At least once a month, I try to plan a Saturday excursion for our Chengdu officer and families that gets us out of town for a few hours and incorporates a bit Chinese language learning at a variety of levels. In the past year, as part of this series of CLO events, I’ve visited the ancient irrigation systems of DuJiangYan and the miniature Great Wall in Luo Dai, as well as museums dedicated to foot binding, the Flying Tigers and Chengdu history/archeology. Each of these little trips has been fabulous, mainly because it is a great excuse to get out of the city for a day! (Posts about each of those outing can be found here, here and here.)

I have to admit to a bit of a CLO failure on my part this month though. You see, I had this great trip planned to go to AnRen Old Town, an area about ninety minutes outside of Chengdu proper. And, on paper, it all looked great. What I didn’t factor in to the planning, that I know better to have thought about, but for some reason it never crossed my mind, was the weather. Sichuan is known for its spicy food, but is just as famous in China for its equally spicy summer weather. For the last few weeks, we’ve been having a heat wave, with daily temperatures in the 90s, which means once the high humidity counts are factored in, puts us sitting at a heat index of well over 100 degrees many afternoons.  This balmy weather is exactly what I walked our travel group into on Saturday. I knew it was going to be a long day when I sat on a bench near the consulate at 8AM, waiting for everyone to arrive, panting. When my legs were shimmering with sweat even though I wasn’t moving a muscle, there was no doubt that the day would be an adventure!

So, while I would love to show you photographs of the maze-like passageways and intricate carvings of Liu Manor, a pre-Cultural Revolution era mansion turned museum, instead, my digital camera is filled with pictures of shady spots and cool caverns!  As I wandered the manor grounds on my own (after dropping everyone off at the entrance to the museum, we made plans to meet in a highly prized shady spot of the courtyard at noon), I spent an inordinate amount of time in the opium cellar, not because I was particularly interested (although, I must admit, the size of the storage area was quite impressive!), but rather because it was a stone building, naturally insulated from the heat and humidity outside. (I can only imagine how important to keep one’s opium cool and dry.) I also spent a good deal of time enjoying a back courtyard, used mainly by servants, but which now displays an impressive array of bamboo and flowering trees, neither of which I needed to pay an entrance price to see in China, through which I was more than happy to wander. (Ooze may be a better word to describe my movements by the end of the day!)

While my nearly head-exhaustion inducing Saturday was more of an adventure that I had expected (it was hot, but it really was a great day!), I can’t say that was my biggest failure when it comes to CLO outing this last year. The day I loaded up nearly half of the consulate community to go commune with pandas and ended up at the epicenter of an earthquake will always win that award. Nevertheless, as I start to plan my September event, I’ll definitely be looking for more weather-appropriate options!

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