Francesca and Henk-Jan's Backpacking Trip!
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Giant Panda Encounter
Note to reader: Francesca started this post, but I’ll keep working on it since she’s asleep!
“Our train ride from Chongqing to Chengdu wasn’t bad, but for some reason it left me quite exhausted. I fell asleep on the train while Henk was working on his blog posts (trying to ignore everyone staring at us since we had seats facing the entire train!) and I couldn’t seem to get my energy back upon arriving in Chengdu. We stood in the taxi line and eventually got ourselves a taxi to Sim’s Cozy Guesthouse. We had planned to specifically not CouchSurf in Chengdu because we knew we’d have very limited time there, plus we needed a sure-fire address that our Tibet permit could be sent to. Once we arrived and checked in, we realized our permit still hadn’t arrived. It was the 7th of August in the late afternoon already (around 4 PM) and we were supposed to fly out the morning of the 9th of August… so we didn’t have much time to spare in making sure we had those permits! Henk sent a message to our agent who assured us we would have the permits before we would need to fly out and we crossed our fingers.”
While Francesca settled into the room and rested up, I secured a meal for the both of us. I brought back a cheese burger for Francesca and a tuna sandwich for myself. Unfortunately the burger was not the best, whereas my sandwich was pretty good. I ended up running down again getting Francesca one as well. Furthermore, I talked to reception to book a tour for the following morning to see the Giant Pandas in a nearby reserve. Laundry was also on the to-do-list. Between all of that and the hassle of making sure our Tibet permits arrived before our flight 2 days in the future I was a pretty busy boy for a few hours. Finally, the promise came that our permits were already in Chengdu and would be delivered the following day. I headed back to our smallish, but comfortable room and we headed to bed early.
On the 8th of August Francesca and I awoke early to see the Giant Pandas in action before they return to their normal state of being: being lazy and doing nothing. 2 minivans chockfull with tourists were driven to the Panda Research Base, the largest center of its kind in the entire world. The Giant Panda, due to habitat destruction, poor diet, slow reproduction and low libido, is perhaps the most famous endangered animal. World-famous celebrities such as movie-star Jackie Chan and basketball-player Yao Ming have helped raise awareness and donated large sums of money to prevent extinction of these ever-so-cute, huge bears.
Francesca and I later learned the Base is home to about 60 Giant Pandas, with a number as low as 3000 still living in the wild. A short video we saw during the day proudly told us that Giant Panda breeding programs are slowly becoming more successful – after well-known failures such as giant panda porn – with babies being born at the Base as well as a Japanese reserve.
Around 8:30 AM we got our first look at one of the colossal black and white beasts. One adult had climbed on top of a wooden structure and was lazily sitting around with its back turned to us. Our group stood around for a good 10 minutes hoping/waiting/wishing for the bear to turn around, but it didn’t… On to the next enclosure and the next panda: this one did show its face, albeit in a tree in the distance. I could barely make it out, but managed to take a decent picture. At this point I feared the whole day would end up like this. And I really didn’t fancy running around taking pictures of panda-asses hidden in the bush all day.
Our luck turned when we got to the next enclosure though. Here, a big female was happily enjoying a hearty breakfast of bamboo in full view. Francesca and I wormed our way to the front and got some great pictures of the panda sitting in the grass with a mouthful of greens. Just after 9:00 AM we left and learned a little about the precarious situation baby pandas are born into. Panda cubs are born weighing no more than 130 grams, about 1/800th of the weight of their mother. They’re blind and pretty much helpless for the first 6 months of their lives. After that they slowly learn how to look for the right bamboo to eat, and by the time they reach the ripe age of 2 after which they usually leave their mothers to fend for themselves.
The next enclosure held a group of youngsters that had sadly already eaten. It looked like they were all enjoying an early siesta as none of them moved a muscle. We stood around for a while, but actually found the cheesy panda-merchandise more interesting. Luckily our guide agreed as she gathered the group and led us to the next area, where we were greeted by a group of Red Pandas. Red Pandas look a lot like raccoons that have been painted red. Luckily, they’re not as endangered as Giant Pandas, but still their numbers are limited and the world has to be careful not to kill them all off.
Seeing the playful Red Pandas after the lackluster Giant Pandas made the Reds look like hyperactive animals. They were running around, playing with each other and climbing in trees. Since they’re so adorable it was no problem to stand around for a good 15 minutes observing their behavior. Awesome! Our tour more or less ended after this as we got some free time to walk around the park. Francesca and I headed off by ourselves and spotted a male peacock with a chick by its side. We tried in vain to get it to show its feathers, but it did seem to respond to Francesca’s calls as it jumped across to our side of the enclosure and showed off in front of us. Some Chinese tourists spoiled the fun for us with their loud voices and the peacock ran off again.
We joined our group again and had a look at some newly born, pink, toothless and blind – they’re so ugly! – Giant Panda cubs. We had the opportunity for a photo shoot with a Giant Panda, but the hefty fee of roughly $80 was a little bit too much for us. A short walk later our group sat down for the video I already told you about. Before leaving we popped into the small museum, where we basically got a rerun of everything we’d already seen on tape. A little while later everyone had finished their walk through the museum and the vans returned to Sim’s. Francesca and I looked at the Lonely Planet for a place for lunch and settled for the Pizza Hut.
A short taxi ride and a quick peek at the menu later Francesca had ordered a cheese lovers’ pizza for herself and seafood pasta for me. As one expects of Pizza Hut the meal was pretty decent and filled us up for our Chengdu-in-a-day adventure. Our next stop was a tiny ‘museum’ filled with Mao Zedong memorabilia, run by an old man. Finding the museum turned out to be quite a daunting task as neither our taxi driver nor locals knew where to find the old bugger. Finally I found the right hutong (naturally, the one we’d already driven through) and spotted the little ‘museum.’ Museum is really too big of a word for the simple dusty shed crammed with statues, posters, buttons and other Mao-junk. Still, it was fun to worm our way through the dirt to check out the memorabilia and take a few pictures. Highlight was the shoot the old man himself demanded. I wonder how many people now have a picture of him!
Our last highlight of Chengdu came in the form of the Sichuan University Museum. Since it basically had the same inventory as many of the other museums we’ve come across in China I’ll refer to travelwiki’s description of the contents: “Starting in the basement, enter the first room where dozens of stone carvings dating from the Han dynasty to the Tang are on display. The room next door has a moderately interesting display on the museum's history and numerous examples of ancient bronzes and Stone Age artifacts. The first floor is mostly artifacts from the Ming and Qing dynasty, including furniture, silk clothing, and an interesting display of leather puppets. The second floor has the perhaps the most engaging display: artifacts and daily use items from ethnic minority groups in China's southwest, including Tibetans, Miao, Yi, Qiang, Jianpo and Naxi. The third floor has a decent display of calligraphy scrolls, paintings, and ceramics.”
I felt like crying after seeing so much more of the same and the world cried with me as it had suddenly started raining in Chengdu. Luckily we found a cab to take us back to Sim’s, where we relaxed for a while and figured out where to eat that night. I had been promised a visit to a hotpot restaurant and knew where to find the staff’s favorite cheapie. We actually had a hard time finding the place, not sure what it would look like, but when we finally did we were satisfied with a cool table for two, window-side. We were asked what kind of oil we wanted (butter or rape seed?) and our hotpot was started for us. Everywhere around us people were sweating like crazy, drinking yoghurt to soothe their burning tongues. Francesca started fearing the worst…
Fortunately for her the Chinese do have a mild hotpot (basically non-spicy) which we automatically got in the center of our hotpot. Next up was the difficult choice of ordering food to dump in our boiling broth. Wonder of wonders the staff actually had a written English menu. We decided that we shouldn’t gamble on some of the more exotic dishes, ordering some vegetables, beef strips and shrimp dumplings instead. The food soon arrived, filling our table with many dishes. What to do next? With the help of a few waitresses I finally managed to explain that this was our first time eating a Chinese hotpot and that we really needed some help. One of them decided to do the cooking for us and showed us what to do. Before dropping the food in the hotpot she made us a dipping bowl with an interesting sauce (salt, soy sauce, garlic, sugar, plum sauce, and some other sauce), something we wouldn’t have known to do. Next, she started preparing the food. Mainly we just wanted to make sure we wouldn’t undercook the meat. Surprisingly, Francesca found the mild hotpot quite edible. I was not having as hard a time with the outer hotpot as I’d expected. Sure, it was spicy and the meat and veggies certainly become infused with spices; and sure, I started sweating like a bear, but it wasn’t unbearable. We even ordered some strangely sweet leavened bread to add to our already varied meal. I managed to finish most of the food we ordered, making the hotpot experience a grand success.
More troublesome had been the acquisition of our travel permits. I had to call a few more times to make sure we hadn’t been forgotten. Just before we left for dinner we finally got the call that we could go down to reception to pick them up. Huzzah, all set for Tibet. I arranged a taxi for our 8:00 AM flight for the following day and headed back upstairs to Francesca to show the permits. Whilst she relaxed I packed the bags for the next part of our journey: the trip through Tibet!
“Our train ride from Chongqing to Chengdu wasn’t bad, but for some reason it left me quite exhausted. I fell asleep on the train while Henk was working on his blog posts (trying to ignore everyone staring at us since we had seats facing the entire train!) and I couldn’t seem to get my energy back upon arriving in Chengdu. We stood in the taxi line and eventually got ourselves a taxi to Sim’s Cozy Guesthouse. We had planned to specifically not CouchSurf in Chengdu because we knew we’d have very limited time there, plus we needed a sure-fire address that our Tibet permit could be sent to. Once we arrived and checked in, we realized our permit still hadn’t arrived. It was the 7th of August in the late afternoon already (around 4 PM) and we were supposed to fly out the morning of the 9th of August… so we didn’t have much time to spare in making sure we had those permits! Henk sent a message to our agent who assured us we would have the permits before we would need to fly out and we crossed our fingers.”
While Francesca settled into the room and rested up, I secured a meal for the both of us. I brought back a cheese burger for Francesca and a tuna sandwich for myself. Unfortunately the burger was not the best, whereas my sandwich was pretty good. I ended up running down again getting Francesca one as well. Furthermore, I talked to reception to book a tour for the following morning to see the Giant Pandas in a nearby reserve. Laundry was also on the to-do-list. Between all of that and the hassle of making sure our Tibet permits arrived before our flight 2 days in the future I was a pretty busy boy for a few hours. Finally, the promise came that our permits were already in Chengdu and would be delivered the following day. I headed back to our smallish, but comfortable room and we headed to bed early.
On the 8th of August Francesca and I awoke early to see the Giant Pandas in action before they return to their normal state of being: being lazy and doing nothing. 2 minivans chockfull with tourists were driven to the Panda Research Base, the largest center of its kind in the entire world. The Giant Panda, due to habitat destruction, poor diet, slow reproduction and low libido, is perhaps the most famous endangered animal. World-famous celebrities such as movie-star Jackie Chan and basketball-player Yao Ming have helped raise awareness and donated large sums of money to prevent extinction of these ever-so-cute, huge bears.
Francesca and I later learned the Base is home to about 60 Giant Pandas, with a number as low as 3000 still living in the wild. A short video we saw during the day proudly told us that Giant Panda breeding programs are slowly becoming more successful – after well-known failures such as giant panda porn – with babies being born at the Base as well as a Japanese reserve.
Around 8:30 AM we got our first look at one of the colossal black and white beasts. One adult had climbed on top of a wooden structure and was lazily sitting around with its back turned to us. Our group stood around for a good 10 minutes hoping/waiting/wishing for the bear to turn around, but it didn’t… On to the next enclosure and the next panda: this one did show its face, albeit in a tree in the distance. I could barely make it out, but managed to take a decent picture. At this point I feared the whole day would end up like this. And I really didn’t fancy running around taking pictures of panda-asses hidden in the bush all day.
Our luck turned when we got to the next enclosure though. Here, a big female was happily enjoying a hearty breakfast of bamboo in full view. Francesca and I wormed our way to the front and got some great pictures of the panda sitting in the grass with a mouthful of greens. Just after 9:00 AM we left and learned a little about the precarious situation baby pandas are born into. Panda cubs are born weighing no more than 130 grams, about 1/800th of the weight of their mother. They’re blind and pretty much helpless for the first 6 months of their lives. After that they slowly learn how to look for the right bamboo to eat, and by the time they reach the ripe age of 2 after which they usually leave their mothers to fend for themselves.
The next enclosure held a group of youngsters that had sadly already eaten. It looked like they were all enjoying an early siesta as none of them moved a muscle. We stood around for a while, but actually found the cheesy panda-merchandise more interesting. Luckily our guide agreed as she gathered the group and led us to the next area, where we were greeted by a group of Red Pandas. Red Pandas look a lot like raccoons that have been painted red. Luckily, they’re not as endangered as Giant Pandas, but still their numbers are limited and the world has to be careful not to kill them all off.
Seeing the playful Red Pandas after the lackluster Giant Pandas made the Reds look like hyperactive animals. They were running around, playing with each other and climbing in trees. Since they’re so adorable it was no problem to stand around for a good 15 minutes observing their behavior. Awesome! Our tour more or less ended after this as we got some free time to walk around the park. Francesca and I headed off by ourselves and spotted a male peacock with a chick by its side. We tried in vain to get it to show its feathers, but it did seem to respond to Francesca’s calls as it jumped across to our side of the enclosure and showed off in front of us. Some Chinese tourists spoiled the fun for us with their loud voices and the peacock ran off again.
We joined our group again and had a look at some newly born, pink, toothless and blind – they’re so ugly! – Giant Panda cubs. We had the opportunity for a photo shoot with a Giant Panda, but the hefty fee of roughly $80 was a little bit too much for us. A short walk later our group sat down for the video I already told you about. Before leaving we popped into the small museum, where we basically got a rerun of everything we’d already seen on tape. A little while later everyone had finished their walk through the museum and the vans returned to Sim’s. Francesca and I looked at the Lonely Planet for a place for lunch and settled for the Pizza Hut.
A short taxi ride and a quick peek at the menu later Francesca had ordered a cheese lovers’ pizza for herself and seafood pasta for me. As one expects of Pizza Hut the meal was pretty decent and filled us up for our Chengdu-in-a-day adventure. Our next stop was a tiny ‘museum’ filled with Mao Zedong memorabilia, run by an old man. Finding the museum turned out to be quite a daunting task as neither our taxi driver nor locals knew where to find the old bugger. Finally I found the right hutong (naturally, the one we’d already driven through) and spotted the little ‘museum.’ Museum is really too big of a word for the simple dusty shed crammed with statues, posters, buttons and other Mao-junk. Still, it was fun to worm our way through the dirt to check out the memorabilia and take a few pictures. Highlight was the shoot the old man himself demanded. I wonder how many people now have a picture of him!
Our last highlight of Chengdu came in the form of the Sichuan University Museum. Since it basically had the same inventory as many of the other museums we’ve come across in China I’ll refer to travelwiki’s description of the contents: “Starting in the basement, enter the first room where dozens of stone carvings dating from the Han dynasty to the Tang are on display. The room next door has a moderately interesting display on the museum's history and numerous examples of ancient bronzes and Stone Age artifacts. The first floor is mostly artifacts from the Ming and Qing dynasty, including furniture, silk clothing, and an interesting display of leather puppets. The second floor has the perhaps the most engaging display: artifacts and daily use items from ethnic minority groups in China's southwest, including Tibetans, Miao, Yi, Qiang, Jianpo and Naxi. The third floor has a decent display of calligraphy scrolls, paintings, and ceramics.”
I felt like crying after seeing so much more of the same and the world cried with me as it had suddenly started raining in Chengdu. Luckily we found a cab to take us back to Sim’s, where we relaxed for a while and figured out where to eat that night. I had been promised a visit to a hotpot restaurant and knew where to find the staff’s favorite cheapie. We actually had a hard time finding the place, not sure what it would look like, but when we finally did we were satisfied with a cool table for two, window-side. We were asked what kind of oil we wanted (butter or rape seed?) and our hotpot was started for us. Everywhere around us people were sweating like crazy, drinking yoghurt to soothe their burning tongues. Francesca started fearing the worst…
Fortunately for her the Chinese do have a mild hotpot (basically non-spicy) which we automatically got in the center of our hotpot. Next up was the difficult choice of ordering food to dump in our boiling broth. Wonder of wonders the staff actually had a written English menu. We decided that we shouldn’t gamble on some of the more exotic dishes, ordering some vegetables, beef strips and shrimp dumplings instead. The food soon arrived, filling our table with many dishes. What to do next? With the help of a few waitresses I finally managed to explain that this was our first time eating a Chinese hotpot and that we really needed some help. One of them decided to do the cooking for us and showed us what to do. Before dropping the food in the hotpot she made us a dipping bowl with an interesting sauce (salt, soy sauce, garlic, sugar, plum sauce, and some other sauce), something we wouldn’t have known to do. Next, she started preparing the food. Mainly we just wanted to make sure we wouldn’t undercook the meat. Surprisingly, Francesca found the mild hotpot quite edible. I was not having as hard a time with the outer hotpot as I’d expected. Sure, it was spicy and the meat and veggies certainly become infused with spices; and sure, I started sweating like a bear, but it wasn’t unbearable. We even ordered some strangely sweet leavened bread to add to our already varied meal. I managed to finish most of the food we ordered, making the hotpot experience a grand success.
More troublesome had been the acquisition of our travel permits. I had to call a few more times to make sure we hadn’t been forgotten. Just before we left for dinner we finally got the call that we could go down to reception to pick them up. Huzzah, all set for Tibet. I arranged a taxi for our 8:00 AM flight for the following day and headed back upstairs to Francesca to show the permits. Whilst she relaxed I packed the bags for the next part of our journey: the trip through Tibet!
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