China: Day Three - Chengdu

Didn't sleep nearly as well the second night. My body just didn't want to cooperate with its new time. But we did get up in time for breakfast since we had to leave for the panda reserve at 7:30. I'm glad we did. It was pretty tasty: noodles, cabbage, hard boiled eggs, dumplings, buns, watermelon and hot orange juice (well, probably something more like Tang) to drink.

Knowing that pandas are out in the early morning while it is still cool (they aren't stupid), Liz arranged for a driver to take us all out to see them. Our driver's wife works at the reserve and his family's house/land was taken to build the park 7 years ago and they are still waiting to be compensated by their new apartment nearby. They are hoping to be in this fall.

The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding started in 1987 with only six pandas and now has 146! It was a beautiful park with lovely lakes, ponds, gardens, green spaces and PANDAS. :)

Sue had to get this pic for her grandsons who love Kung Fu Panda

This one stood up and put his paw up to Sue's hand

Fun play structures for pandas to climb on

And pools to keep cool in

Who let the peacock in???

Me and a panda

This one even smiled for his picture :) 

I'd never seen black swans before

Most of the adult pandas were just sleeping or eating. But the "toddlers" were much more fun to watch! 

This one was really hamming it up for the camera

But sometimes even babies get tired and trees are a nice cool place to sleep...

Twins were born over the weekend. Twins are common but a mother in the wild will choose to raise the strongest of the two. Here at the research park they raise the other twin. The nursery was a pretty popular attraction, complete with angry guards to make sure you don't stop in front of the incubator too long. 

newborn pandas aren't very cute

I don't know how old this little one was but I just felt so sorry for him laying on a bare floor all by himself... :( 

They also have a red panda breeding program. 

By this time it was getting both hot and crowded, so we popped into the air conditioned theater to watch their informational movie about giant panda breeding. Very interesting but the best part was the reaction of middle school boys to panda mating... LOL

Liz took us to the Tibetan part of town near their office for lunch. We ate at a Western restaurant called Leann's. It was started by a Mennonite couple. Liz suggested we get salads while we could. I had a tossed spinach salad and a fresh mango smoothie. Sue and I also took home apple fritters for dessert. 

the Tibetan restaurant next to Leann's

On the way to the office, we stopped by a shop called Blue Sheep run by a British pediatrician. She sells things made by local minority women and all the proceeds go back to their communities. I bought a lot of stuff there.

We also saw some other sights on the way...

While at the office we met the staff and college student volunteers that would be joining us at the English camp in Jin Yang and got our orientation from Joel on Chinese culture and other important stuff. 

They let us ride the subway back to the hotel so we could get ready to go out to dinner. We did just fine. I wanted to go back to this Wal Mart but never got the chance... :( 

Apparently the restaurant next to our hotel was getting ready for dinner, too...

..

Dinner was our chance to meet Charlie, the 13-year-old we brought the homeschool textbooks for. We also got to meet his parents and his swim coach. Charlie is blessed with amazing parents who love him and have decided to homeschool him. Liz has been tutoring him in English for two to three years (you'd think he'd been speaking it his whole life), he is also learning Japanese (from his swim coach), swims competitively and plays on a homeschool basketball team. His swim coach lived in Japan for 24 years as a Olympic coach and now also leads mountain climbing expeditions to Everest and other peaks. 

We ate at Peter's Tex Mex, an American-style restaurant started by a Sichuan-native chef who was trained by the American woman who started the Grandma's Kitchen chain.  It seemed kind of funny to eat tacos in China...

It was a bit tricky to find a cab back. After about 15 minutes, I uttered a quick prayer. About 3 minutes later, we got one. I guess I should have done that sooner... :) 

China: Seattle to Beijing to Chengdu

The weather was terrible in Beijing. This meant our plane was late taking off, which meant our plane was late arriving in Seattle and would consequently be taking off 3 hours later than scheduled. Thankfully we learned of the delay before we left for SeaTac. This also meant I had time to do some house cleaning and yard work before leaving. It is so much nicer to say, "I expect it to look the way it does now when I get back" and actually mean it.

There was no traffic on Independence Day and we got there with 3 1/2 hours to spare, plenty of time to get checked in (we got to check our bags all the way to Chengdu), have some teriyaki for lunch and get a bit better acquainted with one another. I know Sue but had only briefly met Chrissy before.

The flight to Beijing was smooth and made great time. Lots of good movies and documentaries about China to watch along the way. It was raining a bit when we arrived and had to take a bus from the tarmac to the terminal.

I was a bit nervous about customs when we arrived but they were a breeze and we made it to our next gate in plenty of time. Unfortunately we had plenty of time...

The plane boarded an hour late and then we spent another three excruciating hours just sitting in the plane waiting for clearance to land in Chengdu. Needless to say, we were now going to be very late getting into Chengdu.

We arrived at 4:15am. Our luggage was some of the first ones out of the chute. Joel and Liz were there waiting for us. We hopped into a couple of taxis (had a bit of a struggle with the first driver not wanting to start his meter) and headed to the Relax Inn.

Crawled into bed around 6:30am on the 6th of July and fell asleep.

While we hadn't slept much on the plane, we also didn't want to sleep in too late. The best plan is to get right into your new time zone.

Chrissy and I slept great! We had a very nice room with an view of the back alley...

Sue, on the other hand, didn't sleep so well due to the near constant construction of a new subway line in front of the hotel...

Our hotel from across the street

The view of the construction from our hotel

We had been told breakfast ended at 10:00. But this was to be the first of many cases where things just sort of got "lost in translation." In reality, breakfast ended at 9:30 and we missed it. Liz had already considered that we might sleep in too late to eat breakfast and left us with a bag of treats to enjoy, including some gorgeous giant black grapes.

Since we had no plans until lunchtime, we went out to explore our new neighborhood. 

I loved this mop made from the selvages of baby fabric

Lots of little shops like this and lots of little boutique shops like you'd see here.

But directly across the street in an alley was an "real authentic" Chinese market. We had to go see...

There was lots of stands selling fruits and vegetables and foods to eat. There was also shops selling medicinal "wines" (which both Chrissy and Sue tried since the owner's daughter spoke a bit of English) and even a dentist "office" with a very cute and professional "dentist"???

There were also live chickens, children and dogs running around. I'm pretty sure that most people there must have assumed we were totally lost.

Soon it was lunch time and we walked around the corner to the subway station with Joel and Liz and went to the mall.

The subway station roof is right under the don't walk signal

The mall couldn't have been any more different than the market we had just been in. It was just like any mall here in America. Except that everyone and everything was Chinese or in Chinese and no one spoke English. 

We had lunch at a food court. You put money on a pre-loaded card that you can use at any food vendor inside. There were so many choices! But I finally settled on a "little bit" spicy beef pickle noodle soup and fresh pear-mango juice. YUM!

My soup is on the left

After lunch we went back to Joel and Liz's place. We met their kids and some of their friends working in China. We had pizza and enjoyed hearing about life there. 

Walking back to the hotel after dark, by ourselves I might add, I was amazed at how different the streets looked at night. I was also amazed at how many people were out and how late the shops were open. But I was ready for bed and went right to sleep...