9-26-19 - Chengdu - Home of the Giant Pandas
/Day 102. Kyle & Leanne joint blog.
Today we bid farewell to our tour guide extraordinaire and walking history book Albert. We so enjoyed how much knowledge he imparted on us and even taught us about the opium wars in the way to the train station. The train station is huge, newly built and impressive architecturally. Albert can’t continue past the security checkpoint so we bid him farewell and thank him for the past two days.
We are well early so we camp out in the Burger King which has plenty of empty tables and Kyle sets off the find our train platform. He misreads the ticket and follows signs for platform 10 for about 1 KM before hitting a dead-end and realizing he should be looking for platform 18 which is right next to the Burger King. Oh well, Kyle will beat us all in the step count today.
About the train, the seats are three and three across so we take up two rows and Kyle is in another row with two other people. Kyle is looking forward to the 3 ½ hour train ride to get caught up on the blog as the morning to night itinerary in Paris, Beijing and Xi’an has but the blog dangerously behind. About an hour into the ride Kyle starts chatting with the Japanese man next to him who is also on vacation. Not long into the conversation, Kyle discovers that the man lives in the town near us where John & Corey go to school and that he plays table tennis in the center in our hometown a mile from our house. This is incredible. In the most populated country in the world, first the Scout Leader and now the person sitting next to Kyle on a train with 500 people both connected to our hometown. Kyle notes that we would have won to Power Ball lotteries by now with the incredible statistical anomalies we are experiencing.
It turns out Ken, Kyle’s new friend, is retired and loves to travel so the Kyle ends up in conversation for the next 2 ½ hours and the blog catchup plan goes out the window. It turns out we’ve been to a lot of the same countries including Iceland. Ken is going to Argentinian Patagonia in the spring and we are going in January so we talk about El Calafate, Perino Moretto Glacier, El Chelten, Mount Fitz Roy and Ushuaia. He is very excited to read our blog posts and we exchange contact info as the train arrives.
We meet our new guide Sammi right as we embark from the train. No time for wasting — we have a half day here and we are going to see a bit of Chengdu.
After we drop our bags off, we head out to Wenshu Buddhist Temple and we note the very different architecture of the buildings here (more wooden). After surveying the Temple and numerous Buddha statues, we head out.
Sammi then takes us to a famous shopping area called the Kuanzhai Alley Arts & Crafts District with a Wide Alley and Narrow Ally. For Kung Fu Panda fans, this is where his father’s restaurant was. Apparently Disney made the first Kung Fu Panda movie without stepping into Chengdu, the Panda Capital of the World, or even China. A fact that the Chinese Government was not shy in expressing their disapproval about to Disney. So Disney made amends by coming to Chengdu and incorporating many elements of Chengdu into the Kung Fu Panda sequel.
As we walk the wide and narrow alleys, it is abundantly clear that Chengdu takes their Panda mantle very seriously. Every store, shop, boutique, hotel and restaurant proudly display several pandas on their storefront even if the store has nothing to do with pandas. For the stores that are panda focused, its game over. The “Panda Store” is over the top. There is everything panda including panda slippers, backpacks, shirts, pencils, slippers, sunglasses, panda ears, jewelry, stuffed pandas, carved pandas, even panda toilet paper. If there is something panda themed you desire, you’ll find it here. Ashley is in panda heaven.
Sammi has arranged our dinner at Bao Buyi Restaurant, a Sichuan hot pot restaurant and we have an absolute blast boiling our meats in either spicy or not spicy sides. Our spicy tolerance meter has definitely increased during the trip as well. This cuisine is now rivaling Korean BBQ as clan-favorite.
After dinner, we are treated to a Chinese Cultural treat at the Shufengyayun Theatre of the Sichuan Opera House. Inside the seats are wicker chairs with side tables resembling a teahouse structure. While there are tourists here, this show is authentically Chinese. We are invited backstage to see performers put on makeup and costumes. We are served tea throughout the show and our tickets entitle us to a chair massage or earwax removal procedure where someone sticks long, skinny metal chop sticks into your ear to fish out the wax. Safe to say we all wisely chose the massage.
The show is quite impressive with Chinese opera singing, instrumental soloists, hand puppet show and comedy acts. But the highlight was the Face Changing, an ancient art form passed down through generations. One performer came off stage, walked down right in front of Leanne and scared her silly (as witnessed by her scream heard throughout the venue) when his mask changed from red to green in less than a second.
After the show, we head back for the hotel to prepare for the real reason we are in Chengdu — PANDAS! PANDAS! PANDAS! If you go to Vegas to gamble or to New York for a Broadway play, you come to Chengdu for the pandas.
