Viva La Chengdu!!

So as usual things in China never go as planned. We were originally told that we would not be able to leave for vacation before the 8th of January. On January 30th we were told that as of 3:00 pm on January 1st we would be on vacation until the 10th when we were to return to teach classes for a few days. So we scrambled our stuff and got ready to go to Chengdu in Sichuan province. This is where we intended to start a vacation, so we moved our plans up and got out of town. We had plan to take the train (roughly 9 hours) to get to Chengdu.



We arrived at the train station at 7 am on the 1st of January after celebrating New Year's Eve, so we were still drunk and being our hungover stage. We waited in line for 30 minutes before convincing Brent, another teacher, to try and pull the "we are foreign and need to go to the front of the line" bit on a security guard. It worked and he got taken to the front of the line. We had our tickets and went to wait for the train which was leaving in 1 hour. Chinese trains have four different types of seats: hard seat, soft seat, hard sleeper, and soft sleeper. Upon examining the tickets we realized they were much cheaper than we had thought they would be. We wanted hard sleepers and had wound up with hard seats. Hard seats are exactly what they sound like and people are packed into those cars like cattle. This was not going to happen and we were going to try to upgrade once on the train. The train arrived and we talked with one of the conductors on the platform who sent us to the dining car to adjust our seats.



20 minutes later we had upgraded our seats and now it was time to get to them. Let me set the scene: 10 am, slightly drunk/hungover, Michelle, Theresa and I carrying suitcases and Brent carrying a backpack, suitcase, and a guitar (he was leaving right from Chengdu to go home). Now we had to go through 10 train cars to get to our seats, stepping on/over/and through people the entire way. It was ridiculous, and we were laughing/kicking ourselves the whole way. Once we arrived at our section we threw our stuff in and settled into our hard sleepers. There were 6 hard sleepers to a "room" and we had the bottom 4. A sleeper is basically a cot with a pillow and a blanket. I, being weird/sanitary, brought along a pillow case to put over the pillow. These are the pictures.

This is the walkway through each car with fold down seats and little tables.

All I can say is "Yeah"

Me waking up from my nap!

So on the train this cart comes by with food in it. We ordered and proceeded to eat in our "bunks"

And spend the rest of our time goofing off and playing card games.

We arrived in Chengdu roughly 9 hours later. All in all it was fun and cheap to take the train. The first 4 days of the trip it was raining and cold and I got sick which was not fun. Luckily my bar going fellow traveller managed to meet a Chinese girl who took me to the pharmacy and got me some medication. The first stuff was Chinese and didn't really work, than we went back and got, drum roll please, Tylenol Cold. I about jumped through the roof and got two packets worth.

There were many things to see in Chengdu and we took in our fair share, despite the weather and my cold. First up we have the Mao Statue, which is in the center of the city. Story goes that when the earthquake hit back in August the statue was moving back and forth and the Chinese people thought that Mao was waving to them.

Being the true two years old that we are we stopped at an amusement park and got on these stupid monkey boats. It was hilarious until we got off and realized we had to pay 10 yuan for this stupid ride. Either way it was extremely funny.

In order to be a true tourist you must stop and see at least one Museum on your trips. We picked the Art Museum at the University. Really we wanted to check out the university. So we get to the university and are trying to find our way to the Museum. We asked person after person and they just kept pointing us in the same general direction. Each one said something in Chinese, after giving us directions, but we didn't understand what they were saying. So we walked through the university and finally stumbled across an old gentleman who we though could help us, seeing as the actual students didn't seem to know where the museum was. He laughed at us and pointed to a building which was under construction. We had just wasted 2 hours of our time looking for this building, everyone we had talked to had probably told us it was closed, and so we took pictures of the building and the campus.

Sometimes we really are stupid Americans!!

Moving on, there is a park in Chengdu called People's Park. History is that this is where people hid during the 1911 Japanese invasion (I think). The park was beautiful, much like Central park in New York, you can just see the city's building from inside the park.

There was this really neat waterfall setup at the edge of the park.

As with everything I do there is always a story. While researching Chengdu in my Lonely Plant guidebook I discovered that there was some kind of shuttle thingy in the old, underground air raid tunnels under the park. So while we were there we decided to check it out. We bought our 8 yuan tickets and proceeded underground. We walked through a few tunnels before coming to a completely dark tunnel. 3 Chinese kids had bought tickets and followed us down. we all stopped at the dark tunnel and no one knew what we were supposed to do. After examine the dark tunnel for a few minutes by peering around the edges we noticed a Halloween decoration hanging from the ceiling. Michelle immediately chickened out and the Chinese girl was not going to have any part of this twisted haunted house thingy. After much debate and hand holding Theresa led us in, me being second, and two Chinese boys behind dragging the Chinese girl. We made it around the first turn and the motion activate "ghouls" started moving. We all screamed, the Chinese girl and one of the boys took off. I however was not going to be the last person in line so I dragged the other Chinese boys along. Once figuring out that things were motion activated the plan became that Theresa would swing her massive purse out in front of us to set off the "ghouls" and we would scurry by. We screamed and laughed our way through it. I may have complete traumatized the poor Chinese boy who I was practically carrying because he was holding on to my arm with both hands. We made it through and back up to the light of day and couldn't stop laughing. It was an extremely hilarious situation.

Along with museums you must also take in temples. We saw two temples in Chengdu. Both temples had amazing park areas with trees and statues.

This was an statue at one of the Tibetan temples.

These dog like statues were attached by chains to the statue in the center of the roof. I just thought it looked cool.

These trees were at both temples. They had been formed to take shapes. Gain I just thought they looked cool.

One of the temples was concerned with the Chinese Zodiac. My Chinese sign is the Ox and see that 2009 is the year of the Ox I had to take a picture of an Ox statue.

And now the part everyone has been waiting for: The Pandas. We arrived at the Panda research and breeding facility at 7:30 am. We had been told by many people and our guidebooks that the only time to see the pandas was in the morning before they were fed at 8:30-9:30. After eating the pandas go to sleep. Sounds strangely familiar! So we made our way through the facility to the pandas.

First we saw the sub-adults, one and a half to 5 years old. They were adorable. We were only 10-15 feet away from them with no glass, only a trench seperating us. They came out one at a time and sat down to eat. All they were concerned with was eating.

Next we saw the adult pandas. Again very cute and they came out one at a time and started eating. They kept grabbing for the bamboo the others were eating.

These are the red pandas that were also at the facility. They look more like a cross between a fox and a raccoon. They are much smaller and run around a lot more. The funny story with these guys is that when they poop they wiggle their butts. We had a hard time trying to figure out what they were doing at first but eventually we put two and two together.

Here are the pictures of me with the pandas in the background.

We were also able to see the cubs, which we assumed were roughly 6 months old. But we were not allowed to take pictures of them. During our walk around the facility we were "tracked" by security. Everywhere we stopped a security guard instantly popped up. So there was no chance to sneak a picture. The cubs looked more like balls of fur rather than the adult pandas. Same coloring just different body structure.

We watched a short video about the facility and found out that they were having a 50% success rate in breeding the pandas. They had delivered 14 cubs from 9 mothers. They DNA test all cubs to keep track of the parents and ensure that no imbreeding takes place. They seem to be having great success and the facility looks as good as those in the U.S.

Overall, the trip to Chengdu went very well. I enjoyed taking the train and would do so again. For now, it is back to teaching for a week or so than back to vacation for a month.