Day 9 continued

Before we knew it it was time for an early dinner before going to the Sichuan  Opera. As we are now in Sichuan province the food is hot and spicy, which is nice after the blandness of Beijing and Xi'an. It's also interesting that in the northern areas of China they eat more noodles than rice and in the southern part it's the other way around. Anyway, back to dinner tonight, which was a traditional 'hot pot' dish. The centre of the table has a hole in it with a gas ring beneath. A large wok filled with oil and spices is placed on the burner and in the middle of the wok is a smaller container that is less hot and spicy. The food is then brought and you bung it in the hot pot much as you'd do with a fondue. The amount of food we had would have fed a small army, beef, pork, ham, chicken, quails eggs, two types of mushrooms, fish fillets, shrimp dumplings, sliced potato, sliced lotus root etc etc etc. 

Here's the wok heating up. We each had a bowl into which we put the contents of the green tin which was sesame oil.  To that was added, chopped coriander, garlic, spring onions and salt. As you cooked your food you dipped it in your bowl mixture before devouring it. It was certainly hot but not such that you couldn't eat it. I definitely need to diet when I get home. 

Just about ready to add food to as it is now bubbling.  

The Sichuan opera which basically isn't an 'opera' is just a colourful show with some very clever bits. Shadow theatre, fire blowing, acrobatics, puppets and most spectacular, face changing were they change masks in a split second. 

The finale

All in all an excellent day and now we are ready for bed, too tired to be bothered going to the bar. Tomorrow we head off to the Yangtze so are looking forward to a rest.