Next Steps

Hi folks, we had an awesome day today including the Panda wrangling. Tonight is our last night in Chengdu. Tomorrow evening we fly to Guilin which is much further South and a bit to the East. It's in Guangxi province and has a much smaller population of something like 1.3 million. I think we're only there 1 or 2 nights then we go a bit further South to a town called Yangshuo.This part of the trip will be much quieter probably than anything in China so far which will be a nice change, and good considering we'll be spending 4 or 5 days in the futuristic madness of Hong Kong following. Hard to believe there's still 2 weeks to go, seems like we've been gone a couple months. Thanks for all your comments - please feel free to comment more.

Panda Breeding & Research Centre

This morning, we did a tour to the Panda breeding and research centre - only a 30min ride from our guesthouse. The pictures tell most the story.

This is a 2 year old Giant Panda by the name of Yuanda. He was more interested in chomping his apple, than being at all concerned about us.

We didnt get the name of the red panda, but he was also intent on chomping apples. Was a 2 or so hour visit to the centre. We saw babies (a few months) in a crib, 1 year olds, 2 year olds, and 3 year olds. As well as the red pandas. The 1 year olds were very active frolicking about their enclosure, but apparently pandas are only active in the morning for a few hours then they sleep the rest of the day and night. We arrived just as they were waking up which was perfect. They went straight for the bamboo.

China09_Chengdu_Pandas from tgoodwin on Vimeo.

Hot Pot

Last night we partook of the traditional Sichuan cuisine specialty, hot pot. The food of Sichuan province is well known the world over for one particular special property:

facemelting spicyness

Our selected food items - fish, veges, several varieties of mushrooms, were dropped into what seemed to be a bubbling broth of chilli, peppercorns, and hydrochloric acid. The broth was the colour of blood.

The facemeltingness of the 'food' we attempted to consume I can confirm with three words:

Hot (temperature) - any item i dished into my bowl I had to leave for atleast five if not 30mins before I could let it near myself. The table had a built in gas element and the large bowl was sunk into the table, so the noxious potion bubbled madly right in your face.

Hot (spice) - not only the mega chilli hit, but some of the hottest peppercorns i've been in the same room as. These gave the hotness a roundness which produced a sensation much like a soccer ball coated in battery acid being inflated within the mouth

Hot (the above combined) - i was only expecting spicy hot, but the temperature factor inflated the experience to ridiculous levels. The soccer ball coated in battery acid was kicked in there by Satan, and as such was on fire, and so was my face. The tingling sensation usually typical of the chilli eating experience was more akin to a bunch of highly skilled rats playing soccer with the aforementioned ball.

 Em chickened out early on in the experience because she thought the whole fish they chucked in was alive at the time, and also because she feared for her life.  There was no sign of the fish within about 30 secs - I think it just dissolved. I did a bit better, but the main thing is we're still alive folks. Some young locals had their photos taken with us, and heartily said "Welcome to Chengdu!". The rest of the restaurant, including a little girl perhaps 7 who kept coming over to our table to try her english on us, a cleaning lady who came over to check on us a few times and stir our broth, were keeping close tabs on the colour of our faces with much amusement. 

Yet another factor confirming that these people are indeed crazy.

Chengdu Hotpot from tgoodwin on Vimeo.