Day 12: Chengdu - Pandas - Oct 1, 2009 - Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Happy National Day!!

Was quite excited to be seeing the pandas at Chengdu, as I'd read lots about the park and the conservation work that the scientists are doing there. Arrived nice and early, though there were already quite a few others there. Did our normal dash through the pathways to get to the pandas. A couple were in glass cages, but the most were in open-air exhibits, and were they cute? Yes, they were!!

It was a great idea to get there early in the morning as we did, as it was during breakfast time for the pandas, so they were busy munching, roaming about, climbing and the younger ones were playing around with each other. An hour later all the pandas became sleepy, found spots on their own and curled up to sleep, so I was really glad that we'd seen them at breakfast time.

We were also able to file past some glass windows to look at the most incredibly cute baby pandas. There was a newborn, all pinky-white with no black at all, though his head was totally under the blankets to protect his eyes from the light. There was another mega-cute one also in an incubator (maybe about a month old) and twins in a cot who were born in July. I snuck a photo of the first baby, but the guard was being ever so vigilant that I was sharply tapped on the arm when I tried to sneak a photo of the next one. I considered spending time in a Chinese brick pit, but decided I'd forgo any more photos instead!

Some of our group paid A$250 and A$500 to hold a panda, but I'd already decided not to do that, and with my cold affecting me, it turned out to be fate. At least I won't have my cold in a couple of days when I climb the wall. At the panda park were also lots of red pandas in big enclosures, and a huge lake with goldfish and beautiful water lillies.

At the end I tried to get into the panda shop. Tried? The place was packed! Eventually I squeezed through and after a while realised that I was the only one looking at the products and everyone else was standing still. It took me a couple of moments to work out why - there was a TV in the shop, and all the Chinese had crowded in there to watch the National Day parade being broadcast from Beijing. After making my purchases I also stood there watching it for about half an hour while the rest of our group finished at the museum and in the shop. The parade was spectacular - a real show of Communist might - thousands upon thousands of rows of soldiers marching in perfect unison, huge military machines of all sorts, fly-overs, and lots of the Chairman waving from Tiananmen Square. It was a great show, which went on for a few hours, as it was still on the TV at our next destination two hours later. Every city has had spectacular floral displays, festivities and special dances in parks to celebrate the 60th anniversary of National Day, but Beijing was the only place with a parade.

Went to a silk factory and shop - very interesting to watch the two ladies work together to make the silk embroidery.

It was mid-afternoon by the time we got back and by now my cold had set in, so I just went to the local internet cafe and that in itself was a sight to behold - the room must have had 500 big, modern computers, absolutely jam-packed with 15-30 year olds playing computer games over the internet. Ashley, you would have been mighty impressed. There was a constant bombardment at the cash-desk as they frantically tried to pay for more time so they could return to their games. I waited ages, with everyone pushing infront of me. Even when I finally pushed to the front, the lady waved me away - she was too busy taking money off them to deal with me. After about 10 minutes of me standing right infront of her, I guess she worked out that I wasn't going to go away, so she took my money and a staff member was found to set up a computer for me. No soon as I sat down and he started inputting the code, then a teenager came back and obviously it had been his computer. A minor yelling match took place, and I gather that the staff member said it was too bad and that the boy shouldn't have left his computer unattended. His two mates sat either side of me playing Warhammer (or something similar) so he flitted between the two of them having a go at their games.

On an offside, I finally found where half of the 1.3 billion people are - they are in the supermarket in Chengdu. I'm sure it has something to do with being National Day today, as the supermarket was like our Christmas, only worse. This had to be the biggest supermarket in the world - two floors, with non-consummables on the first floor and food on the second. Later quite a few people on my tour complained that they'd gone there and couldn't find the food! It was severly difficult to move in there, and after wending my way through people pushing for live frogs, chicken bits that were unrecognisable, dumplings, Peking duck already cooked and lots of other Chinsese delicacies, I finally arrived at the check-out - one a half hours later! All that for a box of tissues and two apples!

Another hard sleeper train experience awaited us and this time I got a middle berth, which even though is still not high enough to sit up, at least I could stick my head out next to the upper berth in order to sneeze and cough. I slept much better on this train, probably in part due to having a cold and as well as being quite tried from all the travelling. This was one of the longest train journeys, departing at 9.20pm and arriving in at 12.30pm the next day, which meant a fair decent lie on the bed (read "concrete slab"). The smoking occurred again, which is a pain, but it definitely wasn't as bad in the middle berth.