenty minutes later they were back, very shamefaced and apologetic, and admitted that they had copied stuff down from our visas rather than our passport details. We all had a good laugh.
