Whenever you talk to somebody here, you will be asked why you came to Chengdu and if you like it. Any negative comments will be met with incredulity as they assume that you have misunderstood the question. Or, you will give a token “Yeah, it’s great”. If they hear you over the sound of beeping horns and people hocking up to spit at your feet, then the logic begins to show. Sichuan people are proud of two things, beautiful women and delicious food. I don’t see how beautiful women can be a regional feature in the same way that a cuisine can be preserved, but maybe the One Child Policy is more of a Joy Division policy and beautiful people are allowed more children.
My bathroom is fitted with, inexplicably, a tanning bulb instead of a normal light. The fact that I would give David Dickinson a run for his money in a tanning contest should tell you what I think of the local food. And, just as I have had to do with a lot of the food, I’m sticking to imported women. The reason I came was not one of these, but the pandas! Since coming to China I’ve learnt a lot more about them, such as that they’ll happily be hand fed meet, can be moody b*****s, have a stubborn and counter-survival homing instinct (they will exhaust themselves to return to barren lands if dropshipped into a reserve designed for their comfort), and have about 2 hours of active time per day. I’d always loved the way they had multi-million pound enclosures and ignored most of it completely, just like a child on Christmas day playing with the box for their new Wii.
Pandas are a local obsession, everyone is wearing panda clothes. We followed guidebook advice and got there very early, at about 7.30. The centre was open at 8, but they were letting people in early anyway so we had a great intimate time with just us and the pandas. Who were eating, or doing nothing. When this active time was over, they were doing nothing. As you can see from the pics, I was in complete awe. I spent about an hour watching the solitary panda in Vienna zoo while his missus was giving birth, and much longer watching the two pandas in Chiang Mai. So to have about 30 pandas for my viewing pleasure was completely overwhelming, and we stayed until we were physically tired of walking between enclosures. It’s awesome there. Unfortunately, economies of scale mean the pandas don’t get anywhere near the luxury they did in the other zoos, and that made me a bit sad. With only 300 pandas alive in zoos and reserves worldwide, I think every one can expect a bit of VIP treatment. We saw the babies, and more importantly a horde of rich Chinese tourists who had paid off the guard so they could take pictures. With the moral highground, we snapped away until told to stop.
At about 10 the tour groups arrive, but they’re soon gone by 12. At about 1pm, most of the Chinese families arrive. At this point the mood was a bit diminished, so we hit the museum which was actually quite informative.
After the big earthquake here, most pandas moved further away to Bifenxia. Well, they were moved. I don’t think they had much awareness of the earthquake, and collective decision making is not in their nature. Anyway, they are now in another reserve further out which means far fewer people go to visit. The main bulk of interest is from flashpackers on volunteer tours, who pay 600 pounds for 2 weeks of cleaning enclosures and feeding pandas. I’d love to do it myself, but doubt I can afford it and kind of don’t want to support such a blatant ripoff. It’s a tenner in and they have an on-site hostel, so as with the elephants in Thailand I think just turning up and chatting to the right people might get me a panda encounter without having to grease the palms of some expats. Just as pandas were my main reason for coming to Chengdu, this is my sole reason to learn Chinese. It has taken a lot of time to find the details of Bifenxia, so as soon as I’ve seen if it works or not I’ll be sure to post every detail I can in the hope that this comes up on google searches and gives some other panda lover a cheap thrill.
Also excited this week to get a VPN working, so can contact more people who I thought I would not hear from until my trip to Hong Kong. Getting some good obscure messages here, most notably one from someone who identified themselves only as “son of Rambo”, so keep them coming.