Sichuan!!! Yay pandas!
So I have returned from Sichuan! It was such a relaxing break, it was a nice change from Yunnan. So on Sunday, as you know, we took a 25 hour train ride down to Chongqing, which actually is not in the Sichuan province, but it’s quite close and a while back was the same province. Anyway, it was pretty uneventful. I sat around and read, played an epic game of Uno which lasted for more than an hour, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and watched “Casino Royale” in Chinese. So when we hopped off the train, the first thing I noticed was the weather. Although Sichuan is renowned for its spicy food, the weather was a definite disappointment-it was cloudy, overcast, and not too warm. So much for a warm spring break. When we arrived at the hotel, we decided to explore a bit of the city. We walked down this large hill, and found a small local hot pot restaurant. After ordering meat and vegetables by guessing and pointing, we walked further down the hill and saw a beautifully lit skyline across the river. We continued down, hoping to find a way across. Instead, we found lots of trucks and the industrial area, though we stumbled upon a small park that was nice to walk around. It was pretty, but not much going on, so we took a taxi back to the hotel to get real sleep after the long train ride.
The next day we visited the Stillwell museum which is dedicated to General Stillwell who was Commander of the US forces and Chiang Kai Shek’s Chief of staff between 1942 and 1944. It was funny to see all these American jeeps with California license plates in this very Chinese setting. Also a lot of WWII vets were also touring around the museum. I wore my Wellesley college sweatshirt which was cool because they did talk a little bit about Song Mei Ling who was Chiang Kai Shek’s wife and also a Wellesley alum. Supposedly she was instrumental in getting American support for the KMT and negotiated the first war planes to come from the US to China. A lot of the Americans stared curiously at me (clearly Chinese looking) and my Wellesley sweatshirt (clearly American). One women struck up an awkward conversation which went like this:
Woman: “Are you from Wellesley?”
Me: “Yes.”
Women: “Oh, well, nice meeting you.”
Me: “Yeah, nice meeting you too.”
Clearly, awkward. I have a feeling some of the vets thought I couldn’t speak English. Anyway, after our museum visit, we went to Ciqikou Old town which was founded 1,700 years ago. Instead of having a proper sit down lunch, we wandered down the small streets eating all kinds of small snacks and treats including Indian scallion roti, steamed buns, rice cakes, and wire floss sugar. It was a cute little town and I enjoyed walking around it. The funny thing is that there are a few “haunted houses” and some of my friends ventured in. Kind of a weird thing to have in this old town. Supposedly what made them scary is that many of the props were so old and the people who went in were afraid the machines would go haywire and attack them. Next, we went to the Tianci Hot-Spring Resort. It was fun since there were many different pools of varying size and heat. But the most fun was the doctor-fish pool-we got to use it free of charge! In the pool, there were probably a couple hundred fish which eats the dead skin. So the fish went to town on my feet/heels, eating all of the rough skin off. From a girl who giggles during massages and pedicures, this tickled like no other. I waved them away from my stomach, because that would have been way too overwhelming for me. But after maybe 45 minutes in the pool, my feet did feel a lot better. For dinner after the relaxing hot springs, we went to have Sichuan hot pot. I avoided the spicy side because it looked deadly since it was bubbling and a deep red. When we left the restaurant, it had started to drizzle, but we still went to the side of the river to see the skyline and how pretty it looked. We quickly got back on the bus, and headed back to the hotel.
To round out our use of Chinese transportation, we took the bullet train the next day to go from Chongqing to Chengdu. It took only 2 hours, although it was unfortunate getting to the station since it was pouring rain. We had to fight through the downpour to get into the station and it was relatively early. When we arrived, we hopped on our buses to get to the hotel. To our horror, our giant bus backed into a small van and gave it a small dent. We ended up sitting there for half an hour while the two owners argued it out. After a while of exchanging numbers, the other party walked away 250 kuai richer and made off without a word. Adding even more to the hilarity of the situation, we were across the street from the police station, but they did not interfere. After that, it was off to the hotel. Unfortunately Garrett had a stomach bug, so we stayed in for the next two days, watching a lot of movies and on the Thursday, when he felt a little better, we walked around and explored Chengdu. It is quite an industrial city which is huge. Chengdu itself means growing to be a capital city. It is quite large with tons of people walking around. And a lot of bikes. Besides that, that Wednesday and Thursday we didn’t do too much.
The next day was quite an exciting day-pandas! We left to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. We were all really excited. I wanted to hold a Red Panda, so we headed to the Red Panda enclosure. It was feeding time, so all of the Red Pandas came out of their hiding places to eat apples, and there were many ecstatic school children screaming and giggling with delight. If you don’t know what a red panda is, it’s basically a red raccoon. So I paid 100 kuai so I could get a blue gown and plastic gloves. I sat down on a bench, and to my surprise, they brought out the panda and just plopped it on my lap. It was a female Red Panda named Hao Hao, and she was pretty light, like 10 pounds. She was warm, and from what I could feel through my plastic gloves, quite soft. They gave her an apple and she happily munched on it while I got pictures snapped of me. It was totally worth it. It cost 500 kuai (about $75) to take a picture with a teenage panda, and you just stand by it and take a picture, while those with the babies got to hold it, but at the steep price of 1000 kuai (about $150). After the pictures, we wandered off to see more of the zoo. The pandas were surprisingly active, but maybe because it was morning and feeding time. I watched one baby panda climb a tree, and a teenage panda eat bamboo for 30 minutes. Also, at one point a zoo keeper brought out a piece of bread on a fishing pole. It was really cute to watch the panda stumble to try and grab it. Next, Luca, Caroline, Garrett and I went back to the hotel to get pizza. We wanted to look around more of the center of the city. There, it was very Western with a Burberry, McDonalds, and Starbucks (which reminded me of my Swells crew. Here’s a shout out, hey!). But the square still reminded me that we were in China because there was a statue of Chairman Mao and Chinese dragons decorating pillars around the square. By this time, it was about 4:30, and rush hour on a Friday. It was almost impossible to get a cab. We decided to try and stand in front of a fancy hotel to try and get a cab, but still no luck. But a really nice bellman decided to try and help us. His name was Su XiangFei, but he didn’t have an English name, so we named him Daniel. He was very friendly, and we talked about studying Chinese in China, practicing English, where were touring, etc. He gave us his contact information expressing his wish to practice English some more. We finally got a cab, and thanked him profusely. That was the end of our exciting day.
The next day, our last day in Sichuan, we went to see the biggest Buddha in the world. It was the second largest, but the largest in Afghanistan was destroyed by the Taliban. It was a two and a half hour drive, but it was nice since we got up early, so I got a nap. It was cool though because now we’ve seen the three biggest Buddha’s carved into cliff faces in China. The Buddha was originally carved in order to help the sailors on the water from drowning. We climbed up a bunch of stairs (which was nothing compared to the Great Wall) and descended many switch backs to see the Buddha. There were also a lot of tourists pushing and elbowing their way down the line. Also, a group of Chinese school girls came up to us asking to have a picture with foreigners. When Garrett said “Xie Xie xiao jie” (谢谢小姐 Thank you miss), the girls freaked out. They didn’t realize that we could speak Chinese and they were really excited. When we got to the foot of the Buddha, it was so impressive since the toes were bigger than me. When I tried to take a picture of the Buddha’s face, you couldn’t see it because the fog was so dense and it was so tall. It sat looking across the water guarding it. Garrett, James and I took incense sticks to make prayers to Buddha. After the big Buddha, we hiked some more to a small fishing village. It was a nice rest place to have a little lunch. You could see the river, and just a bit further down was some beautiful green grass with yellow flowers. It was probably the nicest day we had on the trip, getting warm and sunny. After lunch, we walked through the village to see this very pretty traditional bridge. James filmed himself listening to the Rocky theme song while running across the bridge. On the way, we stopped by some tombs with very ancient writing. After we crossed the bridge, we climbed some more stairs to make it to a monastery. Before, Garrett had learned how to twist his hands into a Buddhist symbol, and at the monastery, some of the monks saw him. They started chuckling about it, and engaged into a conversation with Garrett on how to do another finger twist. They then started firing all kinds of questions at us, a lot of the time in Sichuanese which I can’t understand. They were very curious about us, but they were adorable. Unfortunately, we had to catch a bus to the airport and head back to Beijing.
Today, I think spring has finally come to Beijing. I heard that it had snowed and had a sand storm in the week we were gone, but today was beautiful. I can’t wait to take advantage of this great weather and explore more of Beijing!
The next day we visited the Stillwell museum which is dedicated to General Stillwell who was Commander of the US forces and Chiang Kai Shek’s Chief of staff between 1942 and 1944. It was funny to see all these American jeeps with California license plates in this very Chinese setting. Also a lot of WWII vets were also touring around the museum. I wore my Wellesley college sweatshirt which was cool because they did talk a little bit about Song Mei Ling who was Chiang Kai Shek’s wife and also a Wellesley alum. Supposedly she was instrumental in getting American support for the KMT and negotiated the first war planes to come from the US to China. A lot of the Americans stared curiously at me (clearly Chinese looking) and my Wellesley sweatshirt (clearly American). One women struck up an awkward conversation which went like this:
Woman: “Are you from Wellesley?”
Me: “Yes.”
Women: “Oh, well, nice meeting you.”
Me: “Yeah, nice meeting you too.”
Clearly, awkward. I have a feeling some of the vets thought I couldn’t speak English. Anyway, after our museum visit, we went to Ciqikou Old town which was founded 1,700 years ago. Instead of having a proper sit down lunch, we wandered down the small streets eating all kinds of small snacks and treats including Indian scallion roti, steamed buns, rice cakes, and wire floss sugar. It was a cute little town and I enjoyed walking around it. The funny thing is that there are a few “haunted houses” and some of my friends ventured in. Kind of a weird thing to have in this old town. Supposedly what made them scary is that many of the props were so old and the people who went in were afraid the machines would go haywire and attack them. Next, we went to the Tianci Hot-Spring Resort. It was fun since there were many different pools of varying size and heat. But the most fun was the doctor-fish pool-we got to use it free of charge! In the pool, there were probably a couple hundred fish which eats the dead skin. So the fish went to town on my feet/heels, eating all of the rough skin off. From a girl who giggles during massages and pedicures, this tickled like no other. I waved them away from my stomach, because that would have been way too overwhelming for me. But after maybe 45 minutes in the pool, my feet did feel a lot better. For dinner after the relaxing hot springs, we went to have Sichuan hot pot. I avoided the spicy side because it looked deadly since it was bubbling and a deep red. When we left the restaurant, it had started to drizzle, but we still went to the side of the river to see the skyline and how pretty it looked. We quickly got back on the bus, and headed back to the hotel.
To round out our use of Chinese transportation, we took the bullet train the next day to go from Chongqing to Chengdu. It took only 2 hours, although it was unfortunate getting to the station since it was pouring rain. We had to fight through the downpour to get into the station and it was relatively early. When we arrived, we hopped on our buses to get to the hotel. To our horror, our giant bus backed into a small van and gave it a small dent. We ended up sitting there for half an hour while the two owners argued it out. After a while of exchanging numbers, the other party walked away 250 kuai richer and made off without a word. Adding even more to the hilarity of the situation, we were across the street from the police station, but they did not interfere. After that, it was off to the hotel. Unfortunately Garrett had a stomach bug, so we stayed in for the next two days, watching a lot of movies and on the Thursday, when he felt a little better, we walked around and explored Chengdu. It is quite an industrial city which is huge. Chengdu itself means growing to be a capital city. It is quite large with tons of people walking around. And a lot of bikes. Besides that, that Wednesday and Thursday we didn’t do too much.
The next day was quite an exciting day-pandas! We left to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. We were all really excited. I wanted to hold a Red Panda, so we headed to the Red Panda enclosure. It was feeding time, so all of the Red Pandas came out of their hiding places to eat apples, and there were many ecstatic school children screaming and giggling with delight. If you don’t know what a red panda is, it’s basically a red raccoon. So I paid 100 kuai so I could get a blue gown and plastic gloves. I sat down on a bench, and to my surprise, they brought out the panda and just plopped it on my lap. It was a female Red Panda named Hao Hao, and she was pretty light, like 10 pounds. She was warm, and from what I could feel through my plastic gloves, quite soft. They gave her an apple and she happily munched on it while I got pictures snapped of me. It was totally worth it. It cost 500 kuai (about $75) to take a picture with a teenage panda, and you just stand by it and take a picture, while those with the babies got to hold it, but at the steep price of 1000 kuai (about $150). After the pictures, we wandered off to see more of the zoo. The pandas were surprisingly active, but maybe because it was morning and feeding time. I watched one baby panda climb a tree, and a teenage panda eat bamboo for 30 minutes. Also, at one point a zoo keeper brought out a piece of bread on a fishing pole. It was really cute to watch the panda stumble to try and grab it. Next, Luca, Caroline, Garrett and I went back to the hotel to get pizza. We wanted to look around more of the center of the city. There, it was very Western with a Burberry, McDonalds, and Starbucks (which reminded me of my Swells crew. Here’s a shout out, hey!). But the square still reminded me that we were in China because there was a statue of Chairman Mao and Chinese dragons decorating pillars around the square. By this time, it was about 4:30, and rush hour on a Friday. It was almost impossible to get a cab. We decided to try and stand in front of a fancy hotel to try and get a cab, but still no luck. But a really nice bellman decided to try and help us. His name was Su XiangFei, but he didn’t have an English name, so we named him Daniel. He was very friendly, and we talked about studying Chinese in China, practicing English, where were touring, etc. He gave us his contact information expressing his wish to practice English some more. We finally got a cab, and thanked him profusely. That was the end of our exciting day.
The next day, our last day in Sichuan, we went to see the biggest Buddha in the world. It was the second largest, but the largest in Afghanistan was destroyed by the Taliban. It was a two and a half hour drive, but it was nice since we got up early, so I got a nap. It was cool though because now we’ve seen the three biggest Buddha’s carved into cliff faces in China. The Buddha was originally carved in order to help the sailors on the water from drowning. We climbed up a bunch of stairs (which was nothing compared to the Great Wall) and descended many switch backs to see the Buddha. There were also a lot of tourists pushing and elbowing their way down the line. Also, a group of Chinese school girls came up to us asking to have a picture with foreigners. When Garrett said “Xie Xie xiao jie” (谢谢小姐 Thank you miss), the girls freaked out. They didn’t realize that we could speak Chinese and they were really excited. When we got to the foot of the Buddha, it was so impressive since the toes were bigger than me. When I tried to take a picture of the Buddha’s face, you couldn’t see it because the fog was so dense and it was so tall. It sat looking across the water guarding it. Garrett, James and I took incense sticks to make prayers to Buddha. After the big Buddha, we hiked some more to a small fishing village. It was a nice rest place to have a little lunch. You could see the river, and just a bit further down was some beautiful green grass with yellow flowers. It was probably the nicest day we had on the trip, getting warm and sunny. After lunch, we walked through the village to see this very pretty traditional bridge. James filmed himself listening to the Rocky theme song while running across the bridge. On the way, we stopped by some tombs with very ancient writing. After we crossed the bridge, we climbed some more stairs to make it to a monastery. Before, Garrett had learned how to twist his hands into a Buddhist symbol, and at the monastery, some of the monks saw him. They started chuckling about it, and engaged into a conversation with Garrett on how to do another finger twist. They then started firing all kinds of questions at us, a lot of the time in Sichuanese which I can’t understand. They were very curious about us, but they were adorable. Unfortunately, we had to catch a bus to the airport and head back to Beijing.
Today, I think spring has finally come to Beijing. I heard that it had snowed and had a sand storm in the week we were gone, but today was beautiful. I can’t wait to take advantage of this great weather and explore more of Beijing!