when i arrived i hated it. i always feel strange to arrive in cities. chengdu is very different from london in that all the architecture is very modern or was modern in the late 80's and now looks stale. theres the odd statue and public concrete plaza. the roads are huge and numerous. buildings tower above you and adverts ask for your attention from every direction. but there are quiet places too. and you don't really have to look hard to find them. they creep up on you. one moment you're next to a huge ring road and in a few moments you've walked into what feels like an alley way in a town outside of the city center. i got used to the speed of the city after a short period of time. i've spent quite a bit of time there so it didn't take long. what helped was having a small group of friends there to enjoy the time with. we had some chinese fast food, a fantastic dumpling meal, indian and pizza - the last two being much less enjoyable. qingwei shared a room with her cousin and i shared one with another cousin. i wasn't looking forward to this to be honest - partly due to my colitis, but it was actually very pleasant.qingwei had insisted that i go to see an eye specialist about my chronic dry eyes which cause me a great deal of anxiety and stress in england. in fact, they weren't causing me much trouble in china so i said i didnt feel it necessary to go, but we went. the first day we queued in several places and each time were told to go to another place. after several attempts to book an appointment, we were told that there were no appointments left and that we should come back tomorrow at 6am to book one with a certain doctor who specialised in dry eyes.
we went back the next day after having our complimentary breakfast of steamed bread, sweet rice porridge and contonese baozi at the hotel arriving around 8:00am. again we queued in several places and again there were no spaces left. however, as we were leaving chengdu in a couple of days (for england they assumed) qw asked if they could make a space for us and they gave us a ticket. then the waiting began. we knew we wouldnt be seen for a couple of hours so we popped out for some japanese food which was pleasant. we returned early afternoon and sat in the waiting area which is always completely packed with many waiting outside the hospital as well. a small introduction to chinese hospitals; the majority of hospitals are state owned and the dotors recieve a salary from the government. theres no gp system, the pateints just go to whichever hospital is closest or they think is the best and pay a small registration fee, equivilent to a few pounds each time they want to make an appointment. the patients then pay for any treatment or medicine the doctor prescribes. the doctors get commission on sales. normally you have to be at the hospital around 6am to get an appointment for that day. there are private hospitals but they are more expensive. most people go to state hospitals and they are much more busy. if you've ever seen pictures of chinese train stations at spring festival then you'll have some idea of what the hospitals are like. i was in a queue of 35 people when booking an appointment. this is not a huge queue.we were the last called. this doctor had published internationally recognised research on dry eyes so i thought it was worth the wait to see her. i had several doses of rather uncomfortable eye drops, some paper stuck in my eyes and some more drops. turns out i have some kind of dry eye disease. this was good news to me because i thought that perhaps i was imagining my dry eyes out of some anxiety problems as i have before with other problems. i was given some medicine and the option for a short operation which involves injecting plugs and something else into my tear ducts. i didn't go for the operation this time.
it had taken from 8am in the morning. we were the last out of the hospital... the doors had already been locked and chained and we had to get someone to open them... we caught a taxi and went to see sichuan opera, grabbing some muffins and other snacks on the way.
sichuan opera includes the famous changing face sequence where the performers change faces within a split second as they flick their fan. its pretty impressive and great fun. the whole thing was very entertaining and id never seen anyone play classical chinese instruments like these guys did. a couple of times they pulled off solo's that you'd expect to hear from an electric guitar.so we went back to pengzhou the next day or day after, i forget... and packed our things.
click [here] for many more images taken in chengdu
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