Panda’s, teahouses and the world’s biggest Buddha in Chengdu

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Day 472: Wednesday 14th October - The world’s biggest Buddha

After yesterday’s exertions on Emei Shan I’m in no hurry to get up early this morning and just take my time instead. After a relaxed breakfast I get on my way. The bus station is next door to the hostel so thankfully it isn’t a long walk. The buses to Leshan are hourly but I’ve just missed one so I have an hour wait. A Swedish guy that was in my dorm last night joins me in the bus station; he is on his way to Chengdu. This guy is one of the most unlikely travellers I’ve seen in 16 months. He’s very shy, doesn’t seem to have a great deal of confidence and it seems like hes stuggling a bit. He didn’t get off the mountain last night until late in the evening and doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing now. I try to give him some help but he seems more comfortable in his own little world than sitting with me and maybe listening to some of the advice I could give him. Okay, fine by me.

It is 40 minutes to Leshan on the bus. Leshan is a small city on the way to Chengdu famous as the location of the world’s biggest Buddha. I store my big backpack in the bus station to lighten the load and then catch a taxi to the site of the Grand Buddha as the bus station is 10 kilometres away.....and this is a small city! The taxi driver after initially trying it on with an unrealistic price puts his meter on and then drives through the city like a crazed lunatic. I’m going to be dead before I get to see this mammoth Buddha! He drops me at one of the gates which happens in hindsight to be the one I didn’t want. The gate he has dropped me at is the one for the giant reclining Buddha. I end up paying 150 Yuan (£14) to visit this park and the Grand Buddha rather than the 90 Yuan fee I spot at the other gates which presumably includes just the Grand Buddha.

For this extra 50 Yuan I see a giant reclining Buddha carved into the cliff face which must be at least half the size of a football pitch. There are many other large Buddha carvings in the park, replicas of various images throughout China, and each at least 10 metres tall. In a cave there are hundreds if not thousands of miniature Buddha carvings too. All impressive stuff but not really what I came to see. I climb up the steps in the cliff face and through the remainder of the park to the site of the Grand Buddha. This is agony for my legs which are feeling the effects of yesterday on Emei Shan.

The site of the Grand Buddha is packed with Chinese tourists. Dafo as the Grand Buddha is known is carved into the cliff face overlooking the confluence of two rivers. He is the largest Buddha in the world at 71 metres tall. Dafo was carved in the eighth century, taking 90 years to complete. From the top of the cliff it is difficult to appreciate the full magnitude. I take the path down the cliff with the rest of the Chinese tourists, and wait impatiently in the ‘queue like’ line which snakes to the bottom of the cliff at snail pace. Not for the first time in a tourist attraction in China I feel claustrophobic - there are too many people to enjoy it. At the bottom of the cliff staring up to Dafo’s face high above you realise the full magnitude, and also when you see his giant sized feet next to you. But all in all, just like XueLan warned Leshan’s Grand Buddha is just okay. Maybe it is worth a stop if you’re going to/from Chengdu but otherwise it is not worth the effort.

And effort is what it is for me climbing back up the cliff after visiting Dafo and then back down again. I walk back around to the entrance I came in through hoping to find a taxi but have no luck so I continue walking up the road. Eventually I find a taxi but now I’ve forgotten the name of the bus station I want to go to. The problem is Leshan has three and as I get in the taxi I have no confidence he is taking me to the right one. I’m right, he doesn’t but that is my fault not his, so I end up taking two taxis to get to the right bus station - very annoying.

It is a two hour bus journey to Chengdu and once I arrive I have the same problem as Leshan in that I am several kilometres from where I need to be. It is rush hour too to make things worse and therefore taxis are thin on the ground. I initially start walking and then wisely consider this to be a touch silly given that Chengdu is one of the largest cities in China. Instead, I get on a bus which drops me just 20 metres from the front of the hostel.....perfect.

I decide after travelling over 1500 kilometres west from Shanghai relatively quickly and with 2000 kilometres to travel back north east to Beijing, to spend an extra day relaxing in Chengdu so I extend my planned one day stay to two days. This will allow me to get some much needed laundry done and maybe the chance to shop for some proper footwear as my flip-flops are fast becoming unsuitable in the cooler climate of central and northern China in the autumn. I even manage to change my Hong Kong currency but decide against booking on to a tour to the Panda’s tomorrow as the hostel receptionist explains it will be cheaper if I have a Panda card which I can get tomorrow in the city. With an extra day to play with I can go to the panda centre the day after tomorrow so it is all good.

After chatting with XueLan I finally get some more Sichuanese food at getting on 10pm. I eat in the hostel as it has its own restaurant. Tonight though the restaurant has run out of rice, which in China is like sacrilege. If this was a restaurant out on the street there would be a riot!!

Day 473: Thursday 15th October - Skipping shopping to drink tea

Having decided to stay an extra day in Chengdu I can take everything at a more leisurely pace. That includes having a lazy morning to restore my energies after Emei Shan. By noon I really feel like I should do something, and I have three things on my mind to do today - get a Panda card, go shopping for a pair of shoes and visit one of Chengdu’s many teahouses. It isn’t a busy day and it involves no sightseeing but that suits me just fine. You need those days doing very little once in a while.

Getting a Panda card takes much more time than I had anticipated. A member of staff on reception has drawn on my map where I can find the Hongqi store that sells the card. I catch the bus there only to find that there is no store at the point on the map she indicated. I ask in a few shops and they point me to another Hongqi store which doesn’t sell the card but they show me on the map where will, but it is several kilometres away. I decide to walk back to the hostel, where I discover that Hongqi is a large chain and there are hundreds of stores in the city. The girl on reception points on the map to the right one, up by the station where I caught the bus originally. I can’t be bothered to return so I decide to walk to an alternative store, and the main branch in the city centre. It must take the best part of an hour to walk there. Once there I have no problem finally getting a Panda card. It costs only 1 Yuan (10 pence) and will save me 60 Yuan (£6) in visiting the Panda Base alone. It is also valid for a number of other tourist attractions in the city which I have no interest in, but it is a good initiative to boost tourism in the city. My one criticism would be accessibility - I must have wasted the best part of 3 hours trying to get the bloody card!!

I walk east from the Hongqi store to Tianfu square, the focal point of the city. A huge statue of Mao Zedong, the founder and first chairman of the People’s Republic of China looks out over the square. I continue walking east until I reach People’s Park which has a really nice atmosphere to it and there are various activities taking place in the park: old people dancing, people singing and some playing musical instruments. In the park are a number of teahouses which is one thing the city is famous for. I can’t be bothered to shop so instead I plonk myself on a chair and spend a relaxing couple of hours reading, drinking chrysanthemum flower tea (sounds bad, but actually quite good) and above all just people watching. Teahouses are a great insight into Chengdu life as people chat with family and friends, play games of mah-jong or other board games, read like myself or even knit. Most of the clientele have seen better days but there is still plenty of life in this charming teahouse.

Day 474: Friday 16th October - Cuddling a Giant Panda

After a few lazy mornings it is back to the early starts as the tour from the hostel to the Panda Base leaves at 7:45am. Everyone in the dorm is up though as well to go to the tour, I guess because this is the must-do activity in Chengdu. The Giant Panda Breeding Research Base is 10 kilometres north of the city and holds some 100 Giant and Red Pandas. When you consider that the Giant Panda is the most famous endangered animal in the world and that there are now less than 2000 left in the wild in 3 provinces in the west of China (Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi) and less than 300 living in captivity, then for there to be 100 in one place is a bit special. There are a few pandas in western zoos but you can get much closer at the Panda research base. If any animal symbolises a country, then in China it is the Giant Panda.

Our visit starts at the Giant Panda enclosure where 4 Giant Panda’s are out and about at the moment. One is deep in thought up a tree, one is sat staring back at all these strange people looking at him and the other two are oblivious to the crowd of people and are too busy play fighting with one another which is entertaining to spectate. We leave the Giant Panda enclosure and walk next to the Red Pandas who are very Racoon-like in their appearance and about the same size as a large cat or a small dog. It is feeding time and they get all excited which keeps everyone entertained. They are much more active than the Giant Pandas. Next, we visit the hospital where a number of new-born baby pandas are being cared for at the moment.

For me it has all been building to the next part of the tour: an opportunity to get a photo taken with a Giant Panda and to stroke and cuddle the panda at the same time. This opportunity doesn’t come cheap, it is 1000 Yuan (£90). However, it is a once in a lifetime opportunity. The likelihood of seeing a panda in the wild is very small and the opportunity is too good to miss. My parents gave me some money for my birthday a few months ago and I told them I would use it for those extra special things which you come across when travelling but are expensive all things considered. This is one of those times so I hand over 1000 Yuan for a few minutes sat next to an infant Giant Panda. The pandas fur is soft and it seems comfortable sat next to me and is happy for me to stroke it and give it a cuddle. I think he’s too busy munching on bamboo to be bothered by my presence. The experience is over all too quickly but will go alongside those other magical wildlife moments from my travels. From swimming with penguins and sealions in the Galapagos, cuddling a koala in Australia, being chased by an orang-utan in Indonesia, stroking a tiger in Thailand and now cuddling a giant panda........to do one would be amazing but to experience them all.....is there a superlative to describe it?......incredible will have to do!

We finish the visit of the Panda Base by walking around the museum which gives all the factual information on the panda. The reason it is endangered is not down to one specific issue. Like most endangered species its natural habitat is under threat. It has been a target for poaching since the ancient times also. There are inherent issues not down to man though as well. For instance, the panda is a solitary animal and can have problems breeding. They give birth to up to 2 babies but the mother can only care for one on her own so if two panda cubs are born one will inevitably die. Then there is their diet of bamboo, which necessitates spending most of the day eating just to get enough nutrition to survive.

I get back to the hostel at 11:30am from the tour. First priority is to check out as this has to be done by noon but then food is the order of the day as I missed breakfast and I’m now starving. I really love Sichuanese food, it is hot and spicy but not too spicy, However, as I’ve found to my cost that while the hot Sichuan peppers and chillis are okay to eat, to put it politely they cause havoc with my digestive system. In that regard, I’ll be glad to see the back of the hot and spicy food that the province is famous for! I sit talking with Fabian, an Australian-Chinese girl who was in my dorm who I’ve struck up a brief friendship with last night and at the pandas this morning. She has to leave at 2pm though to get a train. I have another three hours before I will have to do the same.

I spend most of this time in the restaurant in the hostel chilling out. I bump into Riley again from the Yangtze cruise and sit and chat with him for a while to catch up on the last few days since we parted in Chongqing. I also enquire about Tibet at the hostel. Chengdu and Sim’s Cozy Garden Hostel where I am staying is one of the best places to arrange a trip to Tibet from so they’re sure to have all the information. As I’m travelling on to Beijing (another good place to organise the trip from) they advise me not to arrange it through themselves. They tell me to put a notice up at the hostel which I do detailing what sort of Tibet trip I want to do and the dates I’m interested in to try and get other travellers to form a group. I hope I can find some people to do it with in the first week of November to reduce costs and to share in what promises to be a highlight not just of my China trip but my entire trip. I’m excited just thinking about it.

On the way out of the hostel to catch a bus to the train station I read the posters in the hostel about the earthquake in Sichuan last year. 70,000 people died in an earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter Scale, which struck the north of the province, several hundred kilometres north of Chengdu. I remember this earthquake striking just before I was about to set off on my travels (May 2008 I think). I seem to recall my mum (being my mum) asking if I was planning on going anywhere near the earthquake. ‘Probably’ was my reply and she no doubt started to worry about what natural disasters zones I was going to find myself in. None so far thankfully in 16 months, although I just missed a landslide in Jakarta by a few weeks.

My train leaves Chengdu at 6:20 for the 18 hour journey north east to Xian. I got the hard sleeper and the train I wanted but find that I’ve got the middle berth rather than the bottom bunk which is the best one to get. It doesn’t bother me too much, and all things considered I get a decent night’s sleep. Like most places I’ve been in China the people on my carriage are very curious of this foreigner on the train with them. I feel like a zoo exhibit or even a panda ; )

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