Exploring China Part 4: Chengdu

On Friday, October 30 we got on a plane and flew to Chengdu in Sichuan province. Chengdu is a big city of 8 million people. Many of you probably know Chengdu for one thing: two summers ago, in the summer of 2008, Chengdu suffered a devastating earthquake of a 7.5 magnitude. You may also know Sichuan for one thing: their food. They are famous throughout China and the rest of the world for their food—it's mostly spicy food and they are also famous for Hot Pot. They also are famous for their Panda research center.

Anyway, we arrived at the hotel on Friday and went to go get food. I had a delicious noodle dish that was extremely spicy. Afterward, I took a 3-hour nap because at this point of the trip I was exhausted—I probably got about 5 hours or less of sleep every night. Afterward, we went and got more delicious food. Unfortunately, except for the food, Chengdu was a little disappointing. After the clean air of Lijiang, we were disgusted by all the pollution. Chengdu is definitely dirtier—both in air quality and in the street—than Nanjing is. We were kind of grossed out. Plus, because Chengdu was so humid, all the pollution was just trapped inside. Nanjing has a similar effect but Chengdu was pretty gross. That night we hung out at a restaurant by the river.

The next day was October 31, Halloween! In the morning we went to the 三星队museum, a museum dedicated to an ancient civilization and culture that they discovered in artifacts buried underneath Chengdu. This culture seemingly disappeared for no reason at all and they are still researching to figure out more information about this mysterious civilization that has virtually no roots to any other ancient culture in China. After that we went to lunch at a delicious Hot Pot restaurant. Immediately we headed to the Panda Research Center, which was definitely one of the highlights of my trip. One of our first stops was to look at the red pandas, which are pandas from the raccoon family and look very similar to a cross between raccoon and a fox. And guess what? It was only 100 Yuan to hold a red panda! I decided that I didn't want to hold one, but all of my friends did and I've included a picture of Kira holding one.

After that exciting adventure, we went to the nursery, where the baby pandas were. There was a set of twins playing in a crib-like contraption in one of the nurseries. This was definitely the cutest thing I've ever seen. It almost made me want to cry, thinking about how these wonderfully cute and adorable creatures are almost extinct! We also looked at the adult pandas, which were also incredibly cute in their laziness. And of course I bought some panda paraphernalia as when we left. After that, we went to an extremely fancy dinner at a hotel and I had this delicious beef that kind of resembled steak! I was so excited! It was amazing!

After that we went to see Sichuan opera, which was very different from Beijing Opera, which is what you may be familiar with. This was more of a talent show of sorts, which a skit, music, and opera. One of the acts was shadow puppets and it was literally one of the coolest things I've ever seen. This man made birds, dogs, and cats with his hands using the shadows! He even made a scene with a snake that eats a rabbit! It looked so real. For the finale, he had a horse galloping across a beach. It was so realistic.

After that we were all exhausted, as we had been out of the hotel for more than 14 hours, touring around Chengdu. But of course we had to celebrate Halloween. So we all convened in my friends' hotel room. Unfortunately, we were being too loud and we got some noise complaints from the front desk. A hotel clerk came and knocked on our door to tell us we were being too loud. When we left, we all collapsed in laughter because he probably thought we were out of our minds—after all, we had three people dressed up as pandas, and two people dressed up in 喜羊羊- XiYangYang (a popular cartoon in China) clothes. So the hotel clerk invited us to hang out in the lobby. After a little while, we eventually went to sleep, but it was certainly interesting celebrating Halloween in China! The next day, was Sunday, November 1, and we woke up early and got on a plane back to Nanjing.

So it's easier for me to just post all the pictures at the end of the post instead of throughout the whole thing:

Me on Friday with some guy who was cooking us skewers. I have no idea why I took this picture but it looks kind cool.

PANDA!

Kira holding a Red Panda!

Halloween! Emilia and Jonathan are of course dressed up like pandas. I don't really know what Vince was (on the left) but we was just walking around in a bathrobe type deal.

Halloween