Alcademics

If you've been following along, I've made... quite a few posts after my amazingly informative trip to China with Ming River Baijiu. Today is all fun and photos.

Previous posts, all from this one trip: 

• Baijiu Production in Relation to Other Spirits
• Regional Differences in Baijiu Style and Production
• Baijiu Production: Qu and Fermentation
• Baijiu Backgrounder: A Brief History Lesson
• Repetitive and Continuous Fermentation and Distillation in Baijiu
• A Visit to the Luzhou Laojiao Baijiu Distillery in China
• The Four Most Common Styles of Chinese Baijiu
• How to Drink Baijiu
• Comparing Continuous Fermentation in Baijiu with Sour Mash Whiskey and Jamaican Muck Pits

So here are just some sights and scenes. 

Luzhou

The Luzhou Laojiao distillery is located in the city of Luzhou. It's very much not dialed in for Western tourists. We were only there one night. 

Above: The street right near our hotel.

The Yangtze River! 

A lot of the buildings light up in China. 

 In the lobby of the hotel we stayed in had this glass cubby for the exclusive use of disinfecting TV remote controls. That's a new one.

Chengdu

From Luzhou we drove to the larger, most cosmopolitan city of Chengdu. It is a growing city and growing tourist and shopping destination. 

My hotel room view.

A large, busy park in Chengdu. The yellow trees were a beautiful color not well captured here.

In the park, parents of single children put up signs advertising their adult children's assets. The parents stand around matchmaking in what must be the most humiliating act for the children. 

We took an awesome street food tour. I didn't eat much but hello noodle sandwich!

This is a typical baijiu store- the bottles are usually red and gold. 

We stopped by a more traditional street baijiu shop. This is a medicinal ingredient infusion kit. Yes, that's a starfish. There's a snake head poking out there too and who know what else.

The baijiu stand sells house infusions kept in the big jars, in various flavors. 

The bottles are more infusion-grade bulk baijiu. 

Somewhere not far outside the city, we visited a traditional old Chinese village that has been preserved for tourism. Our group of Americans was an attraction for the locals working in the village. People were taking pictures of us as we were taking them of the old buildings. 

The interior courtyard of a famous artist's house. 

Street vendors were selling local delicacies, along with tchotchkes, traditional parasols, and clothes.

Panda Sanctuary!

Part of what puts Chengdu on the tourism map is their huge panda breeding center and park. We played it right and got there right when it opened. Within two hours, thousands of tour busses pulled up all at once and it became insanely crowded. 

The pandas are adorable of course, and the name plates describing their personalities were hilarious. 

Part of the entrance to the park. The Kung Fu Panda movie has been integrated into the whole park.

That's all folks!