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Published: October 7th 2009
On October 5th we took a day trip from Chengdu to Leshan mainly to see the Grand Buddha, which is the biggest buddha carving in the world. It is 71 meters tall and 17 meters wide.
The bus ride to Leshan was very straight forward, but getting to the grand buddha once we got to leshan was more difficult. From the lonely planet we knew we should ride bus 13, but it didn't say which direction to take it, and also the bus station was on the wrong spot in the map. So when we first got on the bus, I was checking my compass and thought we were headed the wrong direction, so we got off the bus. Only once we started asking people on the street did we find out that we were on the right bus after all.... Lonely planet is more of a hassle than it's worth sometimes.
Anyway we made it to the park that houses the grand buddha, and it was PACKED. It was a monday, but somehow it hadn't clicked that it was still Golden Week, which starts on october 1st (national day). We estimated that the line to actually walk down to the buddha's feet (the trail starts at the top) would have taken 3 to 5 hours. So we settled for the views from the top, which were still good. On the buddhas lefthand side you can see down to his toes. We took some pictures with stephanie kissing the buddha, and me picking his nose. Hopefully we didn't offend anyone.
The previous few days, we just hung out in Chengdu. We were staying at the Traffic Inn, which we'd both recommend. It was comfortable, cheap and clean, and the staff spoke really good english. On the 3rd I went on a bike ride by myself to the People's park, but right when I got there it started pouring. Luckily I had a poncho in my pocket, so I didn't get totally soaked, but the bike ride back was pretty miserable.
October 3rd was also the Autumn Moon festival, which happens at different times depending on the lunar calendar. One of the chinese traditions is eating "moon cakes", which are about the size and shape of a hockey puck. The traffic inn hosted a moon cake eating contest, so I joined. We had 5 minutes to eat as many mooncakes as possible. Once we started, I found out that mooncakes are also about the same density as a hockey puck. Kind of like a fig newton, except much more solid. I managed to get 3 of them down in 5 minutes, but someone else got 5. Oh well, free dinner. Later that night we learned how to make origami candle holders to float candles down the river, which was also a moon festival tradition. People were also sending these lantern/baloons into the sky. Pretty cool to see.
On the 4th we went to the chengdu research base of giant panda breeding. There are about 90 pandas there, and we got to see maybe 10 of them at different stages of life. Baby pandas the size of rats, toddler pandas, juvenile pandas and adults. They were all pretty cute. Steph was in heaven I think. When we got back the weather was nice, so we went back to the people's park. There were lots of locals dancing and singing, kind of like the public park we went to in beijing.
The 5th was leshan, which brings you up to speed! We're actually in Lijiang now, but I'll make a new blog for that.
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Matt Potterton
non-member comment
Moon Cakes
I thought of Moon Pies when you said Moon Cakes, and now I'm hungry. I'm sure a Moon Cake tastes nothing like a tasty Moon Pie though.