Executive Summary - Sichuan Province (Chengdu)

• Saw: Pandas! Pandas eating! Pandas playing! Pandas sleeping! Baby Pandas! Pandas in trees! Teenage Pandas! Red (not as cute) Pandas! Panda facts! Panda movie! Panda museum! Panda insemination (well, photos of)!

Ahem...moving on...

Tibetan section of Chengdu, "Newly Built Old-Style Jiu Street" (sounds as horrible as it is), Foreign Languages Bookstore, whose sign was entirely in Chinese and had 3 floors of Chinese books and a small corner section with English language Nora Roberts novels, a man carrying a live duck on the public bus

• Did: A cooking class, shopped the outdoors stores for North Farce (aka North Fake), took 3 hours to get anywhere on Chengdu public transport, lounged around hostel bar whinging about China (and s***e Chinese love songs), 100 minute Chinese massage from a 4'6" girl that packs a punch, recovered from various digestive issues, packed myself into a coffin, I mean, the top bunk in a hard sleeper train to Xining, participated in passive aggressive ipod wars to drown out s***e Chinese folk songs blaring out of the train speaker intermittently (GnR wins every time)

• Ate/Drank: Sichuan hot pot with my favourite Belgians, Grand Dragon red wine, Harbin beer, The Most Horrendous Sweet Dumplings "tangyuan" (refer photo), muesli with Chinese wolfberry, cucumber flavoured crisps (wtf??), Cooking class: gungbaoji (kung pao chicken), sweet & sour pork, 'fish-resembling' eggplant, Chinese salad, boiled pork dumplings

• Favourite part about Sichuan Province: Pandas! Pandas! And the food, though disappointingly my digestive system was not up for super-hot things

• Least favourite part about Sichuan Province: My love/hate relationship with China swung significantly towards the hate side during 5 days in Chengdu thanks to the public transport system and things being generally more difficult than need be. Bring on Tibet!!

• Life-altering revelation which has contributed to my search for universal truth: The Chinese have developed a panda artificial insemination method which they have coined 'The Frozen Straw'