Jeanette's week-end in Chengdu

Friday I took Jeanette out to Gemma's school for the Grand Opening Party. It was the schools first year in a proper building that was actually a school and enrollment was up almost 50%! She was able to see where Gemma spends her days, meet her teachers and yet again meet more expats.

On Saturday Jeanette and the family headed to San Xing Dui just outside of Chengdu. San Xing Dui is an archeological dig where they found over 400 pieces of jade artifacts that were unearth by a farmer. In 1986 several thousand pieces of gold, bronze, and jade artifacts were found. All of these pieces are believe to be from the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties around 400-100 B.C. They found tons of masks with very large facial features which are not general characteristics of Chinese people. The pieces look like they could be from a Mayan or Incan empire from Central and South America.



Here is a large piece of jade found from the dig. It has previously been cut. They are not sure how the jade was cut because none of the artifacts found were cutting tools. They think that the cutting tools many have decomposed.



Here we are with the jade!

We hired an English speaking guide to give us a tour of the museum. The interesting part about the museum, which was very weird to me, was to me was that they have no idea what people lived in this area and what happened to their civilization. There were no human remains found. They only have speculation about what happened at San Xing Dui. So needless to say the our guide couldn't really answer our questions. I have been to quite a few museums in my life and this was so weird not to have a story to go along with the artifacts we were seeing. The actual dig was not open to the public yet, but it will open sometime next year.

After our museum tour we were walking back to our car and we saw a couple having their wedding photos taken. We generally have seen quite a few brides about China and we always ask if they will take a photo with Gemma and they always say yes!

Gemma and Jeanette squatting like the locals waiting for our golf cart to take us to the parking lot.

The little posers!

Saturday night we went to dinner at the Chengdu Bookworm and then on to the Shamrock to meet up with some of our friends at the Shamrock for drinks. I really enjoyed the evening out and I was so proud of Jeanette for being such a trooper and staying out until 11 pm!