We woke up early and were on our way to the airport by 6 am. We all have so many bags stuffed with gifts from all of our generous Chinese families. We were even eating some gifts (bean paste cookies) on the bus so as to lighten our luggage! We had a four hour flight to Chengdu and when we landed we were greeted by a rousing rendition of the gospel song, "Oh Happy Day," on the airplane loudspeaker. None of the locals seemed to notice, but the song was stuck in our heads all day. We were met by our new tour guide, Tulip.
We went immediately to an incredible Sichuan lunch, hosted by Tony Chen's mom and Eric Lin's mom. The cuisine was so spicy and each dish had red peppers--it hit us like a heat wave. After lunch we visited Mr. Huang's mobile phone company headquarters. His son, Ace, graduated from Bullis last year. We wandered through the worker cubicles to arrive in his large office, which has fish tanks, monkeys, and birds. Mr. Huang motivates his workforce through quotations that are posted on the walls, including: "efficiency comes from diligence" and "success depends on forethought." Mr. Huang has a 60% market share in a city of 15 million and we visited one of his 500 cellular phone stores in the region. Mr. Huang hosted the evening's open house and our dinner. At the open house we met two students, Jerry and Thomas, who have been accepted for the fall. We had a very late dinner, Sichuan "hot pot," in an outdoor restaurant on a terrace above the river. The food was served like fondue and was very spicy. Some of the items we ate included eel, octopus, a whole fish, and tripe. We returned to the hotel and went to bed. Tomorrow morning…pandas!
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