China: Cheng Du street scenes

[molested_cow]

Photos from different parts of Cheng Du and surrounding sites, including temples and what not. I just put them in one big pile. Actually, it's more about the people as opposed to city scape.

My thoughts: Very glad to see really ancient temples that survived the cultural revolution, but sad to see the rapid growth of the city wiping out traditional lifestyles. Even the preserved old streets are highly commercialized with high end restaurants and star bucks.

Photo album here:
Cheng_Du pictures by molested_cow - Photobucket

A few samples:

Ear cleaning service

Skin-puppet maker

Smiling lady

Shoe Repair

Flower crown vender

 

[Derrel]

Some lovely photos you have. Traditional cultures are nice and all. I mean, nostalgia is great and all, but one cannot hold back progress, even in China. China's making iPhones. The Chinese want Starbucks. And McDonald's. Levi's jeans. And foreign-made cigarettes. And cars. They want to move out of the 1920's, and into the 2010's...

 

[molested_cow]

The irony is, things are MORE expensive in China these days as compared to Taiwan, even though everything is made in China.

There's retro effort in various Taiwanese towns and a part of this retro movement is to bring back some of the much missed traditional services, arts and crafts. In Cheng Du, they did a great job restoring the hardware, meaning the streets, the architecture etc. However, what's occupying the architecture are star bucks, restaurants and stores that does not relate to the retro theme. They would seem normal in a departmental store, but seemed out of place there.

Anyway, at the end of the day, the standard of living is something that the locals are finding extremely hard to catch up to. While trying to keep the currency low, the Chinese government has to find a way to relief the pressure that is rapidly building up to help ease the wealth gap.