After breakfast and a lazy morning, we went to the airport and caught a two hour flight to Chengdu (flight number five). We checked into the hotel and had a couple hours to ourselves. I spent the time walking around the shops outside the hotel and buying us a pair of Coke Zeros.
We were picked up and went out for dinner before we went to the Sichuan Opera (I hadn't eaten lunch and I only picked at my dinner - no appetite). The Chinese opera was not what I expected. It felt more like a variety show. We took our seats a few rows from the stage. There were tables with tea cups in front of all the seats - the Chinese sure like their tea. Before the show performers sat in front of mirrors in a room off of the main seating area putting on their makeup. A crowd, including me, gathered around to take their pictures and to see how the colorful makeup was applied.
Actress putting on her makeup. |
The show started with musicians playing traditional Chinese instruments. This was followed by puppetry, singing, dancing. performances resembling opera, and comedy routines. One of the most interesting was a man doing shadow puppets on a big screen. He was amazing.
Chinese opera dancer. |
That night I didn't sleep well. I think I was suffering from a lack of food, water, and the drop in altitude. I was in a weird mood and I had difficulty clearing my head enough to sleep. I was awake at 3:00 AM to hear the people cheering the Euro 2012 games in the bar next door to the hotel.
Day Ten
A terrible night's sleep meant a crappy start to day ten. I was tired, cranky, and a little wobbly on my feet. I felt sick. I tried my best to hide it as we boarded the bus to go to the Chengdu Research base for Panda Breeding.
The Giant Panda - a relative of the raccoon, not the bear. |
Inside the building we were given smocks, booties, and gloves to protect the pandas from any strange diseases we may be carrying. I put this extra layer on and my temp went up immediately. We helped cut apples for the panda. Fortunately we'd arrived at the station a little late and the cages had already been cleaned out (cleaning out the cages is one of the things the tours usually did). A couple panda cubs were called into a cage and, one at a time, we each placed a piece of apple on the end of a stick and fed it to the pandas. We then went outside and, using a much larger stick ( 'pole' would be a better word), we fed other pandas in the open air pen. The pandas were trained to stand on their hind legs to get food - this helped them get exercise. Not feeling great I stood back and skipped this part and just watched the others feed the pandas. After this it was back into the enclosure where we gave the cubs a bath with a hose. I skipped this as well.
Panda standing to get a treat and to exercise. |
It was getting close to lunch time and we headed for the center's restaurant. Along the way we saw a relative to the panda, the red panda, which showed very clearly that pandas were not bears. Panda, both the black and white ones and the red ones, are most closely related to the raccoon. The red panda were more raccoon-like and very cute.
Huge, and hungry, koi. |
As we were leaving the drizzle that had been lingering all day turned into a light rain. We huddled under umbrellas while people of our group went through the little panda center gift shop where all things panda could be purchased before boarding the bus and heading back to the airport.
Flight number six took us to Xi'an. Our guide was born near Xi'an in, what she described as, a small town ... of 200,000. When you have a population of 1.35 Billion your idea of small becomes a bit skewed. I think she was happy to be in a more familiar place.
On the bus to the hotel, for the first time, our guide suggested that there were parts of the city that were not safe for tourists. This convinced most of our group to stay in the hotel that night and not go out. We ended up ordering burgers from room service - something almost everyone in our group did - and had a satisfying western meal. The burger, after almost ten days of Chinese food ... was awesome.
Pictures from days nine and ten (07/01 - 07/02/2012) can be found in my 2012-06 China Google Photos album.
Our 2012 Asian Adventure continues ...
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