Market day in Daocheng

After returning to Zhongdian for a couple of days, it was time for Yingtze to fly home. Will, Hazel and I then continued our journey into Sichuan province, and our plan was to get to Chengdu city through the "back". From Zhongdian, we can travel on the southern Tibet-Sichuan highway, passing through the towns of Daocheng, Litang and Kangding in the mountains to enter Chengdu from the west.

After an excruciatingly long and bumpy marathon 12hour ride, we finally rolled into the Daocheng bus-stop hungry, thirsty, dying for a pee, and to stretch our legs! Being stuck in a rickety old bus, with lots of chain-smoking locals was excruciating. I felt like i had cut short my lifespan by a few years from breathing in so much toxic fumes from the cigarettes!

AND... Not to mention some of the toilet stops were of questionable hygiene. To avoid using them, we drank as little water as possible. But it was also rather cold, which made us want to visit the toilet more.. (ok enough details, i'll stop here) They did stare at us a lot and observed our every move and listend to our English conversation intently - they probably don't see many foreigners around! I got mistaken for being Will and Hazel's tour guide several times throughout the whole week i was with them..

Through another traveller's recommendation, we stayed at a lovely guesthouse called Tongfu - which was probably the cleanest and most spotless hostel we had found in the whole of China! The owner was friendly and invited us to join him and some other travellers for dinner the moment we checked in. Steaming hot soup, steamed rice and vegetables - a warm welcome indeed!

The next day, we went for a walk around the rather small but lively town and discovered a really interesting pile of yakheads outside a shop. Nobody really knows why they were put out there for, with puddles of blood all over. Locals didn't seem to bat an eyelid when they walked past it, but of course, we HAD to take a photo!

yakkity yak - see what happens when you yak too much! (sorry, i know its lame but i can't resist)

This is the boring vegetable section of the market we visited..

Moving on to the much more interesting non-vegetarian section of the market, big slabs of pork and beef are hung up on meat hooks and displayed on the racks. Also on sale are trays of curdled blood and assorted organs... Curdled blood is also known as "blood tofu" as it has a texture like beancurd, and it is supposed to be nourishing. Usually, people eat cook this in a hotpot. Yumm...

And over here, they are blasting some pig trotters with a blowtorch, which i'm not exactly sure why either..

And this is one of my favourite photos .. At the market, a woman doing her shopping has improvised a child carrier with a couple of rattan baskets. This little kid seems pretty snug and comfortable in there with all his winter clothes on. I guess it just proves you don't need alot of money here to buy fancy things- a few simple materials to construct your own child carrier is all you need!