Chengdu
Posted by Rebecca Lynch on Thursday, August 2, 2012
I arrived in Chengdu with 5 days ahead of me to explore the city on my own. Not even a couple of hours into my time here I was already chatting away to groups of people in the hostel which was great. This is the first hostel which has been full of foreigners rather than mainly Chinese, and it certainly makes a difference, its so much easier talking to others when their English is basically fluent. I ended up going out with a group of French guys and an Australian in my first night there.
Second day I decided to try out some of the local temples. After finishing the temple area fairly quickly I sat down on a corner to work out where to wonder next, when I looked up I saw a foreign person walk round the corner, looked back down at my map ... and then it clicked ... wait a minute, I know that foreigner! One of the boys from down in Gansu, Josh, had just walked round the corner with a couple of guys from his hostel. So after expecting to spend the time on my own, I now had a friend to wonder the city with, yey! So I set of with them to the markets and stalls for lunch. The two others were both Chinese, so could point us in the right direction for good cheep food, and we had a selection of all sorts from jelly which tasted like beer, to chilly covered noodles ...mmm delicious... to the most bizarre kebabs - scorpion and locus (just me and josh on that one, the other two weren't quite up for it). The scorpion claws weren't bad, quite meaty for such little things, but the rest wasn't fantastic, but its something else to add to the list of odd foods.
Whilst in Chengdu we figured we should have a look at the giant Mao Statue, and it was big, however compared to the Giant Buddha at Leshan, seemed kinda small. We then headed for the Chengdu museum, it was interesting, but it wasn't the exhibits that were interesting, it was the fact that hardly any of it work, half the exhibits didn't do what they were meant to, some wouldn't plug in or show, but we did find the shadow walls and the light tunnel very amusing. We spent a while posing in front of the shadow wall doing different jumps, James Bond shootings, and of course the classic Chinese peace sign poses. The light tunnel was a walkway which had the lights racing round, if you kept staring at the roof it felt like you were being turned round so of course you would be trying to balance and ended up walking as if you had just had a bit to much to drink, and you felt rather dizzy once you came out the other side, it was great fun!
The main attraction to Chengdu is the pandas. Finally I had made it to the home of the pandas! So it was a very early morning to get to the park for 8:00 to see the feeding of the pandas outdoors before they moved back inside to cooler enclosures as its to hot in the summer for them. I arrived a little early so they hadn't been let out yet, which meant i had time to get one of the front row views. The pandas were so cute! So, so, so, so cute! There were a few different enclosures, one with older cubs about 3 years old so not quite fully grown yet, a pen with fully grown pandas and a pen which had a mother and her young, maybe a year old as the cub was still much smaller than a fully grown cub and still depended on its mother. There was also a couple of red panda enclosures, which were cute, but compared to the giant pandas, the giant pandas get the cutest award from me.
Second day I decided to try out some of the local temples. After finishing the temple area fairly quickly I sat down on a corner to work out where to wonder next, when I looked up I saw a foreign person walk round the corner, looked back down at my map ... and then it clicked ... wait a minute, I know that foreigner! One of the boys from down in Gansu, Josh, had just walked round the corner with a couple of guys from his hostel. So after expecting to spend the time on my own, I now had a friend to wonder the city with, yey! So I set of with them to the markets and stalls for lunch. The two others were both Chinese, so could point us in the right direction for good cheep food, and we had a selection of all sorts from jelly which tasted like beer, to chilly covered noodles ...mmm delicious... to the most bizarre kebabs - scorpion and locus (just me and josh on that one, the other two weren't quite up for it). The scorpion claws weren't bad, quite meaty for such little things, but the rest wasn't fantastic, but its something else to add to the list of odd foods.
Whilst in Chengdu we figured we should have a look at the giant Mao Statue, and it was big, however compared to the Giant Buddha at Leshan, seemed kinda small. We then headed for the Chengdu museum, it was interesting, but it wasn't the exhibits that were interesting, it was the fact that hardly any of it work, half the exhibits didn't do what they were meant to, some wouldn't plug in or show, but we did find the shadow walls and the light tunnel very amusing. We spent a while posing in front of the shadow wall doing different jumps, James Bond shootings, and of course the classic Chinese peace sign poses. The light tunnel was a walkway which had the lights racing round, if you kept staring at the roof it felt like you were being turned round so of course you would be trying to balance and ended up walking as if you had just had a bit to much to drink, and you felt rather dizzy once you came out the other side, it was great fun!
The main attraction to Chengdu is the pandas. Finally I had made it to the home of the pandas! So it was a very early morning to get to the park for 8:00 to see the feeding of the pandas outdoors before they moved back inside to cooler enclosures as its to hot in the summer for them. I arrived a little early so they hadn't been let out yet, which meant i had time to get one of the front row views. The pandas were so cute! So, so, so, so cute! There were a few different enclosures, one with older cubs about 3 years old so not quite fully grown yet, a pen with fully grown pandas and a pen which had a mother and her young, maybe a year old as the cub was still much smaller than a fully grown cub and still depended on its mother. There was also a couple of red panda enclosures, which were cute, but compared to the giant pandas, the giant pandas get the cutest award from me.