China Trip - Chengdu

Having successfully achieved our goals in Chongqing, it was off to Chengdu - home of the world famous panda preserve. It is also home to Weina's girl friend, Yang Fan, and her new baby. We had to cut our trip short by one day because of a change in flight schedule, so Kathy and Dave ended up going to the panda preserve, while Weina and William spent the day visiting with Yang Fan.

This was our first train trip in China. We bought the tickets through the travel agency in the hotel. I didn't realize until we were boarding the train that they sold us First Class tickets. They just assumed that because we were foreigners, we would want First Class. I'm not complaining, just something to keep in mind next time.  Once we left the city of Chongqing, we traveled through very mountainous countryside. The farms stretch right up the sides of the mountains with terraced slopes. We must have traveled through 100 tunnels before arriving in Chengdu.  Like most of China, Chengdu is also constantly under construction - new highways, new office complexes, new shopping malls, new apartment buildings.

Our hotel was in the center of the city right near a big shopping district.  It was Valentines Day in China the day we arrived. The streets were packed with young couples shopping and going to dinner. Everywhere you looked there were people selling roses, balloons and teddy bears.  The Chinese love holidays and they like to go all out. There were even fireworks over the city that night.

The next day we took a taxi to the panda preserve. It was really hot that day. The preserve is located in a large wooded park. Being that this is a Chinese park, all of the paths were paved.  There were signs on the grass warning us that the grass was afraid of our trample. In China, you visit a park just to look at trees and grass. No frisbee playing here.  There was a large pond in the park where you could buy little packs of fish food and feed the fish. I have never seen anything like this before. The fish were so competitive for the food that they were swimming on top of each other, some were completely out of the water!  The black swans were also tame, as they would just eat out of your hand.

Now for the stars of the show - Mr. and Mrs. Panda!

I have to admit we were a little disappointed to learn that we missed seeing the youngest pandas. They only show the babies twice a day at 9:00 and 3:00.  We arrived at 10:00 and would probably have to leave before 3:00 to get back into the city before rush hour. So, no baby pandas for us. There were three other viewing areas - kids, young adults and adults. So, we got to see a number of pandas.  It was so hot and humid outside that they brought all the pandas inside to hang out in air conditioned pens which looked a lot like the cages at the zoo.  Their normal outside enclosures are large, naturally landscaped with lots of structures to climb on and play in. We felt sorry that they were cooped up in cages, but at least it was cool inside. They didn't seem to mind as they were just sitting around eating bamboo. We also had lunch at the preserve - bamboo shoots in garlic sauce, pork and bamboo and bamboo mushrooms - a fungus that only grows on bamboo (delicious).

Since Weina and William were having dinner with Yang Fan, we decided to treat ourselves to some sushi. It was a nice change from all the Chinese food we've been eating. Next it was off to Yan Tai and Dao Ji.