Around China: Chengdu - 成都

At the beginning of October, we decided it was finally time to get out of Kunming and see some more of China.  Actually, I had a break from school due to the Chinese National Day holiday and we hadn't been able to check in with the Consulate we fall under yet so we decided to head to Chengdu (成都).  Chengdu is about an hour north of Kunming by airplane which isn't too bad of a trip.  It is the capital of China's Sichuan province (四川省) and was founded around 1200 B.C.

I'm going to take a quick aside and explain China's National Day holiday (国庆节).  It celebrates when the People's Republic of China was founded on 1 October, 1949 at Tiananmen Square in Beijing.  The actual holiday is 3 days, but the observed holiday is 7 days, making it last from 1 to 7 October.  This year, 1 October was a Saturday so we effectively had a week off of school, or so I thought.  It turns out, only Monday through Wednesday were "official holiday days" and that they just give everybody Thursday and Friday off as well so they'll be able to travel longer/stimulate the economy more.  However, to make up for that, the classes that are originally held on Thursday and Friday are then held on Saturday and Sunday instead.  This was all discovered after the fact.  On Saturday afternoon, I got a text message from a classmate from Vietnam asking me if we had our Thursday class that day.  Turns out we did, but at that point the class was going to start in 10 minutes and was at the new campus over 45 minutes away so we weren't going anyway.  We decided that we wouldn't be affected too much since we didn't understand what was being said and went about enjoying our weekend.  Our teachers thought it was pretty funny and were probably glad that we had a somewhat legitimate excuse since most of our other classmates randomly skip weeks of class at a time for no reason at all.

So there we are in Chengdu.  We had two full days before our schedule meeting at the Consulate so we took the opportunity to see some of the sights.

From our hotel, we took a short walk to the subway station.  Currently there is just one line, but they're working on a second.  Our first stop was Tianfu Square (天府广场).  Eventually this will be the site of the main subway station in Chengdu, but currently it is just a fairly unremarkable public square.  One item of note is the water fountains which are pretty impressive and come one several times a day synchronized to music.  The second is a large (about 90ft) statue of Mao Zedong.  We spent about 10 minutes here looking around and watching the fountains and then continued on when Stephen and David started to attract a crowd.  Normally, in Kunming, people will tell us how cute they are and then be on their way, but here, they were superstars and quickly had crowds of people around them all wanting to hold them, take pictures of them, or just touch their faces.  I have decided that the next time I see a Chinese tourist in the U.S. with a small child, I'm going to run up and start groping their child's face and telling them how beautiful their child is.  Take that Chinese lack of boundaries and/or personal space!

Next up, we walked over to the People's Park (人民公园).  This is a fairly large park in the middle of the town with a lake, lots of walking paths, and some rides for the kids.  Like most of the better parks in China, it offers a good break from the city and lets you forget, for a while, that you're in a city of almost 15 million people where you can't see the sky through the smog.

Stephen, of course, took advantage of the opportunity to stretch his legs and climb on anything and everything.  At one point, when we were walking around the lake, I turned around to find Stephen at a fence along the bank, talking to a group of girls who had floated over in their paddle boat to get a better look at him.  He's quite the ladies' man over here.

Our next stop on the first day was at the Wenshu Temple and Monastery (文殊院寺).  This is an ancient Buddhist temple and monastery and is home to many ancient relics and artifacts.  The temple itself is pretty impressive and the decorations are beautiful.  Throughout the day, you can visit and see people burning incense and offering prayers.

The grounds surrounding the temple are full of trees, walking paths, and quiet places.  At one point, an old man came up and asked us if we were American.  When we told him yes, he began reciting the history of the Flying Tigers and the 10th and 14th Army Air Corps from World War II when they were based in China.  He did all of this in English which was pretty impressive.  The Chinese people's reverence for the American servicemen during WWII always impresses me.  In this area at least, there are very few people who do not know the history of the Flying Tigers and the Army Air Corps and what they did for China during WWII.

 

On Day 2, we made the trek north of the city to check out the panda reserve and research center.  I'm still not sure that the big deal about pandas is.  They're basically a bunch of vegan bears that are black and white.  It was nice to finally see one in person after we were disappointed at the zoo in D.C. and the highlight of Kate's day was getting to see about a dozen baby pandas all sleeping in the nursery.  It was the definition of cute.  In addition to the regular pandas, they also had red pandas.  These seemed much more active than regular pandas and were more fun to watch.  All of the panda enclosures had big signs in English reminding visitors to be quiet.  It also had a Chinese translation, which appeared to say the same thing, but apparently translated into "Please scream at the pandas, bang on the walls of the enclosures and throw sticks at them in order to get their attention so you can take a picture because nothing gets a wild animal to come close to you like being a loud, obnoxious, jackass."  Chalk it up to "cultural differences."

In addition to their pandas, the research base also boasted a pretty nice park with some good walking paths.  One of the better ones was a boardwalk that went around a lake which was a particular favorite of the boys.

On our last day, after our meeting at the Consulate, we went over to Jinli Street (金利路) which is a pretty well-kept historical shopping district.  Here you can find all sorts of little food stands, souvenirs, and theater houses.  As you can see from the picture, it is pretty popular and not too easy to navigate with a stroller, but it was a good place to have lunch and you can even find some less-crowded side paths that offer access to some pretty scenic areas.

That night, we hopped back on a plane and headed home.  The nice thing about having our post office box in Chengdu is that we'll have the opportunity to go back and see some more of the many attractions, although the pandas better get their act together if they want us to visit again......vegan hippies.