Spicy food, caged pandas and opera

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Monday August 7th

Our bus was leaving at 7:30 from the bus station which was pretty far away so we woke up pretty early again. The bus was more modern and clean than the one I took to get to Kanding but the drawback was the chinese I was sitting next to. He was big, pushy, sweaty and smelly. He'd sit with his knee on my side of the bench with the legs spread wide and if I didn't put my knee against his to push him he would take even more, which is what happened when I removed my leg from his because I was disgusted by his sweaty self. The bus had air con but I couldn't feel it because the disgusting chinese man seemed to love to force me to touch his leg which was really hot for some reason. You know I can be quite big by chinese standard also and sometimes on bus I wish I could just take a bit more leg space and spread my leg more. But there is something called being civilized and I restrain myself to my half of the bench. I know all about that the PC crowd will tell me oh it's a different culture bla bla bla and I agree with their point. However after spending 7 hours in a bus next to that disgusting man I say otherwise, PC or not. He made what should have been a comfortable bus ride a real annoyance. For about an hour for some reason he went in the front. Maybe because he was unhappy that the person he was sitting next to actually tried to fight back so he couldn't totally spread his leg like he wanted but for some reason he came back after a while. This time I was ready for him and I firmly planted my knee in the middle of the 2 seats, even taking more space than half of the bench. I managed to kept it for almost all the ride even though I had to fight for it constantly as he was trying to push me away.

We stopped for lunch and had some sichuan noodle soup. It was the best chinese soup I've ever had. Soup in the south tastes nothing, Sichuan soup is spicy and tasty I love it. We got to Chengdu at around 3PM. Slightly before we entered the city I told the czech: "We can see Chengdu is near, look at the sky". Indeed the sky ahead was very grey. Big chinese city in view. Once we entered Chengdu it started raining, maybe my judgment on Chengdu's air quality was made too fast. It was raining quite heavily once we got out of the bus so we waited like 20 minutes for it to stop but realized there was no point since the hotel we were planning to go was literaly 30 seconds away from the bus station. We took another triple room at the Traffic hotel for 40RMB each (didn't manage to bring the price down). It is quite expansive for us but we didn't feel like walking or finding out which bus to take to get to the other hostel. I was planning to stay for a few days in Chengdu but figured I'd change for Mix Hostel, a place highly recommended by several people including Louis and Maude from Yangshuo the day after since I didn't know how to get there (it's not in the LP yet, it's a new guesthouse). The czechs were planning to take a train to Xi'an tomorrow as they had a plane to catch in Beijing in 7 days. They were a bit tired of China so they tried to take an earlier flight but their airlines company, aeroflot, didn't have any earlier flight so they were stuck to stay all 7 days.

We both had different things to arrange so we split up and said we'd meet in Highfly Cafe by the riverfront for dinner. I went to an internet cafe, reserved for Mix Hostel and planned how to get there tomorrow. I spent more time than I realized and before I knew it it was time to meet up at the cafe. I went there and waited the czech with a beer. Once they got there we ordered as we were all starving. I got a club sandwhcih that was fairly original. Instead of chicken and bacon it was ham and egg. Good though. It felt good to be eating some western food after a while of only chinese/tibetan food. Dinner was good I sort of like the place, good ambience, decent music, decent food and cute waitress. After we were done the czechs wanted to go visit the tibetan district. Not feeling like being a tourist for one day I declined since I also figured that after being in tibet a tibetan district in a big chinese town would be quite depressing.

I went back to the hotel and burned a CD. My memory card is now full and I realized that the second memory card I thought I had turned out to be a 16MB card instead of another 512MB so I had to burn, especially since we were planning to go see the pandas the day after in the early morning. I just read and watched the international news for the rest of the evening. It might not look very tiring when you read but 8+ hours bus ride everyday make you tired for some reason, especially when you're with some big sweaty guy with no manners.

Tuesday August 8th

Once again (this is unfortunately starting to become a routine) we woke early to get to the pandas early. We didn't want to take a "tour" that, for 70RMB, just drop you at the pandas, pay the 30RMB entrance ticket and come pick you up at 11:30. That just meant paying 40RMB for incity transport which is just stupid. We knew we had to take a couple of bus transfert and then get a rickshaw but we figured how hard could it be? Well it wasn't easy. We had to take a bus to the train station and then ask around for 20 minutes at the train station how to get to the bus terminus next to the pandas until we found someone who could understand what we were trying to say. I must admit I didn't enjoy it, I hate feeling like an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing. I'm more of the kind of traveler that "does his homework before leaving the hotel" and then just ask for minor details along the way as I'm shy when it means exposing my lack of knowledge about something. I just hate looking like a damn clueless tourist. So Gaby did most of the asking around with me just voting for a taxi. In the end we did get to the terminus and from there it was an easy rickshaw ride to the pandas. The rickshaw driver tried to ask for 20RMB initially but since we were the only tourists around and there were 20 drivers he didn't have much negotiating power and took us for 10.

We paid for the 30RMB entrance ticket (the girl didn't fall for my poor tourist speech, I think she heard it before). I was happy to go to the Panda Breeding Center and see pandas. I was a little bit disapointed. Pandas like to live at altitude higher than Chengdu and they can't take the high temperature in the summer in Chengdu. So they keep them in airconditioned room. I was hoping they'd released them at some point but they didn't, or at least we didn't see them outside except for the one that you can have your picture taken with (for 400RMB, although I totally agree with this high fee as this is intrusive for the pandas) but there was no way to take a good shot of that panda unless you paid the fee. He seemed happy to eat his bamboo and pose for the camera. He seemed especially when the hot brazilian babe came next to him to pose although I'm not too sure if it was because of the nice brazilian import (oh oh, I'm gonna get trashed for treating women as object here. Calm down it's a joke ladies) or because his guardian gave him an extra big piece of bamboo. The Giant Pandas were quite happy to eat bamboo in their cage and it seemed that only tourists cared about the fact that they couldn't get good pictures.

We went to the red panda enclosure and they were outside. Unlike the big pandas these can take the heat and they were busy walking around, lying down playing dead or walking in the trees. I found them pretty cool even if they're not as cute as big pandas they're still lovable. We also went to the nursery where, to our surprise, we realized that 2 babies had been born 2 days ago. They were incredibly small and ugly (all pink) and were kept behind several plastic containers in a room where the temperature/humidity was controlled. They were under the constant supervision of a technician and they asked for us not to use flash when taking pictures. We had a bowl of instand noodles for breakfast in the park.

We were done by 11:30 so we came back again using public transport except this time we caught bus No. 1 which goes somewhat close to our hotel. We got back there by about 12:45 and prepared for check-out. I said goodbye to the czechs and we exchanged emails. If I go to europe I'll give them a call or something so we could go share a beer somewhere in Czech republic.

I used the instructions from Mix website (awesome website by the way) to get to the hostel, taking bus 55 until we cross a bridge and meet a rocket, can't be hard. I got off at the stop after the bridge and went looking for the guesthouse. I wasn't too sure I was on the good street and then I saw, painted on the wall, a cartoon of a backpacker with his nose in a book titled "Lonely Planet" and a sign below saying: "Backpacker Beware". I immediately loved the place. You can see it is made by backpackers for backpackers. The staff is friendly, there's funny signs on the walls, the place is packed with friendly people. I got a 4-bed dorm room for 20RMB. On the way up to my room I saw sitting at a table Alexandre, the quebecer I had met in Zhongdian and who shared with me the hard-earned knowledge of the 4-base system of chinese relationship.

It was good to be back in the company of a quebecer. We chatted for a while and then decided to go to People's Park and see Mao statue in the city center. He had been told by one of the girl working at the hostel that it was cool and he was leaving tomorrow for Beijing so he wanted to see it. I hadn't had the chance to see a Mao statue yet so I was excited at the opportunity to see the man with an ego problem in concrete. I dropped my stuff in my room and we took a bus to downtown. We spotted a McDonald and Alex tried his luck: "Un ptit Mcdo?" (Do you desire to go to McDonald?) to which I replied "Pkoi pas" (Of course). When conversation turns to McDonald among travellers it almost feels like a competition to see who will say the most spiteful thing about the restaurant chain. "I haven't been to McDonald since the time of mullet and leopard jackets were cool", "I heard Ronald was a pedophile" or "I think anyone who goes to McDonald is worse than Pol Pot" are things you hear often in hostels. But if you get them drunk enough, all backpackers will secretly admit that they've to McDonald much more often than what they say and if they have taken hard drugs some will even goes as far as to admit that *gasp* Big Mac actually tastes good. Okay I'm exagerating a little bit but it is true that saying you enjoy McDonald every once in a while is almost taboo among backpackers.

We both had delicious Big Mac combo and everyone stared at the wierdos who had invaded their restaurant. On top of the good food, I saw one of the neatest chinglish I've seen in the trip. On the wall next to where you order there is the plaque with the employe of the month. You can see written in english: "Whale Done". I asked Alex and he said the chinese symbols indeed meant "Well Done". Sometimes I wonder whether the chinglish is intentional. After McDonald we walked a bit west toward Mao and the People's Park. On the way we were interrupted by a friendly monk who was sitting on a bench and wanted to take picture of us with him with his camera. I'm not too sure how a tibetan monk can get enough money to buy a digital camera but they do. I guess I'll stop feeling bad about not paying to enter the monastery in Zhongdian. We agreed to the pictures but took one ourselves.

We arrived at Mao a while later and we did self-portrait of ourselves and the statue of everyone's favorite dictators (except for the millions who were, you know, killed because of him). It's funny whenever you try to approach the subject of Mao with a chinese you get the same answer: 70% good 30% bad. It is the party line, it's what the chinese are told and that's what they repeat to you. I'm not criticizing the fact that Mao did some good things (well to be honest you could remove the s because the only good thing he did was unify China) but it just seems that chineses do not want to think about their history. They'll accept whatever is the official version which I think is sad.

After the intense emotional moment of seeing Mao in stone we went to People's Park. It was indeed a lovely park and we strolled around for a while, sweating profusely in the heat. We walked in a remote corner in the forest and saw a couple get out of it. Having seen perversity in park in that trip before (in Vancouver), I quickly suspected that they had been doing "things" out there by the look on their face! Alex and I managed to avoid suspicion by leaving the remote area unseen. We were back in the main crowd and no one could suspect us of deviation! Mao is near we had to be careful. We went to a place where music was being played using a mic that look like one you buy for kids except the sound quality was worse, if that is indeed possible. The music couldve been good but it was ruined by the distortion.

We left the park and made it back to the hostel. But I wanted to go to Carrefour, a french supermarket chain that has some import so we walked there. I was hoping for good chips and nutella unfortunately they had neither. I had to settle for international Lays which taste nothing like those back home (and even those aren't good) and jam for tomorrow's breakfast. On the way out we met 2 frenchmen (you could recognize it by the fact that htey had just bought a baguette) and we started chatting up. They're also living at Mix and it seems they've been in Chengdu for more than a month. They just like it so much in here that they're just staying, not working just lazing all day at the hostel and drinking at night. They're nice people and all and I don't want to get involved in what other people are doing but it seems uninteresting to stay in the same place for so long when travelling. Back at the hostel I realized they were staying in the same room as me.

Alex and I had bought 2 beers each to start the night so I joined him and some brits downstairs. Most of them left after less than an hours on trains so it was only me, alex, a british guy who's name starts with S and Brandon an australian guy teaching english in Suzhou. We decided to go eat Sichuan's most famous meal: hotpot. We went to this place near the hostel. Hotpot is quite simple. There's a boiling broth in the middle of the table and you order raw meat and vegetables. You put those in the broth and fish with your chopsticks. We ordered a variety of meat, potatoes and mushrooms and a half/half hotpot. Hotpot in Chengdu is VERY spicy so you can order slightly less spicy versions like half-half that will not leave your stomach ruined. It was totally delicious. One of hte best meal I've had in China but thank god we were close to the air-con which seemed set on "Arctic" temperature setting and that they had plenty of napkins to take care of the sweat because it was so spicy.

After the meal we took a bus to this place called Dave's Oasis which is a nice western style pub with free internet, pool table and comfy sofa. We played cards (Aussie rules 500, although there was no ref that does funny moves with his hands in that game, that's only in aussi rule football) for several hours and I must admit that quebec team was beaten by the rest of the Commonwealth. We had a pizza at some point to help digest the spices in the hotpot. I highly recommend Dave's pizza. Good stuff. The whole place is quite cool. Alex kept talking to us about this Sichuan opera thing. I had heard that chinese operas were about as interesting as getting your teeth removed without anasthesia but he told me that was only Beijing Opera. Sichuan Opera is quite interesting he said, especially the mask changing. Since he is a quebecer I trusted him and bought a ticket from Dave for 70RMB (the guidebook quotes 100RMB and the prices I've seen in travel agency seemed to be running around 130-150RMB so I knew it was a good deal). The other 2 also bought their tickets. We went back to the hostel at an undetermined time and I suffered for a while in my bed before I finally managed to fall asleep despite the stiffling heat.

Wednesday August 9th

Finally. After 4 days of waking up before 7 and often before 6 I managed to sleep late. I woke up around 11 and had some extremely delicious banana pancakes with jam for breakfast. Alex woke up at the same time as me and accompanied me for breakfast. Some french people nearby heard us speak french and started speaking to us. They were friendlier than most frenchie but I must admit one thing: I feel no cultural connection with french people. I mean I don't want to say they can't be nice. The bretons I met in Yangshuo or Marie-Laure that I met in Yangshuo and subsequently in Lijiang were among the coolest people I've met on this trip. It just seems that everytime I speak to a french person he'll spend half the time laughing at our accent or expressions and we do the same thing to them just to show them that they're just as bad (for example a popular french expression is: C'est Nickel. This means that something is nice or cool. Translated in english it means: It's Nickel. Can't get more retarded than that in my opinion). There's also the fact that french people consider parisian french to be the correct french and consider any other dialect to be a provincial dialect. This annoys me to no end. In english you have american accent, british accent, ozie accept, canadian accent (eh?) but no one claims to be "the" good english. In french it is different the parisians will always make you feel like your french is inferior. Also, as I said above there's no cultural connection between us. Except for old people we don't listen to the same music (we ship them our bad artists), tv shows or read the same press. Plus the language is not even such a big cultural link because we have to speak in a more international french for them to understand (you don't expect them to make an effort do you?) and to be honest speaking english feels more natural to me than international french. When I meet a quebecer it is totally different and we seem to connect on every level.

Anyway this was a rant I've been wanting to do for a while as there are so many french tourists around China and it is a bit not nice for it to be placed here as these frenchie were actually not too bad. One of the girl had lived in Ottawa for 6 months and she was very happy to be talking with quebecers again. Alex wanted to go souvenir shopping as he was coming back in Quebec soon and wanted to bring stuff for family and friend.

I didn't feel like shopping so I told him cya tonight and went in an internet cafe starting the long job of getting back up to speed on the blog. I was more than 2 weeks late now so I knew I had a lot of work to do. Sometimes I just don't feel like writting anything and often there's no way to upload my pictures on the computer so it's hard to keep up. Nevertheless I like putting in words my experience so I enjoy the experience generally (although it would be better if uploading each pics didn't take 10-15 minutes). I spent all the afternoon there, only stopping to eat a spaghetti in the guesthouse. I came back at 6PM and met S and Brandon. They had been taking it easy also. It seems that Mix Hostel has this magical ability to make you feel at home and just want to relax and take it easy. I should be careful unless I finish like the frenchie and spend a month here.

We waited a bit to say bye to Alex but by 6:20 we had to leave or be late for the show. We wanted to eat at an Indian restaurant we had spotted on the riverfront. We took the bus there and ordered some food. It took a while to get our food but it was delicious. It makes me want to be in India/Pakistan just for the food, it's just so much better than chinese food. The food doesn't come very fast however and we were a bit late for the show. We took a cab but when we were almost there Brandon realized he had forgotten his passport. We left and he went back to get it while we went to secure our place for the opera. We got there about 10 minutes late but I don't think we missed much. It's a pretty cool room and they serve you tea/peanuts for free. There's also annoying guys that offer you massage.

The opera was interesting. It is several little "sketch" of 10-15 minutes each so it is fast paced and if one is boring (there was one with lots of talking so we didn't get anything) it won't last too long. The highlight was clearly the mask changing. There's like a guy dancing with a mask (see picture 2 and 3), then they just do a move with their hand and the mask change. It is impossible to see a transition in the mask it's as if it just magically appeared there. Of course there's a trick and you can see that in the dancing they turn back from the crowd for 1-2 seconds in between changes, probably to prepare the costume for the next mask changing. Nevertheless it is impressive. The "Chinese shadow" was also impressive, the best ones were the howl and the wolf eating the rabit. I highly recommend the Sichuan Opera. You won't be bored and you'll be entertained in a show that you will never be able to see outside China. After the show we opted for a quiet night and went back to the hostel. I checked my emails and went to bed.

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Photos

Chengdu sunset
Over the river in front of Traffic Hotel. I liked Chengdu immediately despite the stiffling heat and the lovely riverfront here had something to do with it.

Mao statue, next to a Starbucks
I'm sure Mao would be proud on the location of the Starbucks near his statue. Viva la revolution.

Panda
Contrary to what it looks like this panda was happy to be in his cage. Why? AC. Pandas can't take the heat so they don't go out when it's too hot. So instead of sitting around in the grass eating bamboo all day they sit around on concrete eating bamboo all day. Crappy pictures for tourists though.

Red Panda 1
Contrary to the fatties these can take the heat. I like them, they're cool.

Chengdu sunset 2
Lovely sun reflection and construction crane eh?

Red Panda 2
Chilling.

Baby Giant Panda
Not Giant yet. This guy was 2 days old, being born on August 6th 2006.

Red Panda 3
"What you looking at?"

Whale Done
My favorite chinglish to date.

Me and some monk
This guy was sitting on a bench and wanted picture of me and Alex. We said ok but only if we can also take pictures.

Me, my hat and Mao
Now my portrait

Sichuan opera 2
These are the mask changing guys. The show is worth seeing just for them. They were just awesome.

Sichuan opera 3
Tried to catch a mask-changing move. They're too fast even for the camera!

Comments

[marie-laure]

Sichuan opera
Salut Victor ! Merci pour ton post de Chengdu : ca m'a rappele de bons souvenirs de l'ete dernier. J'etais moi aussi allee voir le Sichuan opera et j'avais adore. En plus des femmes Naxis, je t'enverrai des photos des masques si tu veux. Je rentre le 22 en France... un peu de patience ! Bonne continuation ! J'ai hate de lire la suite !!!