hello everyone and welcome to expat hangouts number two! today we're talking if you can
read Chinese is right there Tongzilin - Tongzilin or a lot of the Americans say tongzilin we're in
tongzilin right now this is the area of tongzilin when you see when you get off the Metro about here
and about right there this is the area that you see and this is sort of in the south central part
of Chengdu if you have tianfu Square up north you go down renmin nan lu which is this one so you're
coming down south you get to sichuan gymnasium which spell where I live and you lean and then
if you keep going further south you will hit a big bridge that crosses with the second ring road
after you pass that bridge go under it you will come out you'll see all these buildings right
here and you know you are in tongzilin until you hit the south railway station which is basically
press that bridge right there so it's a very small area geographically speaking but this is where the
foreigners live this is where they work this is where they play a lot of them especially the new
coroners they are hanging out here all the time so you will see like behind me here we have the
air china building and then we've got another china Southern Airlines we have the Manhattan
building which is where a lot of foreigners choose to live there's another Manhattan building around
there there's the Masters building right there and there's quite a lot of others and these places are
full of restaurants for differently bars or differently this that and the other a lot of
people speak English here it is really a gathering place for foreigners particularly new foreigners
who are looking for somewhere that have more fits their tastes and what they're used to back home
so let's go around and let's talk about it don't lean in some ways is the best part of the city and
the worst part of the city it's some of the best because you do have like it's a very aesthetically
pleasing neighborhood everything does look pretty nice it's a good looking place architecture is
very pleasing to the eye the streets are well maintained it's it's a good place to be I think
but the thing is it's so expensive to live around here a lot of the buildings here are
actually old some of them are kind of newer but a lot of these buildings are pretty old and they're
small and they're extraordinarily expensive this place it's really hard to get your money's worth
here because everything is just so expensive this is prime real estate so I mean as you can see if
you go along tong zi lin North Road which is this right here this is I I really like it this is one
of my favorite roads just to ride down it's it's good now that you know the sort of drawback so
you don't get a lot of what you pay for let's talk about what's good here so you've got the care for
this is sort of one of the Centers of tongzilin and there's a lot of great imports there there's
a lot of variety it's really good so this is what a lot of tongzilin is centered around so let's go
around the neighborhood and talk about what's here so if you do if you do a circle around the
tongzilin care for you will notice there are tons and tons of little shops to buy clothes at there's
actually a little import store right here called Sabrina's is very very expensive but you can get
a lot of stuff here that's imported from other places there's bistro which is a tapas place
there's Japanese food there's local sichuan food of course there's all sorts of stuff around here
and if you take a couple of minutes where we take like half an hour or so and you wonder around you
will find so much stuff just around the carrefour and that's sort of what I would suggest is to make
care for your base and then sort of filter out from there because it's very easy to get north
central and south in tongzilin once you've begun exploring the areas around care for you will come
eventually to be South Tongzilin Road and this is the road that you really want to be at in
terms of food if you're looking for foreign food for example there's Morgan's steakhouse right
here a lot of great steak I hear it's a bit too expensive for me but it is a it's a great like
fine-dining style Steakhouse here in town just behind me here is gillies Chili's I don't know
it's it's an Italian place it's also pretty good we've got a new Creperie next door I think that
times that crepe the air breathe I don't know I'm American but you can get stuff there keep
going you get to the diner the Malaysian place a little bit of British stuff there as well we
need to keep going there's the iron pig which is an okay american-style barbecue southern American
keep going down Mike's pizza kind of an overrated place the most overrated in Chengdu I mean used
to be Napoli there used to be an import grocery store and all these other things and then the
road directly in front of me if you take this road in front of me it's a French software you
can get to origins sabor a mi and there's just more and more and more stuff around here places
to eat places to Train places to party places to just walk around this is why foreigners are
in this area because there is so much variety there's a lot of variety here and that's what
people want they don't want to be stuck with one type of food they don't want to be stuck
with one type of activity so maybe pay a little bit of extra money live in Singapore Gardens or
live in Europe city which are two neighborhoods that are right on this road right here yeah the
buildings are older yeah they're more expensive but you get easy access to all this stuff that's
kind of cool and hey if people enjoy that great great great great and that's really it so that
is a brief introduction into Tongzilin, the Tongzilin area of Chengdu so I hope you all
enjoyed this video think you're very much for watching I'll see you all next time you