Panda-monium!
Trip Start
Nov 10, 2009
1
11
14
Trip End
Nov 24, 2009
Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Friday, November 20, 2009
We went to the Panda Breeding Center north of Chengdu. There are only 1,200 pandas in the wild and the panda center has about 25 of them in captivity. Here they study the pandas and breed them and try to teach them survival skills so they can return them to the wild. We watched a lady doing research on one of the pandas She had hidden apples in his habitat and was recording how long it took for him to find them. We saw young pandas, old pandas, and newborn pandas in an incubator. It was amazing. They eat most of the day and sleep the rest of the time. Every panda we saw was eating bamboo nonstop. They live among each other until about age 4-5, and then they want to live alone.
After watching the pandas we went to Da Fu's thatched hut. Da Fu is a famous Chinese poet that lived about a thousand years ago. He wrote beautiful poems and lived in a thatched hut in Chengdu. His hut is in a gorgeous park. Huge ginko biloba trees and bamboo and Chinese pine trees.
Then it was off to the countryside to Dujiangyan, a resort city about an hour from Chengdu. This city is close to the mountains and is a very popular summer resort among the Chinese people.It is also very close to the location of the devastating earthquake that occurred about 1-1/2 years ago. There is an enormous amount of construction going on, but still massive devastation. Probably the saddest sight, besides all the devastation, was the temporary housing that everyone is forced to live in until construction is complete. Very sad. Dujiangyan is also the location of an ancient irrigation system built in 256 B.C. to keep the valley from flooding. They created an artificial island out of bamboo and rocks in the middle of this raging river , thus taming it for irrigation and to control floods. It was an amazing site with the roaring river in the foreground and the mountains in the background. Oh, and one small detail, we had to walk across a tiny rope suspension bridge to get across the river.
After all our sightseeing, we ended our day at... PIZZA HUT! Strange, but familiar. The cheese pizza and salad bar was awesome!
On the way back to the hotel we decided to check out the Japanese Supermarket and I mean SUPER. It was 5 floors and had everything you would need from fish heads to fur-lined coats. We were most intrigued by the hanging sausages you picked up off the hanger and the live fish tanks. They even sold turtle in the meat section. Did I mention it was packed? The store was absolutely full of people. It made us very grateful for our Wal-Mart Super Center.
We are off to Shanghai tomorrow.
Comments
I am loving reading your blogs. Trips like these do more for relations between countries than all the diplomats in the world can do. Those kids will remember you forever! Abbie, I am happier than I can say that you have been able to have this experience!