C & C globetrotting around the world…

The bus ride from Songpan to Chengdu took forever (7.5 hours to be exact). The road was very winding and Chinese driving is always an adventure since they always pass in blind turns and dark tunnels. Christoph was sweating the entire drive, especially since the ravine was so close. Luckily the driver wasn’t driving fast, but he was on his cell phone non-stop. Arrived in Chengdu we were totally drained. We checked in at Sim’s Cozy Garden Hostel, the largest and coolest hostel we’ve ever been. We had heard amazing things about it and now we saw why. They have a nice garden with bunnies running around, many terraces and chilling corners, and although it was huge, there was still a nice feel to it. And then there was a very big DVD collection and DVD players in every room (on top of the DVD room that’s like a small movie theatre). Cecilia had diarrhoea, but if there is one place that’s not so bad to have it, Sim’s Cozy is it. She took advantage of the DVD collection and watched some comedies, which was lots of fun, especially when you can’t go very far from the room…

There’s not much to see in Chengdu, so we spent more time inside the hostel talking to other travelers and watching some movies while Cecilia got better. The hostel organized activities every evening in the bar, from birthday parties where everyone got free beer all evening to Trivia Games where the winning team got beer each round. Very awesome. We also met lots of people, so that was lots of fun.

The main reason to come to Chengdu is because of the pandas, so one day we went to see these almost extinct animals. They are just adorable!!! Like live teddy bears! Totally cute! We went to the Panda Breeding and Research Centre with a tour from the hostel. The Giant Panda, a solitary animal, lives about 18 yrs in wildlife, 20-25 in captivity. There used to be a lot, from Beijing to Yunnan, but now their habitat has been destroyed, so the numbers have dwindled dramatically with only 2000 still living in the world (there are 70 here). Females reach maturity at age 5, while males when they are around 6 or 7 years old (men, always maturing later!). A female will usually have a baby every 2 years, but in captivity that can happen more often. However, natural coupling is often unsuccessful, so the researchers actually resort to artificial insemination (they collect the semen by electrically stimulating the male). The gestation period is between 32 and 50 weeks, after which 1 baby is born. Sometimes twins are born, but in wildlife only one would survive since the mother cannot care for both. What’s really impressive is that although the mother weighs about 150kg, the baby only weighs about 150g at birth (1/1000)! At birth they are actually pretty ugly, looking more like rats than pandas. Slowly they develop the black spots and then the hair starts to grow. The babies we saw in the incubator were a bit over a month old. Their eyes are closed in the beginning and they learn to walk only when they are 6 months old. They stay with their mother until about 18 to 24 months of age, when they get their own territory. It’s very interesting to see how close to humans this behaviour is, when you consider that most other animals can walk right after birth. From then on the young pandas are pretty playful, climbing trees and running around. However, the pandas usually spend about 16 out of every 24 hours eating bamboo. The ones we saw were eating bamboo sitting on their butts – so cute (I know I’ve said it before, but they are just loveable). I guess because they are such big animals and bamboo is not as nutritious, they just have to eat all day. We also saw red pandas, but those look more like racoons than pandas.

We also went to Carrefour to buy groceries and saw some interesting articles: pig feet, pig intestines, pig face, chicken feet. The funny part is that these are considered delicacies and are more expensive than chicken breast. Weird foreigners eating chicken breast, the thing with less taste…

The last day in Chengdu we decided to go down-town. We went to Renmin (People’s) Park and that was really interesting! There were lots of tea houses with (mainly old) people chilling and playing games, while not far there were about 10 different groups of people playing blaring music and dancing to it. Some was karaoke and some was completely out of tune. We really don’t know how they can listen to it, but we were laughing our heads off the whole time. We’ve never seen anything like it before. And the people dancing, they were not even nearly moving to the beat of the music, not to mention that since the musics were playing one next to the other, there was an indescribable cacophony!!! Not so far from the music place still inside the park, there were people offering to clean your….ears! The cherry on the sundae!

Then it was time for another 24-hour train ride. Initially we had wanted to take the backroute to ShangriLa and Lijiang in Yunnan over the Szechuan-Tibetan Highway passing through the mountains and beautiful landscape, but then we decided that taking buses for 8 hours a day for 3-4 days in a row was maybe not that exciting. We had been to Tibetan villages, so we decided to skip the Tibetan villages around ShangriLa. The train is just so much more comfortable. Christoph also slept on the train, a first!