After Europe (2 months) and America (8 months), I am about to start the third and last part of my travels: Asia. During the planning phase, I had been a bit too ambitious. I am running out of time and I chose to skip Japan and Korea. These countries deserve more than a few days, they will be part of another trip. As for China, it would take months or years to see every region. But I was there to visit the area where my beloved Han was born (Chengdu), and good friends in Shanghai (future article).I had not seen her since Argentina. That is 105 days!Not as internationally renowned as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Guangzhou and Hangzhou are, Chengdu is a huge city located quite centrally in China: 14.5 million people, 5^th agglomeration in the country. Not too far from Tibet (about 500km), the area is called the ‘Country of Heaven’ or the ‘Land of Abundance’. And this is where the best looking girls of China come from. Obviously…Because Chengdu is not especially international oriented, the very vast majority of its people do not speak a word of English. Luckily, I had a cute personal interpret by my side. She introduced me to her family and I managed communicate with the grandparents, uncles, aunties, and cousins. Discussions included business, history and politics and it was gripping.Han and I were not expecting the family dinners would also involve friends and neighbours. I guessed it was quite an event for them. I was amazingly welcomed and I cannot thank them enough for it.

I was not expecting playing basketball either!Chendgu is the capital of the Sichuan province, which is famous for its delicious food. There is a real culture around food there, people talk about it all the time. “oh, you are going to Chengdu? Did you like the food? Did you like this? And that?”. This and that includes roasted duck, pig brain, waterlily root, double cooked pork, etc… all of this delicately spiced and cooked in typical ways, such as the hotpot. Basically, we could spend the whole afternoon in the little streets of Chengdu trying all the different food. And we would stop eating only to start dinner.I took too many pictures of food, so I’ll just post ‘collages’:Chengdu is also home of the Giant Panda, a Chinese national treasure. We visited a new Centre of re-introduction, sensitising visitors to the issue: there are only 1,500 individuals left.At the end of the week, we climbed Mont Qingcheng with her cousin, Haoer:Undergoing a strong jetlag in the first days, meeting Han’s family was intense. But everything went well and I had a fabulous time. I would qualify this experience in Chengdu as the most exotic of my whole trip.We spent one afternoon in the New Century Global Centre, the largest shopping centre in the World (by volume). We went ice scatting, a first time for miss Hannah.More about China in the next article!