The main tourist feature of Chengdu is pandas. The entire worlds population of wild pandas live within an hour of here. Whenever you see baby pandas on tv, they are at the Giant Panda Research Base.
Thats where I went today.
It wasnt as over run by tour groups as I thought. The baby pandas werent quite babies anymore, now almost 6 months old. Its a very high quality facility and worth the visit.
Getting there if you arent on a tour group is a challenge, I took a million photos (by request of multiple people) and quite a few videos that wont appear here. Read on for the photos, I spent ages selecting and cropping etc.
I was up early, out before 7 when it was still dark, the internet tells you to get their early before they get sleepy. The internet also told me to go to a bus station south of the city, to take the only public direct bus, 902.
It is not easy to get there, despite it being the most popular tourist attraction in town, basically its assumed you will go with a tour group.
So After a 30 minute speed walk I stride confidently into the bus station, which is a hive of poor people with all their worldly belongings.
All the busses seem to only go to the other side of the country. Theres an information booth with a young girl, I ask in Chinese for 902. She informs me in perfect English that 902 has not run since they started building the subways to reduce congestion, you must go on tour bus!
I ask how a Chinese person would get there, she gave me instructions to take 3 busses....challenge accepted.
Getting on a bus at this time of morning was really dangerous. They barely stop, are all 100% full and you charge into the street before it gets there and hope to not get run over.
If you dont do this you will be at the back of the scrum and never get on one. It took me 2 goes to get on my desired bus, but they come every couple of minutes.
After a nail biting ride, sometimes at great speed, I arrived at a bus depot. Now what.
The bus I thought she told me to get next was nowhere I could see, no numbers on signs or the ground.
Time to employ a new tactic, follow the cute looking girls with panda merchandise. This proved a succesful tactic.
The reason the bus I was told to go on doesnt go at the moment is because of the construction around the Panda Research Base, you drive around it and then back to the gate which is currently somewhat hidden.
Up until now, I had no idea if I was going to the pandas, a Sewerage factory or an Engine plant. Various bus signs that had English listed such things as destinations.
And now we get to the Pandas.
As mentioned the small ones are about 6 months old. There are maybe 20 small ones throughout the park, some are rotated into duty to be petted by the few American tourists who are prepared to make a $200 donation for the experience.
I think they are too big to hold currently, so I am not sure what the VIP experience currently is.
There is a heap of new, fancy looking architecturally unusual buildings under construction, with the associated noise levels. I think there has been a lot of recent attention to this facility that has seen funds pouring in. Various celebrities seem to have sponsored facilities under construction.
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There are 2 distinct areas, I guess they are working on a Disaster recovery strategy so that they dont all die off at once due to disease, fire etc.
The area closer to the main gate, the sunshine nursery, is roughly 10x busier than the moonlight nursery at the back of the park, which seems to actually have more pandas.
My top tip, go straight to the moonlight nursery.
Its me, in my signature purple shirt, commando shorts, clown shoes, a winning combination.
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*** astericks this time
The park is rather nice, away from everything. Off in the distance here you can see a new style upmarket Chinese suburb.
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Apparently red pandas, also called the lesser panda, are more ferocious than the big ones. Theres warning signs everywhere, but strangely no real fencing.
I didnt bother with many photos of the lesser panda.
Still in the Panda park is this nice looking lake.
Which upon closer inspection has a terrifying swarm of gold fish making life difficult for swans.
The photo doesnt capture it, but the fish literally climb over each other to get out of the water and try and get the food!
The girl screamed each time but kept doing it anyway because her boyfriend kept stuffing up the photo.
Getting back again, an even bigger challenge! I got on a random bus that came assuming it would go somewhere like say, the city.
Instead it went a differnt way and I became confused as to which was North or South. The sun was too far over head to know precisely and blackberrys famous GPS failure was indeed still a failure.
I changed bus but couldnt find out where I was, time to go on foot to get my bearings!
After about an hour, I worked out where I was based on a river that ran through a really impressive nice park I found myself in.
I was nearby the Northern train station which is the last stop on the metro.
That blue building sits on top of the metro, to get there I walked across construction sites, fields etc. I had my doubts but other people seemed to be making the trek.
Judging by the buildings nearby, its an area due to be demolished soon!
Back in the city now, I got off a stop early.
Tomorrow I am going to Chongqing for 6 days, but then I am back in Chengdu, in a different hotel. This is it (the middle building), Celebrity Ruicheng. Its enormous!
Eager to get back and edit and upload my photos, I bought a sandwich and portugese tart from an upmarket bakery. Its in a box but it is made on site.
It wasnt good, sure it was fresh high quality ingredients, but they put so much mayonnaise on it that to me it becomes almost inedible. The portugese tart however, fantastic.
I hope you all (all? I think no one reads this!) appreciate the effort I made editing all these photos!
Tonight, I headed east, on foot.
The east side of the city, and the next 5km further east, are the nicest parts of Chengdu I have seen so far.
Nicer than the city centre itself, which I am sure will be ok once finished, but will have lost a lot of its for want of a better term, culture, in exchange for louis vutton and gucci.
Thats not to say east of the city is hutongs and people in big straw hats. Its still a bustling modern city with malls, skyscrapers and convenience stores, but people actually live here currently too.
The people spend much of their time in the street, more so than any other city I have been to, and all seem so very happy. Well perhaps not the guys in the car crash in the photos below.
It may be too early to call, but my long walk through the east of Chengdu has me ready to elevate it to, best Chinese city yet visited status.
I reserve the right to change that upon reflection, but I will back in a week for another week to make sure I know what the hell im talking about. Not sure if that last sentence made any sense.
Around the corner from my hotel I found this market. Its a labyrinth down many back streets.
I had no idea this existed, its still under construction. The buildings that surround it are enormous, mixed use residential and commercial.
Its worth mentioning that all this construction is happening at the same time as at least 4 metro lines are being built, as well as 2 full elevated ring roads, more on that shortly.
One of the above mentioned ring roads. It boggles my mind to think that you can walk under it whilst its being built, as I did. You get showered in sparks from people welding sections together, hot dip bolts are being put in place and plasma torches are cutting things to size.
Australia take note. This is a supermarket in what many of us consider to be a third world country. I WISH we had these in Australia. Coles and Woolworths have a lot to answer for. Also, I love supermarkets.
This is the Mix C megamall view from the roof. Its eerily similar to a place I visited in Nanjing, which may have also been called Mix C but I cant remember.
Also like the one in Nanjing, it has an ice skating rink.
My dinner was average. It came from the food court. I chose poorly. I got excited when the plastic version had lots of nice looking bok choy. The real version did not live up to the plastic.
Also I ordered and pointed at the one that had roast pork as well as bbq pork, yet instead of roast pork I got duck, which is fatty and full of bones.
Also Australia, this is how you make a food court. Note that its large, clean, has a variety of non chain stores and every one of them makes the food in front of you to order. Also everything is $3 or less.
Now if only I could figure out how to still pay Australian wages of say, $25 an hour to achieve this.
Heading back now, and this is the impact a metro line under construction has. What would normally be a very busy road is blocked, and hence it becomes a great space for people to enjoy themselves in relative peace and quiet.
It was excellent to walk down here, it went for miles with almost no cars, just people eating out, dancing, skateboarding, whatever.
And a bit further up the street, you get to where the metro is actually being constructed. They just dig a trench, lay the tracks, build the road over the top of it again. Same thing I saw in Hangzhou. I climbed up someones fire escape to see this, they sure looked surprised to see my head appear out their window.
Long exposure.
And a random neon shot, because I didnt do any on this trip yet.
What at first appeared to be just one of many minor traffic accidents was somehow different. The 2 guys involved didnt just drive off. Instead they argued. A crowd formed, the police were called.
Now if the police came to an accident here, you would stand just out of view and try and listen in and observe. Not so in Chengdu, you crowd around the scene as close as you can.
As I was taking the photo it did occur to me that no one else was filming, and then it occured to me that even in our 'westernized' countries the police have been known to arrest or shoot people for filming them.
I dont know if its illegal to film the police in China or not.