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Foadi's other posts seem to be genuine, and it appears that he is knowledgeable about the places he speaks of. Although he might use different criteria from yours in judging a destination.
i apologize, my hotel was having happy hour when i posted that. free beer.
i apologize, my hotel was having happy hour when i posted that. free beer.
Haha ok that explains it.
Wow great replys guys. I'm am excited for Chengdu and China in general. It looks like they might have just built a sort of bullet train in Chengdu so I can't wait to try it out.
Chengdu is a nicer town than Beijing or Shanghai. Because it's off the usual tourist route there won't be so many scammers and touts as you'll find in the big cities and people are friendlier. Definitely make time to take the bus to Jojaigo--the valley with all the waterfalls. Some of the most beautiful scenery in China.
Visit Beijing if you get the chance. Xian, if you want. It's not such an exciting place, IMO.
Yes, you sound like very familiar with Chengdu. Are you Chinese? haha.
I like Chengdu very much, as you have menthioned, the city has beautiful scenery and very smart girls...
don't worry too much about the language barrier. you'll pick up the language soon enough if you're living there. don't let something like that make you second guess making the move. language is something people put far to much thought into in my opinion, especially old hands with a superiority complex. i might have been drunk when i made my last post, but that is what i was trying to get across.
sichuan is a beautiful province, there are plenty of good weekend trips you can take like leshan/mount emei. last time i was in chengdu was in late 2005, so i imagine it has changed quite a bit since then. people always talk about the beautiful women there but i think theres beautiful women in all chinese provinces, don't really understand that. interestingly, all of the girls i spent time with while there were transplants from other parts of china lol.
chengdu to shanghai overland would take a long time, i imagine. i did it, via chongqing and the three gorges cruise to yichang, bus to wuhan, then train to nanjing and on to shanghai. took a while but i stopped at a lot of places along the way and wasn't in a big hurry. don't know about direct trains but i'd imagine they take a while. flights are fairly competitive in china however, so you can prolly fly there for as much if not less than it would cost to take a train.
nightlife-wise, i suppose it depends on what you're looking for. i personally enjoyed it
don't worry too much about the language barrier. you'll pick up the language soon enough if you're living there. don't let something like that make you second guess making the move. language is something people put far to much thought into in my opinion, especially old hands with a superiority complex. i might have been drunk when i made my last post, but that is what i was trying to get across.
sichuan is a beautiful province, there are plenty of good weekend trips you can take like leshan/mount emei. last time i was in chengdu was in late 2005, so i imagine it has changed quite a bit since then. people always talk about the beautiful women there but i think theres beautiful women in all chinese provinces, don't really understand that. interestingly, all of the girls i spent time with while there were transplants from other parts of china lol.
chengdu to shanghai overland would take a long time, i imagine. i did it, via chongqing and the three gorges cruise to yichang, bus to wuhan, then train to nanjing and on to shanghai. took a while but i stopped at a lot of places along the way and wasn't in a big hurry. don't know about direct trains but i'd imagine they take a while. flights are fairly competitive in china however, so you can prolly fly there for as much if not less than it would cost to take a train.
nightlife-wise, i suppose it depends on what you're looking for. i personally enjoyed it
Foadi, this post sounds more like you haha, thats it no more drinking and typing for you or we'll have to give you a TWI ;-)
Excellent. I'm really scared about the language because I don't know **** for Mandarin. Might have to take a summer Mandarin class.
Chengdu looks like a booming city and i can't wait to explore it.
Mandarin is seriously not as hard as people say it is. The characters are somewhat challenging, but it would not be too difficult to learn basic Chinese. In fact, I think it is easier than Spanish, which I wasted nearly eight years of my life learning. To survive in China, you only really need a little bit of Mandarin, though even that isn't completely necessary, because most store workers and taxi drivers can speak English well enough to get basic services, but I always think that having a basic grasp of the language can help immensely.
Don't bother with the Three Gorges "cruise" everything's underwater from the dam these days. You can do the whole river in two hours aboard a hydrofoil (rather than 7 boring days on a "sightseeing cruise"). If you're dishonest, you can pay the cheapest fare and then sit in 1st class (which is not much of a step up) since no westerners ride the hydrofoils and everybody on board assumes that any westerner would always travel 1st class.
Actually, you'll probably just spend the whole ride sticking your head out the gap in the middle, which is a popular spot since it's the only place you can smoke.
Chongqing is a nice town if you are going to do the hydrofoil (it's the starting point). Ride the rustbucket gondola over to the riverside resturants. Even if (I mean when) it's smoggy, it's still a pretty sight to see.
I can't believe nobody's mentioned the Chengdu tea gardens! On the NW side of downtown, there are some nice parks with big open-air teahouses. Go, have some tea, and get your earwax removed. Well, at least have some tea. Oh, there's a trendy section of town now with REALLY pricy tea shops. They're pretty nice too, but like 10X more expensive than the public parks. You'll probably see some other westerners there as well as the city's upper crust.
Hey there! I lived in Chengdu for one semester while I was studying at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. Chengdu is a great city. Apart from the weather which is usually gray and depressing, people are very nice and laid back, and the atmosphere reminded me a lot of my home city Honolulu.
You should be aware that the Sichuan dialect is widely spoken in Chengdu. Sichuan dialect sounds quite different from standard Mandarin, and even native speakers from other provinces have told me they can't understand it at all! In the classroom, you will study standard, Beijing style mandarin. Outside the classroom you will have to deal with a lot of Sichuan dialect. Looking back, I don't think that this was so helpful for my Mandarin and maybe I would have progressed faster in a different city. That said, young people, university students, and educated people will usually be able to speak excellent mandarin.
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