I had actually checked the weather forecast 4 days before, yesterday was a perfect day for going out. With Mix's foreign guests climbing team and Mix's staff climbing team, we set off to Luodai Hakka Town in the morning.

Luodai Hakka town is one of the Hakka people's inhabited area in China, and according to the Hakka people's saying, Hakka culture and the language preserved perfectly in Luodai here instead of south China.

Actually Hakka is not a national ethnic minority, they are Han Chinese Gypsy whom retreated back to isolated Sichuan basin when China widely had wars lunched by those warlords back to hundreds of years ago. They came to the "Land of abundance" and settled down, and stayed gather around with the people from the same hometown. Thus on the old street of Luodai there are four assemblyhalls which are respectively "North Sichuanese's Assemblyhall", "Cantonese Assemblyhall", "Hunanese and Guangxinese's Assemblyhall"  and "Jiangxinese's Assemblyhall".

Where we are going to climb is a wall built on the mountain some about 10km away from Luodai Hakka Ancient Town. When bus reached to the start point of the wall, the air became more fresh. Local government built this wall aimed to provide a fast way for Buddhist pilgrim to get to the top of the mountain, the end of the all, where a 2000-year old "Golden Dragon Temple" can be found. Though this temple is a small scale one, but it never effects the passion of the Buddhist pilgrims spent plenty of time to climb through a dirt path before the wall was completed.

Why I call it "Great" Wall, because it looks exactly like the "Great Wall" built in north China, only the scale is comparatively smaller. In March, the Peachblossom  , Pear tree flowers as well as rape flowers are thoroughly blooming around this area, so here is also a famous area for local Chengdu people come to go for a walk in Spring.

Wall stretches 1.6km from the foot of the mountain to the top, for Mix's Foreign Guests Team, this wall can be done in roughly 40 minutes, but for Mix's Staff Climbing Team, specially for our cooks, whom spent days in front of gas stove, this wall is definitely a challenge. But no matter what, all of us eventually reached to the top, and cooks even preyed for a good year in front of the Buddha statue in Golden Dragon Temple.

We walked down the mountain through the old dirt path passed by a dense forest which is nice. And we had a lunch in a "Nong Jia Le" and served 12 dishes and 1 soup. It was a big lunch.

It is said the vegetarian has very much good temper, but sometimes may not! After one of our guests got bite by PANDA, lately a Dutch traveler got bite by HORSE!!!

It sounds really ridiculous but it did happened. In Chengdu's Panda Breeding Center, there is a very popular program that visitors can take a photo with Mr/Miss Panda. Most of visitors are very cheerful, cos this is gonna be an absolutely show-off picture back home to their friends, in another hand, Breeding Center is happy also cause it is a quick way to increase the daily income (Maybe part of the money runs into the protection of this nearly distinct animal). Maybe at that moment the losing-temper Panda was just as a Dutch lady said he/she might suddenly fell the identity-criss? "I'm a Panda?", "I'm not a Panda", "I'm a vegetarian?", "I'm not a vegetarian?" YES! I'M NOT A VEGETARIAN!!!

Definitely the horse in Songpan has same problem, or maybe back to thousands of years ago, the Horse is actually a meat eater. Anyway, it warns us that even the most lovely animal could be the danger.

Travel safe!
Mix