Blogs from Chengdu, Sichuan, China, Asia - page 85

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Asia » China » Sichuan » Chengdu June 16th 2007

Aamulla Tomin sisäinen herätyskello toimi taas 5:30 aamulla, mikä oli ihan hyvä juttu. Edellisenä iltana oltiin väsymystokkuroissa listauduttu Panda-tourille, joka lähti seitsemältä aamulla. WWF:n tunnuselainten katselemiseen Chengdu sopii erittäin hyvin, koska keskustasta about kymmenen kilometriä pohjoiseen sijaitsee naiden uhanalaisten suurten pandojen tutkimuskeskus. Sinne huristeltiin pikku pakulla muiden matkailijoiden mukana. Paikalle päästyämme huomattiin, että parkkiksella oli vino pino näitä pikku pakuja ja että ei oltu taaskaan ainoita liikenteessä. Siellä sitten palloiltiin meidän kuskin ohjastamana ja katseltiin kun pandat mutustelivat bambua. Pandaa olisi päässyt silittelemään ja henkilökunta olisi ikuistanut hetken vielä omalle kameralle 20 euroa/henkilö, mutta passattiin. Jos olisi halunnut päästä moikkamaan pentupandoja olisi siitä joutunut pulittamaan about 100 euroa. A... read more
Panda
Red Panda
Chengdussa

Asia » China » Sichuan » Chengdu June 14th 2007

"You have your thoughts and I have mine. This is the fact and you can't change it even if you kill me." (Ba Jin, shouted out at the end of a televised public humiliation in the People's Stadium of Shanghai, during the "Cultural Revolution" on the 20th June 1968). Ba Jin who was one of the greatest of China's 20th century writers was born in Chengdu in 1904. Chengdu was the latest stop in my world trip(click here). The city is famous for its spicy food, the Giant Pandas, the Sichuan Opera and the nearby Leshan Giant Buddha (the world's largest Buddha). It was also the home of many literary figures including the Tang era poet Du Fu and the more recent Ba Jin (1904-2005). Ba Jin/u... read more
Panda at Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding
The Giant Buddha, Leshan
Panda at Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding

Asia » China » Sichuan » Chengdu June 14th 2007

Sanxingdui lies about 30km north-east of Chengdu and is the site of a museum chronicling extraordinary archaeological discoveries made there 20 years ago. Excavations revealed a settlement of the Ba-Shu culture, a Bronze Age people whose level of advancement challenged the conventional ideas of Chinese civilisation having arisen in the north of the country. Apart from finely carved pottery and tools, they also created startling bronzes including masks with leering grins and eyes on stalks, strange figures with oversized hands, "trees" with birds on them, and some alien gold masks. No other mention of this civilisation has ever been found. We also visited Huanglongxi, a town 40km south of Chengdu and famed for its Qing dynasty streets lined with wooden shops - it also featured in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". However I found it inferior to ... read more
Chuanxi face-changers
Bronze tree
Chuanxi fire-breather (ignited)

Asia » China » Sichuan » Chengdu June 13th 2007

Our visit to the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base will no doubt be one of the highlights of my entire trip - I'd be really surprised if going all the way out to Wolong gave a better experience. We saw pandas ranging in age from less than 1 year old to mature adults, all either dozing or chomping on bamboo in a variety of relaxing positions, the favourite one being lying on their back munching away, with discarded bamboo husks all around and fresh supplies a lazy paw's reach away. It's hardly surprising that they're endangered as, in the wild, they have just one mating season per year, they can only raise 1 cub at a time (twins are fairly common but 1 will be neglected and will therefore die), and the male's penis is very ... read more
Giant Buddha's 'do
Paws
Giant Buddha's ear

Asia » China » Sichuan » Chengdu June 13th 2007

I spent two trips developing the Ecological Tour itinerary to the remote areas of Sichuan province in China. This area just opened up with hard surface roads about three years ago. The Wolong Panda Preserve is actually the first stop seeing Panda close up and you can even go in and touch and play with some 1 year old Pandas as you can see in my photo. Going over mountains passes up to 15,000 feet across the mountians where many Tibetan people live. You can stay in their homes, see how they live or hike around the villages and stay in the small towns like Danba. There is a wonderful park on this itinerary called Hailougou where you can take a cable car up onto the mountain and across a glacier. About half way down ... read more
Hailougou Park

Asia » China » Sichuan » Chengdu June 10th 2007

Chengdu brought increases in both temperature and casualness - for the first time in China, I saw many guys walking around in shorts. The city had a similar feel to Kunming, with umpteen Western brands, foreign cuisines, and bustling shopping zones though a good deal more greenery. There was a lot to see both inside and outside the city (so much so that I'll write 3 entries for it) and - despite an expat population of over 3,000 - we were still clearly a novelty item. Wenshu Yuan was the first Zen Buddhist temple I'd been to on this trip and the vegetarian restaurant there served us up good but enormous portions. A local couple at our table unsubtly took photos of me using their mobile phone. The neighbouring street was full of souvenir shops and ... read more
Shop fresh out of vowels
Boxes on bikes
Professional ear-cleaner

Asia » China » Sichuan » Chengdu » Emi Shan June 8th 2007

VIETNAM TO CHINA - (May 2007) Wed 16th May - (Sapa, Vietnam) At last my passport containing a Chinese visa finally arrived from Hanoi and thankfully only one day later than the travel agency had promised. Once I'd picked the passport up from the Sapa Mountain Hotel where I had previously been staying, the hotel kindly telephoned for a mini bus to take me to the Chinese Border. Unfortunately, in true South East Asian style, after picking me up from the hotel the bus drove around Sapa for another 2 hours trying to fill up before actually leaving town. However, once we had set off, the bus made good time and by mid day I was being dropped off at the Vietnamese/ Chinese border post just outside Lao Cai. CHINA (Hekou, China) Surprisingly, this proved to ... read more
Chinese Temple - Emei Shan
At the top of Mount Emei
cheng du skyline

Asia » China » Sichuan » Chengdu June 5th 2007

There were some things prior to Emei Shan that were left out, among them a visit to pandas and just too must trustfullness in Lonely Planet, so these must be told to see the whole picture clearer. It has been a lifelong dream for me to see pandas. And what better place to see pandas than in China. So the day after arriving to Chengdu, we took a guided tour to the near panda breeding center. Here we made our first lonely planet mistake. According to the book it said that the easiest and best way of getting out there were by a hostel-arranged guided tour. The following should give you a good idea about why it is not a good idea to take a tour. First of all, we were all crammed into a minivan, ... read more

Asia » China » Sichuan » Chengdu » Emi Shan June 2nd 2007

I don't consider myself an experience traveller, I've seen some things around europe and even been to the highlands of scotland. But nothing has ever come close to what we've just been through. Shan is the chinese word for mountain, so for those of you who haven't figured it out yet emei shan is a mountain. For the people of China Emei Shan is just not another large hill, but the holiest buddhist mountain. And why they have chosen this as their most sacred became quite obvious, but we'll return to that later on. First we must begin with the beginning. It had been our plan all along to conquer a mountain, and from the desciptions we got from Emei shan the choice seemed natural. (writers note: after a beautiful trainride from xian we arrived ... read more
Billeder fra tog - Xi'an-Chengdu
Billeder fra tog 1
Billeder fra tog 2

Asia » China » Sichuan » Chengdu June 1st 2007

Today was the earliest day of all the day…ever. I had to wake up at 6:30am! We went on a hike up Ermei Mountain, holy land. And there was no better way to start this early morning than with a nice gondola ride up part of the way! After getting off, I instantly found myself in the middle of the wilderness…it was pretty sweet. We spent most of the morning hiking through the mountain till we found a Wannian Temple in Fall. Missy, Sean and I as well as a few others went inside and explored on our own since we were frustrated with our tour guide for rushing through the sites. There were a lot of people here to day that it was almost difficult to navigate through the temple. Afterwards we finally got ... read more
Ally, Missy, Me and Jess at the Temple
Lovely
So cute!  Even after bitting Chloe!




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