Chengdu

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Pandas

It was another early start to go see the pandas. Our guide at the Panda Research Base, Melody, gave us the lowdown on the giant panda:

 • · there are only about 1,600 giant pandas in the wild
 • · the research base has 160 pandas; currently 60 are “away on business”, two being on business in Edinburgh J
 • · originally carnivorous, the panda’s diet is now mostly bamboo
 • · only 20% of the 14kg of bamboo they consume per day is nutritious which is why they eat so much and laze around/sleep a lot to conserve energy
 • · the female is only fertile for 2 days of the year
 • · pregnancy lasts anywhere between 3 to 6 months, and has been known to be as long as 11 months
 • · they are very cute.

Green Goat Temple

After checking out Tianfu Square and having my photo taken with several Chinese tourists in front of the Chairman, we visited Qingyang Gong (Green Goat Temple). The temple is dedicated to Laozi, the founder of Taoism. It houses the Three Purities Hall guarded by two bronze goat statues, one of which embodies elements of all 12 zodiacal animals. Inside are the Three Purities – original chaos, the origin of form and the beginning of matter.

Teahouses and hotpot

After a busy day sightseeing, it was time to slip into Chengdu-time. Chengdu is known for its more relaxed pace of life and people spend hours whiling away the day in teahouses, sipping tea, dozing, gossiping and reading. It is also known for its fiery cuisine and on a recommendation from the hotel we went to a local Chongqing hotpot restaurant. All red and gold décor, huge fake European paintings covering the walls, packed to the rafters, and extremely spicy hot pot – excellent! We finished off the night with a stroll and a beer at Kuanzhai Alley, an area of beautifully restored old alleyways full of boutique shops, bars and restaurants.

Veggie lunch at the monastery

We started the next day in a more leisurely, Chengdu-inspired style. We arrived at Wenshu Yuan Monastery just in time for the vegetarian lunch served up by the monks. It wasn’t even midday but were told that lunch started and finished now. After collecting our two bowls and chopsticks we filed into the narrow wooden benches with everyone else and were served a variety of vegetarian slops from wooden buckets into one bowl and a big mound of rice in the other. Signs on the walls told us “silence” and “don’t waste food”. If only we’d seen these before allowing the monks to overfill our bowls. Our (big) breakfasts were only a couple of hours ago. It was a struggle; both Kim and I palmed off some of our lunch onto Paul, who manfully was eating up all of his tofu, which he hates. We were the last ones to finish, a good 5 minutes after the “lunch is finished” sign was paraded around. We spent the afternoon wandering around the temple complex and soaking up the zen atmosphere, complete with zen music coming from stone lotus flowers dotted around the place. The whole complex is beautiful, old temples, gardens and pagodas. It’s actually a working monastery so has living quarters as well as a guest house, a library, a prayer hall. And we discovered that Buddhist monks play table tennis and badminton to let their hair down!

More tea, and home

After the obligatory stop at a beautiful teahouse, we reverted to Brit style and enjoyed an afternoon tipple at the Shamrock pub before heading to the airport. It seems we had built up enough good karma for our flight to actually take off on time and arrive early in Shanghai.

More photos on Flickr .

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