Back to civilization

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Hi,

After an exhusting week of travelling from Yunan to Sichuan through monutains in elevation around 3,000 to 5,000 meters (though beautiful landscape and people), I have arrived to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province.
After no hot water, not to speak about running water at all, I have now good showers.
After tempratures around zero, I got rid of my tiets, gloves, wool hat, etc.
After Chinese people that they can hardly say more then 'hello', 'bye bye' and 'thank you', in the hostel here the people can speak fluent English.
Life is much easier and comfortable here, in Chengdu.
It is so good to be again in a big and a modern city. Its only problem is the polution. The sun, stars and moon are not seen, normally.
In Chengdu, like in any other big city, the Chinese destroy old buildings and build new ones instead. One of the reasons for that is that the old buildings represent poverty and famine. By destroying the old buildings, it is like eliminating the poverty and famine that was in the 60th of the 20th century.
And indeed, when I was a kid, in order to convince me to finish the food, my parents used the ultimative sentence: "did you know that in China there are millinons of hungry children that would love to eat your food?" In other families, China was replaced with Africa, Cambodia, etc, depends on which year you were born.
Chengdu number 1 attraction is visiting in the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base. The pandas are so cute. They eat a lot of bamboo (20 kg per day), while all the tourists take pictures of them. They like so much to eat that they seem to don't care about the tourists.
The entrence fee is reasonable but if you want to have your photo with a giant panda, then it costs 50$, with a baby panda: 150$. Apparently, there are people that are willing to pay those enormous sums for this pleasure. Only for red panda it costs about 12$ - nobody likes them.
In one of the parks in the city I met a starnge guy who tries to continue Dr Zamenhof legacy and to promote the Asperanto language. I had no idea that this language still have supporters. I thought it has died long time ago. Not enough that I have difficulties in understanding Chinese (i.e, I understand none), this guy was approaching me in Asperanto. However, I could understand a bit since it appears to be similar to Spanish. Defintly, he was the main attraction in the park, even better then the pagodas.

Bye, Sharon

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