China 2013 Day 12

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Today is panda day! We need to get an early start because pandas are most active in the morning. We have a buffet breakfast at the hotel, but there's little Western fare and the selections are underwhelming. On the way at 8:30.

It's a grey, hazy day, even though the forecast promised sun. Pollution is probably a factor. Most people are sniffling and coughing by this time from exposure to the bad air, and there seems to be a cold making the rounds.

We drive through Chengdu. It's a "small" city of only 4 million, the capital of Sichuan province. There's noticeably less English signage than in previous cities, but like the other cities we've visited it is busy and crowded, with bad traffic and lots of construction. In a way, it is a microcosm of China as a whole: a mix of modern and old, pretty and ugly, in the throes of change.

The Panda Research Centre is only 20 km north of city, but the trip takes almost 2 hours. It is home to around 50 giant pandas. There are only a couple of thousand pandas left in the wild. Besides the devastation of their natural habitat, pandas have a number of problems. They have a low sex drive and produce only one cub at a time, who are extremely small (100 g) and fragile at birth. They're not always great parents; sometimes they fail to bond with their offspring or accidentally crush them. Their diet is almost exclusively bamboo, which is not intrinsically very nutritious, with the result that pandas do little but eat and sleep.

At the centre, we ride an electric shuttle into the park. Our first stop is the panda nursery. There behind glass we find five panda babies in a large crib, all asleep in silly positions: one is flat on his back with all four limbs splayed, and another in the same configuration on his front.

We then move to the adult panda area. It's a large wooded area surrounded by a fence, a moat and a pedestrian pathway. Through the foliage, we spy at least six pandas, who are unsurprisingly hard at work eating and sleeping. Although they are large animals, weighing up to 100 kg, despite their bulk, they are adorable.

We move on to the next section to see the red pandas. These are much smaller and more active animals, if anything even more adorable. We see four or five of them but there are certainly more hidden in the bush.

We have lunch at the centre: another meal of rice and stuff, nothing more than okay. Then it's back to Chengdu on the bus. Once there we have stops at two "cultural heritage areas": the unpronounceable Kuanzhaixiangzi market and Jinli St. Both are essentially tourist traps, with shops, restaurants and theatres. They remind me a bit of Ottawa's Byward Market or maybe more Toronto's Distillery District: old areas that have been completely restored and gentrified in the spirit of the original.

We have dinner at another restaurant. Highlights are the individual noodle bowl appetizers and the smoked duck; the rest is the same old, a little too greasy and heavy on the protein.

Tonight we have signed up for a Chinese variety show. Our bus delivers us to what must be Chengdu's theatres district. Along the street are theatres and stores in traditional Chinese styles bedecked in lights. It is very pretty. We walk to the end of the street and back, and it is time for the show.

The theatre is actually al fresco under a huge tent. In front of the seats are benches with a tea cup for each seat. The tea leaves are already in them. Attendants walk around holding pots of hot water with incredibly long spouts–easily 4 ft long. They reach in from the aisles and expertly fill (and on demand refill) the cups.

The show is terrific. It really is a variety show, a series of short acts: instrumental ensembles, Chinese opera, virtuoso solo musical performances, comedy, stick puppets, and more. In the comedy routine, which features an overbearing wife and her hen-picked husband, I am intrigued with how the percussion instruments are used in the background to complement the very physical comedy. But for me, there are two real highlights. First, the "shadow hands" act, where a man uses his two hands to project shadows on a screen depicting a variety of animals. Great stuff. The finale of the show is the "face changers" act. Actors in elaborate costumes change their mask faces and even their clothes with the snap of a cloak in the blink of an eye. I have no idea how they do it, but I remember seeing an act on TV where a woman changed outfits in a similar way that I think must have been borrowed from the traditional Chinese techniques. Extremely entertaining.

However, it's been another long, tiring day and everyone is noticeably dragging. And we have an early start tomorrow for the long drive back to Chongqing. Back at the hotel, we quickly get ready for the next day and retire.

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