Arriving in Chengdu from Lijiang, I was struck once again by China's amazing contrasts. Leaving a smallish, cute rural town in the mountains, Chengdu greeted me with its own particular mix of smog, traffic, and busy, busy people. Saving the day, though, was a visit checking out the city's most leisurely of residents - the pandas at the world-famous breeding center.
Chengdu's pretty big, and getting bigger. Whole stock markets' worth of companies are relocating here from the comparatively expensive east coast region of Shanghai, and that means Chengdu is a near-constant construction zone. And, just like the rest of big city China, all of these people, new cars, and the like mean smog, smog, smog, mixed in with a sizable dose of traffic anarchy.
I couldn't help but sympathise with the local traffic warden:
... trying to organize this intersection:
... filled with overly ambitious delivery moped drivers like this dude:
But, after a midnight flight got me to the city and getting set up in yet another amazing hostel - Sim's Cozy Garden - the next morning, I went out walking. Spurning the dubious safety of the local bus, I instead decided to trust my karma by being one of the braver sights in a Chinese city - a pedestrian.
45 minutes walking, including one brief stop at a local McD's for air-conditioning and a chance to watch the NBA Finals with basketball mad locals, brought to the massive downtown plaza. And, being China, any massive plaza means Mao... lots of Mao. In this case it was a huge statue gazing benignly over the chaos that only a mostly capitalist China can bring. Wonder if he knows what's been going on?
Even Chengdu has its own oases of calm though, and I had fun ducking into the People's Park, guarded in this case by a bold Communist soldier statue, facing off against a resurgent bank.
A pot of green tea at a teahouse sorted me out...
...and then I kept walking to the Wenshu Temple district - a restored street of shops and temples, more than a bit heaving with tourists. I kept going, hitting up the city's street of knock-off outdoor sporting goods, but then called it a day in the 90+ degree heat, and headed back to the AC comfort of the hostel.
The World Cup brought its own fun, as the hostel put on the matches, and I got to watch the US come from behind to tie Slovenia 2-2 in the early morning hours. Great time, with the bonus of no hangover. Excellent.
The next day was pretty much devoted to the pandas, with an early morning tour group taking us out there in time for feeding around 8:30.
It turns out timing is pretty critical with pandas, as even on the best of days, they can't be called energetic. Eating only bamboo, pandas get very little nutrients from each bite, so pretty much all of their attention is focused on eating, eating, eating, with the occasional look around to see what's happening.
And, much as I loved seeing these ridiculously cute guys, I did have to wonder... these bears that are hyper-evolved to eat only bamboo, whose libido is so low that biologists have to resort to all types of tricks to, ah, encourage 'action', and whose females often don't recognize their very early newborns as their offspring, and have to be prevented from roughly batting them around or worse... well, I'm more than a little concerned about their long-term prospects. I'm thinking Darwinism might be rearing its ugly head soon, especially as their bamboo habitat is shrinking fast - they probably won't be able to adapt fast enough to survive.
But, pessimism aside, I really hope I'm wrong - they were awesome to watch. We got to see the adults getting their grub on:
... including one's best "Homer Simpson" impersonation, as he combined full body reclining with breakfast.
The adolescents were a bit more active... if only a bit:
And, as a bonus, we got to see a baby playing and bonding with its mother:
Awesome.
Not to be outdone, we also got to see the panda's cousin - the red pandas. Much smaller and equally much more active, they really reminded me of North America's raccoons:
Getting back to Chengdu, it was tough to get fired up to see more of the town, so I just chilled out and got caught up blogging. After a power nap that turned into several hours, I headed out for a local restaurant where I got to try the city's version of "hot pot" cooking.
Wow. Tongue-burning, sinus-clearing spiciness, but wow.
Here's the deal, they set up two bowls of flavored broth, one mostly chicken-based and the other a sea of chili peppers. Fired up to a near-boil by the table's gas burner, you get to dip in everything from freshwater eels, pork, chicken, and little bundles of vegetables, and basically gorge yourself silly.
Like I said, awesome.
A critically necessary walk post-dinner helped settle the stomach, and I rallied nicely for yet another night of beers and World Cup soccer, before heading out to the next stop of Xi'An in the (very!) early morning.
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