I left off my last post with the high speed train from Shanghai to Beijing. The train was pretty cool! I mean, after 5 hours, even a rollercoaster would stop being super exciting. But still, the train ride was quite lovely, smooth, quiet and comfortable. I think it’s definitely my favorite way to travel so far (high speed train, that is, not just any train).
So, we arrived in Beijing, and made it fairly easily to our hostel, where we got a lovely room in an old building with a nice courtyard, in a traditional style building, in a special type of neighborhood called a Hutong. Amusingly, our neighborhood was also apparently THE neighborhood for musical instruments, because on the main street by our place, there was a massive line of different music shops… at least TEN… all stuffed full of classical Chinese instruments (well, and less classic but also cool instruments like Trumpets, which are probably the most awesome instrument ever created). Amusingly, it seems that all these stores like to advertise their products by conducting music lessons… on the street. So, every day we’d walk to the bus or subway and pass somebody learning to play some tiny, snake-skin, stringed instrument that I’d never heard of… or a flute. I thought about going in and asking for lessons on one of those giant Chinese harp things, but I didn’t want to get their hopes up that I was even considering buying one, so I never went in.
As for the hostel, though, we liked that pretty well. The place we stayed even had a lovely little covered courtyard, with little fish ponds and everything, where we ate breakfast every morning. We even had a VERY cute little white kitten that lived in the courtyard and would hang out with us every time we walked through. Too cute!!! Best of all, there was this really small but awesome hand-pulled noodle shop right across the street who was not only SUPER good food, but also super cheap. We had some a little language trouble trying to order specific things, but the guy was very patient, had a good sense of humor, and was even willing to make custom dishes for us.
(The courtyard)
(The kitteh)
(Sometimes kitties think they’re sneaky. They’re not.)
(Neighborhood music store; sadly no trumpets here)
(The Noodle Guy, pulling his own noodle)
(I’d always wanted to try a Century Egg. It was GOOD!)
In fact, it was all pretty great at that hostel, except for the bathroom situation. You see, we chose a room that used the shared bathroom facilities, because the hostel prices in Beijing were still quite high (and this saved us a bit of money). That, in and of itself wouldn’t have been a problem (we’ve done it many times before), but since this is a VERY old neighborhood, they apparently have some pretty serious troubles with their sewer system. And, since we were staying in an old building, I think we got near the worst of it. The result of this was that every time we went into a bathroom, we got just BLASTED with the smell of raw sewage coming up from the drain. Nothing they did to clean the bathrooms made any of difference. And honestly, they didn’t make that strong of an effort to begin with. So… basically all the bathrooms smelled like outhouses on a hot day. Hurray!
And now we’re getting into the parts of China we didn’t really enjoy. In fact, it’s fair to say they made is quite crazy. The smelly bathrooms was one thing. Another is transportation. That’s going to be quite a rant, though, so I’ll get back to that later.
Despite our best efforts, we really only got to see three big sights in Beijing, The Great Wall, The Summer Palace, and The Forbidden City. The first was The Great Wall. Aside from the incredible and crazy trouble getting there, The Great Wall itself was pretty cool. I mean, after all that trouble, and especially after seeing such a similar site in India, it was definitely a bit diminished in our eyes from what it probably is to most people, but don’t get me wrong, it IS a VERY cool thing! It’s a huge fucking wall! Actually, it’s LOTS of huge fucking walls! On and over mountains! It’s also hugely fucking crowded… like only China can do crowded. You may not have been aware of this, but it turns out China has quite a lot of people in it. *Gasp!*
To be fair, we DID go to THE most popular section of the wall, in Badaling. We went there for a few reasons. One was, I knew that we could get a train there, which meant that we would not have to take a guided tour. As a rule, we don’t like guided tours. Not only do they charge 10 times what something SHOULD cost, but the information the “guides” give you is often not useful or interesting, and they usually try to rush you through everything, and they make you do that with 20 or 30 other people. So, in a guided tour, it’s often very difficult to actually ENJOY the thing you’re going to see. I had read on that seat61.com travel site though, that I could get a train there for very cheap, and then we could take our time. Perfect!
Aside from that, Badaling is also one of only two different sections of The Great Wall that has a cable-car/chair lift thing to get up there (the other is 3 hours outside of town). Since I have a bad knee (if it wasn’t bad before this trip, it definitely is now), and Jimena has a bad back, climbing up a literal mountain of stairs (again) over a many kilometer up-hill hike, did not sound like our idea of fun. Riding up to the highest point on that mountain in a cable car, though, and getting the lovely view all the way up and down… THAT is EXACTLY our idea of fun!
Obviously, we were of course (not) the only people who thought of doing this (even on a Thursday). Long story short, we decided to skip the very tippy top of the wall, because we did not feel like being crushed nearly to death before plummeting down the mountain to our doom. So, we picked a corner and sat down for a while and ate our lunch while admiring the wall, and loudly pitying all the poor, dumb bastards who tried to squish their way to the top. We actually found a few brightly-colored hats to watch, just to see how long it was taking them. After watching one sad hat take more than 30 minutes before even getting past the first rise, we gave up and walked away.
We headed down the wall/mountain a bit and found a nice spot with not so many people (you know... less than 1,000 people per square meter). From there, we just stood and looked out and enjoyed the amazing view. Oh yeah, and we took LOTS of pictures. Eventually, it was time to come down the mountain. The line for that was actually about 1 hour! It was a good thing we got in it early, too, because at the end of the day, they stop letting people on after 4:30. Anybody left out wins a free hike down the mountain (whether they like it or not).
(The mad-house mob for the top. Fuck that noise.)
(A less crazy section we could actually enjoy)
(See! Enjoyment! What a view!)
Another big site we went to in Beijing was the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is one of those sites that people say you shouldn’t miss if you go to Beijing. Fortunately, it was pretty easy to get to. The Subway system takes you pretty much right there! One thing we hadn’t exactly expected is exactly how BIG that place was, though. WOW! If we take the biggest Chinese Garden we found in Suzhou, this was easily double that. Basically, the Summer Palace was a small… CITY … that royal families could rest in and entertain company. There’s lots of water, in rivers, ponds and lakes; lots of fancy buildings, temples, covered walkways, gardens and statues (including a gigantic Marble Boat). It’s a very pretty place.
Alas, it was also, just like The Wall, incredibly crowded. There was almost nowhere we could go to get away from the noise. And, as if loud talking and yelling isn’t enough (the Chinese are not a quiet people), it seems that all the guides, even in quiet, peaceful places like gardens, feel that the only way they can communicate is by using their own personal megaphones. So, the people were not just loud, they were AMPLIFIED.
Eventually, though, before giving up entirely on the place (crowd fatigue… it’s not a real “thing”, but it should be), we decided to try one last place, called the “Garden of Harmonious Interests”… sort of a garden with a garden. It sounded nice on paper, but… since everything in this place has some kind of fancy name, it was hard to know if this would really be a quiet spot. You know what? It WAS! It was PERFECT! There was almost nobody there, and its centerpiece was this amazingly beautiful little lake full of Koi and smaller goldfish. In fact, it was so full of goldfish (I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many in one place), that at times it was like you could see little islands of golden, wiggling fish. People were sometimes feeding them, which would make them crowd even tighter together. Also, while the rest of the park was wide open to the screaming, sweaty hot sun, this place was cooled by the shade of weeping willows. So, finally, after all that stress we had trying to make our way around the gigantic, hot park full of so many screaming, pushy people, this was a small, intimate, quiet, cool spot we could finally relax and enjoy. We stayed there for about 2 hours, and then finally called it and headed home, with peace in our souls.
(I’m only showing you the peaceful part)
(See? Just look at all that tranquility.)
The last big sight we saw in Beijing was The Forbidden City. However, since that was our last day in Beijing, and since it did not go very well, I will save that for the ranting section below.
Before I get to that though, I’ll mention two LITTLE things we did/saw/ate. One was, we ate Peking Duck. We planned on making this THE big, fancy meal in Beijing (you know… since Beijing = Peking). Alas, while we did find ourselves THE number one Peking Duck restaurant in the city, the price (perhaps not so shockingly, in retrospect) turned out to be about 3 times more than we were expecting (I read a review that apparently gave me the wrong number). Despite that, we ended up chatting up some other European and US folks there who were VERY friendly, and we ended up deciding to share their table for some company at least (rather than leave after having waited about 45 minutes for our table). Well, while we ordered plain pork with fried noodles (very sad in restaurant just DRIPPING with juicy roast duck), they got the full meal. But, because they were such INCREDIBLY nice people, they let us try their duck! Woohoo! Jime thought it was pretty tasty, but it was not her favorite. I liked it a LOT. What’s more, at the end of the meal, those guys donated alll their leftovers to us! What sweet, wonderful people! So, I went out for one duck meal, failed, cried inside, then came home with TWO duck meals. Life is strange sometimes.
(Roast Duuuucks cookiiiing, on an open fiiiiire)
The other little thing we saw was a performance of the Beijing Acrobat Theater. FREAKING AMAZING. Like, mind-blowing amazing. There’s just something about Chinese Acrobats that is other-worldly and surreal. You see, for them, acrobatics are not enough. Feats of contortion are not enough. No, these people do acts featuring one person doing contortion, acrobatics, feats of incredible strength, and sometimes juggling… ALL AT THE SAME TIME! Freaking nuts. Freaking AMAZING… but NUTS. At the end, they did one of those motorcycle “Giant Balls of Death” things. Jonathan Leiss, you know the one, where they take a giant metal cage ball, and send a guy in on a motorcycle to spin around and around and upside down like a mad-man. And then they send in two… then three… four… even FIVE! These guys did seven. Seven motorcycles in one giant cage. CRAZY! Also, the costumes were super pretty. :)
(I believe that was 9 ladies on one bike)
Alright, so… let’s get on with the ranting. I mentioned we took a train to The Great Wall, so let’s start with the train ticketing system. In China, there are apparently different rules, in different cities, and for different types of train. In Shanghai, we wanted to buy our tickets for a high speed train to Beijing. We were told there that we could only buy our tickets 3 days ahead. SHITTY, because I had read they were available something like 2 months ahead. Nothing we could do would change that, not for high speed trains, not for low speed trains. Also, for high speed trains, you apparently need to have your passport. Not low speed trains… and not “trains that travel really far”, just… the high speed trains. Whatever.
In any case, in Beijing, we tried to buy our tickets to go see The Great Wall. After much fighting and having one window after another close in our face after we had waited in line, we finally got told that we could only buy THOSE tickets for the SAME DAY (and they were already sold out for today)! And, what’s worse, they stopped selling tickets for some trains for several hours a day, so the only way to guarantee a ticket is to come very early in the morning. So fine, we came back the next day, waited in line for 20 minutes, and AGAIN had the window shut in our face. After waiting at the front of the line for an HOUR (because only this ONE window sells tickets for this ONE destination), we finally got our tickets for the 9am train. Or so we thought. We had arrived at 7:30 AM, hoping for any one of 3 trains, leaving at 8, 8:30 or 9. They had closed our only window at about 7:50AM. Since we got our tickets at 8:40AM, and since the 9am train was the only one left, I had said “two for the 9am train.” Since she then nodded and gave me 2 tickets, I thought we were good. Come to find out… they did not have a 9 am train that day. They also had not had an 8 am or an 8:30am train. Those trains, apparently, only run Fri-Sunday… and today was a Thursday. WTF?? This is not written ANYWHERE (at least, not in English). The next train wasn’t until… 11. Shiiiiiit!!! So much for getting up at 5:30AM!
Oh, but it gets worse. We waited around. There was a mall nearby, so I decided to go wander to kill time. Jime hung around because she was exhausted and sleepy. I came back plenty early for our train (around 9:50am), and… Jime was nowhere to be found. SHIT! Did they run the 9am train after all? Did I miss her? She wouldn’t do that to me, would she? We had no way of contacting each other, so she couldn’t have called for me if she’d wanted to. Maybe she just figured we’d meet up at the other end? Shiiiiii… Oh. There she is. They had made her get in line again (for boarding the train) more than an HOUR early. She was up hanging out with another English-speaking family we met while waiting in the ticket line. They had to wait in the new line too. Turns out, even after you get your ticket, it’s open seating, so it’s one big free-for-all (the next paragraph will explain the idea of that phrase for my Tico folks).
At about 10 minutes before departure, they open the doors, and everybody… RUNS! They literally RAN. The train was like… 300m away, and everybody… young people… old people… parents carrying their children; they all hauled ass like Japanese in a Godzilla movie. Since I’m a healthy dude in reasonable shape, Jime sends me ahead. I start jogging a bit, and realize that while we started out near the front of the line, there are now about 200 people I front of me. Alright fuckit, let’s do this. I start running for real.
You know that stereotype about Asian people being fairly small, in general? It’s true. It turns out I’m quite a bit taller than most people here. Also… I have no shame.
So I started from the back, but in what will probably be the only time in my life this ever happens, I passed ALL of them. I got first choice of seats, and saved a nice block of 7 seats for us and the other family we had met.
As a wrap up to this little story, we talked to a Chinese lady on the train back. VERY sweet young mother with perfect English. Turns out, if we had just bought a refillable subway card, we could have skipped the ticket line altogether, and just took the first train we saw. In fact, considering that the train home was filled to DOUBLE capacity, that’s probably what more than half the people on that train did. Oh well. Now we know! And so do you!
Last little bit on trains, while Shanghai wouldn’t let us buy tickets more than 3 days ahead, and for Beijing to The Great Wall would only let us buy tickets for the same day, it turns out that our next two train tickets (Beijing to Xian and Xian to Chengdu) opened up TEN days early, and that we had to travel one day late to Xian, and that the Chengdu tickets were sold out ENTIRELY through the end of the month. So, we had to fly. Lesson learned here? In China, for train travel, ALWAYS use a travel agent, and do it as soon as possible. Turns out Chinese citizens can buy tickets online weeks or months before they go on sale at the stations, and good travel agents will charge very little markup (like… 5%).
Other failed travel:
We tried to get a bus to go see a really pretty cave near Beijing. First, despite many web pages on the cave, info was very hard to come by on where that bus actually picked up from, and many of them contradicted each other. After two days of leaving the house early to try, we finally found the right place… and there was no bus that day. Not because it wasn’t scheduled… just because they didn’t get enough people paying, so they just canceled it.
We tried to go to another nearby city to see this Clay Sculpture park Jime had read a lot about that sounded really neat. I had seen that there were MANY trains every day to this city, which was NOT a major tourist hub, so we were lead to believe we could just show up and take the first one. Nope. After wading through what must have been the busiest, most insane and chaotic train station crowd we’ve ever seen in our lives… we finally find out that despite how many trains are running every day, they are ALL sold out for our only days available. Oh, we could have taken a standing room only option at 7 am the next day, but at twice the cost we were expecting, and with no clear way of getting to the park one we arrived, so finally.., we just said fuckit and skipped that trip.
On our last day in Beijing, we had to check out of our hostel, and we had a train in the evening, so we saved The Forbidden City for our last tourist trip, because it was pretty close to us, with lots of options for getting there, so we wouldn’t have to worry about getting stranded and missing our train. Hell, would could have WALKED home from there if it came to it.
Well, after searching the Google for the best way to get there, I found a bus that dropped us off right next to the West Gate. So we went there, but I couldn’t see the gate. I thought it was one way, but wasn’t sure, so we asked a European tourist who was walking by, and she said that it was in the other direction. We start walking, and after a while, we can see the intersection she pointed to for us to turn on, and it’s WAY down there. So, I am convinced it was in the opposite direction, just around the corner from where we got dropped off, so we go back. Turns out I was correct, and there it was. Only… nobody was allowed to enter through that gate. It was OPEN, but… Exit Only. So, we ended up walking about 1 km around the city to get to the South Gate. If we weren’t already tired of failing in China, this may have actually been a fairly pretty walk. Instead, it just sucked. Yeah yeah, pretty little pond with boats in it, whatever. By the time we made it to the ticket counter in front, we really only had about 2.5 hours to enjoy the whole place, which… if you’ll recall… is called the Forbidden CITY, not the “Forbidden Coffee House” or the “Forbidden Couple of Buildings”. So, there was just no chance we were going to be able to see the place properly, which was sad, because it was one of the most expensive admissions we’d seen. Still, since there was even less of a chance that we’d be coming to Beijing again any time this decade, and since so many people (and websites) said it was a must see, so we did it anyway.
It was interesting. The buildings were very pretty. That being said, the courtyards were mostly empty, and all the buildings look almost exactly alike. So, if you stand in one place after walking in the main gate, you’ve pretty much seen the whole thing. Still we walked through it anyway. Fortunately, they had a map in the very front telling you what parts were where, so we took a picture of that, and decided what we wanted to see. Sadly, those things were all the way in the back, but oh well.
Oh well, my ass. We got all the way to the back and… the building we were looking for… that had been on the GIGANTIC MAP in the beginning… was not THERE. No building. This is where all the pottery and bronze stuff that were the only things we wanted to see in this whole place were. That building. Nope. No building. We thought we were crazy, so we borrowed another tourists paper map. No building. We double-checked our picture in our camera and… THAT map had it. We were not mistaken. In our map, there were 3 buildings here. On the paper map… and in reality… only 2 buildings here. Thinking back on this now, perhaps the building we wanted was the REAL Forbidden part of the city! Either that, or the ancient Chinese have sorcery pre-dating Harry Potter, and that building is hidden with the same magic as Platform 9¾.
(Pretty buildings with pretty lions)
(I’m not saying we had NO fun that day…)
If that weren’t enough frustration for one day… after taking such a long hike to get into the Forbidden City, we decided to follow the crowd OUT, in an attempt to go the best way. We failed. Or rather, the crowd failed to be efficient. It took us so long, and walking so far, that by the time we got to any sort of transportation option, we were looking back fondly at the tiny little walk we had done to get in.
So, that was the end of our Beijing visit. That night, we got on the train to Xi’An. And you know what? The train was LOVELY. I may not have enjoyed the trains in India, but China does trains RIGHT. This was a low speed, sleeper train. But it was every bit as quiet, comfortable and luxurious as our first train in China (from Hong Kong to Shanghai). After all the stress of the Forbidden City, and the long, long walk home after that, it was great to finally relax. We changed into PJs, watched movies, ate some nice noodle for dinner, crashed out, and woke up in a new city!
I woke up in Xian about an hour before our arrival. Jime wasn’t up yet, so I just enjoyed sitting there quietly, staring out the window at the beautiful landscape going by. I tried to get a couple pictures for you, but alas, they didn’t work out. When we finally arrived, Xian went almost exactly opposite to how Beijing worked. For us, Xian was the city where everything worked PERFECTLY.
We got off the train, immediately found a “left luggage” service where we could leave our big backpacks for the day, and then very quickly found a special express bus to The Terracotta Warriors. It helped that we had read about this bus ahead of time, so we knew to look for it, but I was very happy that it didn’t take very long to find it. We got on, and despite many warnings to watch out for fraud busses (busses that lie and pretend to be the express bus but charge you MUCH more), this bus was the right one, and they charged us the right amount. Also, it was air conditioned, which was great, because if we thought Beijing was hot… Xian is an actual desert.
On the bus, I sat next to a very nice young French couple. Aside from being friendly, it turns out that their next stop was not only also Chengdu, but they would even be staying in the same Hostel as us! So, I made friends. J
We got to the museum area with no problem, paid our admission, and headed in. The only complaint we had here was minor… there was about a 1km walk from the ticket window to the entrance. I’m not exaggerating. That’s a long damned walk! And, as I mentioned, this was the dessert. So… HOT! DAMN HOT! But screw it. This place was cool.
Once you get into the main area, there are 4 main buildings. One houses a more generic museum, but has some smallish bronze chariots that they also dug up in the same site. We started there (by accident, because the buildings are not actually labeled). We didn’t stay long though, because we wanted to see the “real” Warriors! We went immediately to the next building, which was building #2, but apparently as the least amount of complete warriors dug up. In fact, these are all very much still active archeology sites, and this one is just the least known. So, we saw a few broken pieces of warriors, and, amusingly, a few horses’ asses. It was a slow start, but still very exciting to finally be seeing the real deal! Also, the AC in this building was BEAUTIFULLY cold.
We took our pictures, but our anticipation for the main show was still growing, so we moved on quickly to the next building over. This, of course, turned out to be building #3. This one had only a small amount of warriors in it, but for us, it was also our first glimpse of INTACT, complete warriors…. actually standing up! We stayed here for a little while to see everything, but again… this was still not the main show, so we kept going.
We could see building #1 next to us, but it wasn’t clear how to get in. Fortunately, we saw some other folks coming up from a stairway below us, so we gestured to ask if we could go in this way. They nodded yes, and pointed the way. In we went! And came in… the back. THIS was the main show! And their they were… the ARMY! All facing… away from us.
You know what? Whatever. We didn’t care. This was still cool beyond words. And even better, it was a fun way to prolong the moment… to gradually build up to the main view. We walked up the sides, where finally, there were NOT so many tourists. So, we got to get up VERY close, almost close enough to touch. These things are incredible. The thing that kept getting our attention, and kept blowing our minds… was the faces. Every single face is DIFFERENT! Every single one is unique! Clearly, the artists had certain basic types of warriors that they made many of, but every individual soldier was as unique as a real person, with his own face, and even his own hair and body. Some were fat; some skinny, some were young, some old. Truly amazing.
We took our time walking up the side, taking pictures every few feet. Of course, on this one day of all days, we had forgotten to bring the spare camera batteries with us, so our little super zoom camera ran out of juice way too early. But, I at least got some VERY nice close-ups of some of the faces.
Eventually, we made it to the front, and saw that famous scene that anybody who has heard of the Terracotta Warriors has seen. There it is…this huge army…lined up in front of us, Generals, Captains, archers, horses, everything. Incredible. I don’t care how much we’d heard about it, how much we’d read about it, and how cool everybody SAYS it is… it’s all true. It’s like The Grand Canyon in Arizona… seeing this in person is worth every penny. It’s possible we took more pictures of this one place than any other place we’ve been in our lives.
(First taste of standing warriors, pit #3)
(The mother lode, starting from the back, pit #1)
(More from the back of pit #1)
(Here we are!)
(And here THEY are!)
After getting our fill of the main body of the terracotta army, we headed back to check out that museum building that we had ignored completely earlier. It was cool. It had some neat stuff in it. The bronze chariots were definitely cool (about ¼ life size). Still, nothing could compete with that big army. So, after getting our fill of the museum in about 45 minutes, we took one last pass through the main warrior building. Yep… it was still cool. We had just seen it an hour ago, but it didn’t matter. It was still VERY cool.
On our way back to the bus stop, we decided to look for a souvenir. We had planned long ago that we were going to get one, and this seemed the best place to do it. We just acknowledged that they were going to overcharge us, decided we wouldn’t go over $10, and headed into the army of trinket sellers. We stopped at a few just to get the lay of the land, and then made our way to the shop we thought had the best stuff. Shockingly, the prices outside didn’t seem so bad! So, we went in. Turns out the outside stuff was the cheap stuff. The inside stuff, they wanted more money for. Well, after Istanbul, India and Nepal, we are not your average chumps. After a few attempts from them of “oh no no no… not possible… this hand carved!” we finally made them throw up their hands in disgust, and agree to sell us one of the fancier, bigger ones, for something like $4 (down from around $25). WIIIINNNN!!!
And then it was back to the bus. The bus back was smooth, we got our bags easily, got a taxi with no sweat, and got to our hotel quickly and cheaply. Our hotel was clean, nice, cheap, and with good AC. We had an early flight out, so we got up at something like 4AM, got out the door, and got a taxi to a spot where we could catch an express bus to the airport. Here, we thought we’d hit a wee glitch, because the first bus didn’t leave for another HOUR… by which time we wanted to be AT the airport (an hour away). Fortunately, we were not the only folks waiting for this, so a Taxi driver made us all a nice deal, and we ended up sharing a cab with two Chinese folks, and we ended up each paying pretty much exactly what we would have paid for the bus anyway. So again, everything went perfect. Even our flight left on time, and was comfy, and with a smooth check-in at the airport. All in all, Xian could NOT have gone better. Especially after all the frustration and fail in Beijing, this was a huge relief for us.
And then we hit Chengdu, land of the Panda, and our last city in China. When we got to our hostel here, the Chengdu Mix Hostel, we liked it immediately. The vibe inside was warm, welcoming, eclectic and VERY pretty! The staff spoke very good English, and our check-in was smooth. Our room was nothing fancy, but it was clean and cheap. We had a shared bathroom again in this place, but unlike Beijing, the bathrooms here were just fine.
More than any other hostel we’ve stayed at, though, this one had LIFE in it! They had activities going on almost every night. One night it was a free bike tour that I unfortunately missed because it was full. Another night we had a dumpling making party (so… what we’d call potstickers)! They gave us all the ingredients, showed us how to roll out the dough, and at least one way of wrapping up the dumplings, though we were encouraged to be creative from then on. When all the filling was gone, they steamed them all up for us, and we had a WONDERFUL free and delicious dinner, surrounded by other fun travelers, all having a great time. Also, there was another little white kitten to play with… AND a grey kitten.
One of the other nights we were at this hostel, that French couple I mentioned earlier from Xian showed up, and we all went out to dinner together. Since Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan, we decided to all go out for some nice Sichuan Hot Pot, which is apparently THE thing to eat (even Anthony Bourdain did it when he was there). The place we went was to a really nice restaurant right around the corner from us, that was apparently somewhat well-known. Since none of the other 3 people at that table were big fans of spicy food, we chose to NOT go with the pot of boiling lava, which is apparently more traditional. Instead, we went with a sort of fish and vegetable broth.
The way it works is, you sit around a table with a big, open gas flame in the middle of it. You order a broth (basically spicy, not spicy, or a pot with 2 chambers that has some of each), and a bunch of meats, vegetables and other stuff to cook in it. The staff brings you your pot of broth, puts it on the flame, then brings out plates of all the raw stuff you ordered. You put your stuff in and it cooks in the broth. When it’s ready, you reach in with your chopsticks and grab out a bite at a time. If you chose the spicy broth, this time has meant that all the peppers have reduced the sauce to a bowl of liquid fire that will melt out your insides. Our NOT spicy fish broth was decently flavorful, without those unfortunate side effects. All in all the meal may not have been necessarily the most flavorful ever, but it was fun and amusing to eat, and the company was great.
(Hot pot! Not spicy, but still hot. )
The main attraction of Chengdu, though, and the reason we were there, was the Panda Research Base and Breeding Center. We did this our 2nd day in town. The weather was ab-so-lute-ly PERFECT! It was completely overcast with clouds, cool, and with a very slight drizzle (pelito de gato). For humans at the beach, maybe not perfect. But for a day visiting Pandas, it doesn’t get better!
We got into the park easily enough, and took a little zoo bus to the top of the hill, all the way in the back. Our first panda sighting was a big, old fat Giant Panda, doing exactly what Giant Pandas are normally doing… sleeping. Fine, whatever.
Across the street from him, though, was the Red Panda enclosure and nursery! Sadly, the nursery part was closed, so no baby red pandas, but the enclosure was open. We spotted our first red pandas within minutes, at the first of many wooden viewing platforms. Cool! These guys are ACTIVE! They were walking all over the place. We moved on, and saw more… and more… climbing, walking, running, everything. We headed down farther into their area and … holy shit!! There’s one on the path!! It was just like the place at the zoo in Budapest, where the animals could go wherever they want! If they want to cross the fence, they can do that! You can’t… but THEY can. In fact, as we looked at the fence, we saw that the staff had made giant holes in pretty much every single section of the fence for them to walk through. Cool!
Well, I won’t sit here and tell you about every single minute we were in this enclosure, but I will tell you this… it was easily the coolest animal encounter I think we’ve ever had… even compared to the lemurs!! We had pandas by our heads, by our legs, one even stopped and smelled my foot! E spent HOURS, and I mean HOURS in this one enclosure. In fact, even when we eventually left to see more of the park, we eventually made our way BACK to this enclosure, and spent the rest of our day here. So many pandas!! And all of them are so cute, you just want to pick one up and put it in your bag to take home. Since Jime and I know how to be quiet, and since the park, BLESSEDLY was not too crowded, we got some pretty spectacular pictures, and some wonderful interactions, some of which we even got on video. This park may be dedicated to the Giant Pandas, but it was the Red Pandas that stole the show for us… by FAR.
(Not a LOT fierce, mind you, but SOMEWHAT fierce. They’ll still bite the shit of you, but they’ll look VERY cute doing it.)
That’s not to say we didn’t enjoy the other guys. When we did eventually get out, we found our way to the panda cubs area. Most of the enclosures were full of sleeping giants, but ONE in particular had two one-year-old cubs wrestling with each other. And they just went AT it… on and on and on for hours! For people in the US, Giant Pandas are so stereotypically inactive that we’re liable to say “Awwwww” any time a Giant Panda lifts its head and burps. But here, the action was so packed and so… CUTE… that we just got stuck standing there, staring… and giggling like little school children with every jump and tumble. They were like a cartoon come to life.
Along with that, we’ve got about 300 bajillion panda pictures. I mentioned earlier that when we saw the Terracotta Warriors, we probably took more pictures in one day than ever before? Well… it’s possible that on Panda day… we may have taken DOUBLE or TRIPLE that amount! Of course we won’t make you look at every single picture. Even cute, cuddly little pandas… even PLAYING pandas… and even… yes… BABY pandas (fresh out of the oven infants)… can get old after a while. Still, I will at least say that it’s a LONG while. So, along with all of our other pictures from this China trip, a link to which I will post below, we’ve decided to keep a special folder for JUST the pandas. That way, if you want to totally geek out and “ooh” and “aaaawww” half as much as we did, you have a place for that, and anybody who doesn’t want that, has a way out!
(Cute panda cubs, playing. Awwwwww!)
(Ugly ass panda baby. Awwwwww!)
OK, I know this was a post of epic proportions (literally), but that’s it for now! Thanks for reading! Next stop, Vietnam!
Pictures for China, Part 2: http://alexjimenartw.shutterfly.com/pictures/1818
Panda Pictures:
http://alexjimenartw.shutterfly.com/pictures/2005
It wasn't as long as I feared, and I only noticed 2 typos, so that's pretty good. ;)
ReplyDeleteI love willows!