Author Archives: d4vid

Chengdu’s Wenshu Monastery was surprisingly serene. I especially loved this giant hall — surrounded by autumn trees — even though it was built in the 1980s or 90s. 

Peking Opera was one of those “cultural” things you need to get inoculated for by attending once.  Sichuan Opera, on the other hand, was genuinely entertaining. Shadow puppetry!  Fire breathing!  Quick-change masks!

  Okay, Plan B for dinner.   Went to a famous Chengdu mapo dofu place.  

It took me and Debbie forever to cut across town to get to a restaurant our friend Alison had recommended only to find it was out of business.   

Chengdu is sometimes called Turtle City (although there seem to be a million conflicting explanations as to why.) This side alley reminded me of so many others throughout China.

Daci Monastery turned out to be one of the most colorful Buddhist temples I had ever seen.                   This was new for me:  a temple expansion still under construction. Whereas this was not new:  encroaching modernity. 

In Chengdu, went to an awesome bookstore called Fangsuo built bellow ground in the foundation of the Daci Monastery.

Finally got around to visiting the City God Temple of Shanghai (around the corner from Yu Yuan.)      This guy looks like he’s reading a newspaper on the toilet. The city’s goddess seemed to get short shrift, off to the … Continue reading →

  With work and country crashing down, it’s still nice to see the autumn colors.

Had great fun with ODW’s Pipeline, Infrastructure, and R&D teams at a team building outing.  Go carts.  Gasoline engines.  Indoors.  Got to love China laissez-fun attitude toward safety!

  A pleasant surprise.  I found two bottles of California red Zinfandel lurking in the back of a little used cabinet.  Brought them back from L.A. on my trip in March and forgot about them entirely.

Today is my birthday.  I turned 42 so I’m considering this year my “Answer Year.”