We still had a few more hours before our train leaves, but we really can’t start to visit fsome other site anymore since there probably isn’t much time. From the Wenshu Monastery we wandered into a high end commercial district. There were malls and tall office buildings in this area and they have Starbucks!
Well I would say I couldn’t resist the pull of a Starbucks even though I was deep inside China. Actually, I must confess that I am crazy for their Starbucks City mugs. I try to collect them wherever there is a Starbucks, even if it is China. My friend brought his laptop along and he managed to connect to their wireless network. There were a few customers here too but most of them were foreigners. Once in a while a Chinese looking customer would walking in.
We don’t get too many chances to spend time like this since our schedule is usually quite tight. So with a mocha frappucino in my hand I relaxed the afternoon away.
Our train leaves in 7:00pm and obviously we won’t be able to have a proper dinner on the train itself so we decided to have an early dinner. There were a couple of restaurants here and I couldn’t really find a nice one here. Then again, I couldn’t really tell if they were good just by their looks. We entered a Sichuan restaurant, hoping to get a last taste of the wonderful Sichuan cuisine while still in Sichuan.
We ordered Twice Cooked Pork 回锅肉, which is bacon cooked in Sichuan spices. It is called twice cooked because the pork is boiled first then sliced then refried, giving it a distinctive texture. The black beans used in the dish impart a very nice flavor to it.
The other dish we ordered was the Gung Bao Chicken 宫保鸡丁. This is quite widespread all over the world and has its origins here in Sichuan. It is bascially chicken with a special salty sour taste from a mixture of sugar, salt and vinegar. There is usually peanuts sprinkled on top to give some contrast to the texture of the chicken.
While the dishes weren’t that bad, they weren’t that great either. I was mildly disappointed by our last dinner in Sichuan. I still have a reason to go back to Sichuan, since we were forbidden to enter the Aba prefecture areas, which included Jiuzhaigou and Huanglong. Those two destinations are surely good enough reason to come back here. in the meantime, I would keep in my heart the wonderful experiences I had here in this Land of Plenty called Sichuan.
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