Chengdu

Chungking is the major city on the east side of the Szechwan, or Sichuan, Basin. The major city on the west side of the basin is Chengdu. Like so many other Chinese cities that we have seen, Chengdu is a very ancient city that is today a center of science and high technology.

I see the Szechwan, or Sichuan, Basin as being analogous to Switzerland in Europe. Isolated by mountains, the people have no choice but to be smart and industrious, and end up being more prosperous than they would have been otherwise. Switzerland had to produce compact goods that could be exported over the mountains and became known for the clocks and watches and other precision instruments, and now this vast basin of far inland China is a center of high technology in a similar way. The Three Gorges Dam, which we saw in our visit to Wuhan so I won't go over it again, provides inexpensive electricity and this has made this basin into what used to be the global center of Bitcoin mining.

I can remember from childhood seeing the news coverage of Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China. No one could have imagined how that visit would change the world. Until then, the United States and China did not even have diplomatic relations, now we see "Made In China" everywhere.

In 2008 there was a devastating earthquake near Chengdu, but now the city looks very well.

Paper is a Chinese invention and Chengdu is believed to be where paper money was first used.

Let's begin our tour of this very ancient city with some of the archeological sites and historic districts. The Jinsha Archeological Site dates from about 1,000 B.C. It is enclosed in a large hangar-like building that reminds of the Terra-Cotta Warriors that we saw on our visit to Xian, but this site is actually much older.

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Here is the Huanglongxi Historic Town in Chengdu.

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There is traditional Chinese architecture right in the middle of the modern city.

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The center of Chengdu today is Tianfu Square.

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This is to the south of the city center.

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