Christmas in Chengdu

I’m sitting in the Chengdu Bookworm Café, enjoying a free hotspot (very common in China, not as rare as in Germany), the cozy atmosphere of a library and the gorgeous british food… 😉 The capital of the Sichuan province is famous for being homestead to the biggest group of captive Panda bears worldwide, and notorious for its incredibly hot pepper dishes. So yesterday we had the real chinese winter food, a scary Sichuan Hotpot.

Sichuan Hotpot

But actually, something made Chengdu feel very familiar. During the airplane’s descent we had to cross a thick layer of clouds which didn’t really end when the plane touched ground. The Chinese have a saying: 蜀犬吠日 shǔ quǎn fèi rì, meaning “Sichuan dogs bark when they see the sun”. With 10 degrees centigrade and a permanent drizzle the weather in this place reminds me of Hamburg’s winter and is quite some contrast to the cold and dry dust of Beijing.