A Trip After Starting My Working Life—Chengdu Travel Diary—1

As far as I can remember, I don’t think I’ve gone away to unwind since I started working. Honestly, after graduating and moving to Beijing, life has felt really fast-paced. Most days it’s just back and forth between home and work. I really miss the sky at school, which looked different every day. Standing by the river, it was just so beautiful! Of course, the school pond (it wasn’t very big, but let’s call it that for now) had plenty of fish too. Speaking of 🐟, I have plenty more stories to tell, but I’ll save those for later. This time, with my girlfriend heading to Chengdu on a business trip, I took the opportunity to take a day off and unwind a little. Honestly, I’d wanted to get out and see some mountains and water for ages, so this trip fulfilled a little wish of mine. Hahaha.

    Since time was tight, I planned to fly both ways. Thinking back, the last time I’d flown was when I went to Yunnan with my mom after my college entrance exams. That was a long, long time ago. To be honest, I’d pretty much forgotten how the whole flying thing worked, and I was setting off pretty early this time too: I’d booked a 6:40 a.m. flight. Maybe because it was so early, I barely slept all night, then got to the airport a little after three in the morning. Probably out of curiosity, I went ahead and wandered around the whole airport, and discovered that international flights left really early, around five. At that point I really wished I could leave at five too!

    Then I waited and waited until it was finally time to go through security, and headed over with my little backpack. Here’s where things got funny. Since I hardly ever fly, I had absolutely no idea you couldn’t bring water or drinks you’d bought yourself onto the plane. And this time I’d brought three and a half bottles of water. I only realized the problem when I was right at the security entrance, so I sheepishly scurried back out and started chugging. By the last bottle, I really couldn’t manage any more, so I ended up throwing it away. I’d even drunk the water I’d meant to give my girlfriend
，

. This really taught me a lesson. I’ll definitely remember it this time.

    Once I’d finally dealt with the water, I was absolutely stuffed. Then I went through security and discovered just how strict the checks were. If I’d arrived too late, this definitely would have had me panicking. After the long security process, I finally reached the departure lounge. Haha, curiosity struck again, and since I still had plenty of time, I wandered around the whole lounge too, but at least I got something out of it: I spotted lots of Peking opera design elements. I thought they looked pretty good, with a really polished feel.

    After finally making it through that long, long night, it was time to board at last. Maybe because my plane was on the small side, we had to take a bus out to it before boarding,

and after staying up all night, I finally made it onto the plane. My first thought after boarding was: it’s so cramped! If someone in a window seat wanted to get out, everyone beside them had to get up. How’s someone with social anxiety supposed to handle that? The airplane meal was pretty awful too, but honestly, the view was absolutely beautiful. Seeing those clouds, I even had the urge to jump right into them,

and of course there were mountains, rivers, and plains too. They were truly beautiful from up high, with all the mountains looking so small below. I could see dozens of mountains at a glance—it felt like I’d switched on a super-wide-angle lens,

and I really loved that feeling.

    Three short hours later, I arrived in Chengdu. My first impression was that the air was much better than in Beijing. It felt very mild, though a little damp, giving you the feeling that you always wanted a shower. I also noticed there were so many of these purple flowers in Chengdu. They were really beautiful.

  Next up: my Chengdu adventure begins!!! Let’s have some fun!

This is also my first time writing for a WeChat public account. I haven’t really figured out what I want to write about yet, but I used to keep a diary now and then, so I thought I’d try a different way of recording my life. Of course, as someone who works in tech, I’ll also share the technical things I learn and so on.