Sichuan

Travel to China: Tips and Resources

May 20, 2013 by Furio Fu 2 Comments

Travel to China

This guide contains pretty much all the info that you’ll need to prepare your trip to China: VISA requirements, travel insurances, vaccinations, guidebooks, planes and trains, hotels, internet and phone cards.

Also, you’ll find tips on where to eat, what to bring to China, when to travel to China, how to avoid the most common scams and how to bargain.

p.s. At the bottom of this post you can download a Travel Phrase Book Chinese/English in PDF format. You’ll find the most common greetings, the most common food and drinks, numbers, how to ask for help or directions, as well as some useful sentences for taking a taxi and shopping. You can print the PDF e-book and use it during your trip to China ; )

Chinese food: Malatang from Sichuan

November 19, 2012 by Furio Fu 7 Comments

Sichuan Malatang A malatang cauldron.

When I was in Europe, the only Chinese dishes that I could get were fried rice, noodles, spring rolls and beef with mushrooms. I couldn’t afford expensive ethnic restaurants and most of the cheap Chinese spots adapted their dishes to the European taste in order to attract more customers. Now you know why the main dishes of a Chinese buffet all-you-can-eat are often the french fries or the chocolate ice cream.

A couple of months ago I started to bring my camera to the restaurants with the goal of documenting my experience with the “real” Chinese food. This is the first episode: say hello to Chongqing malatang.

What the hell malatang is?

[Read more...]

Filed Under: food Tagged With: food, Sichuan, street food

Mosuo, the last (almost) matriarchal tribe

May 29, 2012 by Furio Fu 16 Comments

mosuo Shot by the photographer Luca Locatelli. Visit the whole gallery at lucalocatelli.com.

I heard about the Mosuo bits and pieces at a time talking to anthropologists and backpackers. They are a Chinese ethnic minority living around Lugu Lake, on the border between Yunnan and Sichuan province. I had the idea that they were a matriarchal tribe and I believed men among them were reduced to sex objects. Mosuo men didn’t even have to work!

“Maybe I could move there,” I admit I thought [Read more...]

Filed Under: society, travel, women Tagged With: ethnic minority, Lugu Lake, Mosuo, Sichuan, Yunnan

Lugu Lake: between the grassy sea and a legendary playboy

May 24, 2012 by Furio Fu 8 Comments

Lugu Lake: Lige Village.

In this chapter of the saga dedicated to South West China I want to tell you about our stay in Lugu Lake, a volcanic body of water that separates the provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan. I will tell you about its stunning colors, its barbecues, the Grassy Sea and Zhaxi, legendary playboy.

If you want to know how did we arrive to the 2,700 meters of Lugu Lake, homeland of the (almost) matrilineal Mosuo tribe, read From Lijiang to Lugu Lake: chronicle of a hectic trip.

What’s there for dinner?

After the ritual pics and the adieu to our travel companions we tell the querido driver to let us in Lige, the village of our hostel, the Youth Hostel. The name is so original that in the only Lige there are two hostels with the same name…

We check in and then go looking for a bit of local flavor, that is dinner. The task is not that difficult as all the 饭馆儿 are aligned along the only street of the village, a tiny alley that borders the beach. We discover that in Lige people eat [Read more...]

Filed Under: travel Tagged With: Lugu Lake, Mosuo, Sichuan, travel in China, Yunnan

Traveling: South West China

April 15, 2012 by Furio Fu 10 Comments

tibet

This post is the first of a series dedicated to my travel to South West China of last Summer.

After several “demanding” holidays that saw me crossing the Tibetan 5,000 meters with the fever and climb the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain with a f*cked up knee, I had promised to myself to choose a QUIET vacation [Read more...]

Filed Under: travel Tagged With: Guanxi, Kunming, Sichuan, Stone Forest, Yunnan

Travel to China: Tips and Resources

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