The Long Journey Into The Heart Of China

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The time had come to move on to another uncharted territory, but I was a bit nervous about China.
Firstly, there was the language factor which isn't something that I haven't dealt with before, but it was signage in particular that was going to be difficult - I just cannot read any Chinese characters apart from "people", "1", "2" and "3". The closest challenge I've had is having to read Cyrillic but at least it is sort of close to the Roman alphabet. Chinese characters are just mumbo-jumbo to me.
Also, I will have to cover a lot of distance - this will be the biggest country I will travel on the whole trip - in a fairly short amount of time so a lot of long and possibly complicated journeys await me. It didn't help that the most challenging part of the journey was first up - a 1,750km journey from Sapa, Vietnam, to Jiuzhaigou National Park, right in the heart of China. I would have to negotiate two stopovers in Kunming and Chengdu. Including the stopovers, the journey will take four days including at least one overnight journey. Talk about going straight into the deep end. Which I would have to negotiate without being able to read Chinese.
And of course there was the small fear of travelling to an authoritarian and bureaucratic country; there will always linger the possibility of thishappening again. I felt similar to how I felt before I went to India but I had known of more people who had backpacked around India and a reasonable amount of English is spoken there.

There was also more preparation required; first I needed to download a VPN to get behind "The Great Firewall Of China" and with summer being the most popular season for domestic tourism, accommodation and transport needed to be booked earlier in advance.
I expect infrastructure to be better but it looks like it will come at the cost of everything costing more - certainly more than it has in Vietnam. Already, I think I may need to sacrifice a future leg of my journey - most probably the Philippines - to fund this but perhaps this shouldn't be surprising as my money should've run out by now!

In other words, I had a great challenge ahead of me for the next two months and I felt a little daunted. China is far less backpacked than South East Asia so I am expecting to be a lot more lonely - hopefully I will be surprised!
Also to be taken into consideration is the fact I have now been travelling for twenty-two months and that I was almost broken after eighteen; now wasn't the best time to have such a challenge ahead of me and part of me was exasperated that I now had to do this. But having now got my visa and a flight from Beijing to Osaka booked, this now had to be done.
Motivating me was the fact that I now just had four months (max) to go; one might think whether it is wise to drag myself through this but I was now fully committed. I was nervous about South Africa, South America and India but came through all three just fine - I should have confidence in my backpacking experience and the knowledge that once I got onto the ground at all three places and got used to them, things became easy.

Things got off to an inauspicious start as I walked out the door of my hostel in Sapa. It was raining, big time. I had asked for a 6am checkout but didn't get down til' 6.20am and now had to wait for receptionist to get up again. My bus to the border was leaving from across town at 6.35am so I was getting frustrated. At 6.25am I just chucked what I owed onto the counter and took off. I couldn't wait any longer.
Waiting at the bus stop, I then realised I had left my passport at the hostel. I hate how some hostels insist on keeping it for you in Vietnam. I now had to charge back to the hostel in the heavy rain, getting twice as soaked, to get it back. Two unnecessary trips in the rain. I was hoping to catch the 0940 train from Hekou (the Chinese border town across the river from the Vietnamese border town of Lao Caí, just 36km from Sapa) but those hopes were now dashed. At least the hostel owner called me a free taxi back to the bus stop to stop me and my luggage getting even wetter.
The border crossing actually turned out to be easy and friendly; no dramas whatsoever. On the Chinese side, they even ask you to rate your experience with a choice of four buttons from "Deeply Unsatisfied" to "Greatly Satisfied". One officer was smiley throughout as he guided me through the whole process. So I was now in China - I had reached my motherland.

When I was a kid, I had taken a few Mandarin lessons and when my grandparents would come over from Malaysia to visit us in New Zealand, I would always have to speak with them in Mandarin. My mother and father also spoke Mandarin around the house regularly when I was growing up, so over the years I have managed to pick a bit up. It was now paying some dividends as once over the border, I found that just over half the time, I could ask for what I needed and found myself understood - I have a somewhat decent base, now I just need to build more vocabulary upon it.

My first impressions? As expected, everything is very well developed! The roads and infrastructure are amazing! Even in the border town of Hekou, pavements and shrubs are nicely kept and there are all these nice clothing stores there - it must be a place for people to come and buy things duty free.
I have seen, read and heard so much about China that I had this preconceived idea of what it would be like here and especially on the way into Kunming, my expectations, by and large, were met; heavy industry on the city's outskirts; highway bridges crisscrossing each other like noodles; a busy city centre choking (literally) with traffic and people; tall, flash, modern buildings reflecting China's massive recent boom that has made it one of the world's economic powerhouses.
One thing I didn't expect were the lovely, wide, tree-lined streets and the amount of greenery around. The city itself was generally very tidy and well-kept. The air was also noticeably thinner in Kunming - I was unaware that it has an elevation of almost 1,900m!

I only had one night in Kunming as with only thirty days before needing to get to Hong Kong, I had to make tracks. I hadn't even planned on coming here but I needed to stop here on my way north. I had an afternoon to explore the city however and I thought it'd be a shame not to at least have a look around.
The thing that was most apparent when walking around Kunming was that this was a fully developed city. Things were rather orderly and people followed road rules which is more than can be said of Vietnam. The place was clean!
I then realised that the way you backpack developing countries and the way you backpack developed countries is different; mainly that developed countries are more expensive. The transport, food and shop options are all different. I would need to adjust.
Kunming doesn't have that much to see and I saw everything in a three hour walk around the city. The most impressive sights were the Green Lake Park, a pretty park built on a lake and a favourite leisure spot for the locals; and the Yuantong Temple, which was actually almost as good as any temple I saw in Vietnam.

But soon leisure time was over and I came to the business of having to make my way to Chengdu, which I was slightly dreading. This was because the journey was a 17-hour train ride on a hard seat - in the lowest class of carriage. The cheapest carriage was all I could afford, was all that was left and is the class that all the locals ram themselves into. If it was to be anything like a second class Indian train, then this promised to be an experience.
Also a new experience was visiting a Chinese train station. They have different ways of doing things here. First there was a baggage scan to get into the outdoor area of the station and then another to get into the flash Marina Bay Sands-like terminal building. Depending on which train you're catching, you're then ushered into one of three gigantic waiting halls where people are already lining up outside gates, airport style. Not a case of simply walking into the station and going straight to your platform here.
Thankfully the train was modern; it looked like any train you might find in use in Europe. And the seat wasn't "hard" - just a normal seat that you would find on any European train.
But...there were a couple of annoyances. First, I swear that everybody in China smokes and while doing so in the toilet cabin is prohibited in Europe, it's not a problem here. The areas between carriages are designated smoking areas but the door that separated them from the carriages wasn't closing properly (or wasn't being closed properly) and so I had to put up with smoke for almost the entire ride. I am going to die here. I am going to die here from second hand smoke inhalation. When you leave a train reeking of smoke, then I'm sorry but that's a fucking joke. Then at one stop at about 3am, a shitload of people got onboard and we had a full train, people! Seats are laid out facing each other with a table in between which is perfect between friends but less so between strangers. Contorting yourself into a comfortable position without touching the legs and feet of the person opposite was a challenge and didn't help with sleep quality. Luckily after so much travelling on various forms of transport I managed to get to sleep eventually, which lasted for about 5-6 hours.

Like most long journeys these days, it thankfully went by pretty quickly and before I knew it, I was in Chengdu! With only a day and a half here, I dumped my bags at the hostel and explored the city in the afternoon.
Kunming was very pleasant - I could actually walk around without sweating - but Chengdu felt like I was back in Vietnam. It was stifling.
In terms of sights though, the first place I visited was the Wuhou Temple and it was here that I had my first encounter with shitloads of local tourists. Chengdu is quite a popular place for Chinese to visit and it seemed they were all here. The temple is ostensibly a Buddhist temple but it is dedicated to two legendary historical figures from the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history which is roughly from 220AD to 280AD. The historical figures are Emperor Liu Bei and military strategist Zhuge Liang. The Three Kingdoms period has been heavily romanticised in Chinese culture which perhaps explains the site's popularity with local tourists, as it is also where Liu Bei's tomb is. Much like the Tomb Of Minh Mang near Hue in Vietnam, the tomb is essentially a massive mound kept up by a round retaining wall which is then in turn ringed by another circular wall. The complex is quite big and there are several temples in very pretty and tranquil surrounds of cypresses, bamboo and bonsai gardens - well it would have been lovely had it not been for all the tourists around. All in all, it probably wasn't worth the steep ¥60 (£6.50) entrance fee.
Much more value for money was the Qingyang Temple. At just ¥10, this Taoist Temple was less than 20% of the price of the Wuhou Temple and had less than 20% of the people too. Now this was serene; these temple complexes usually are. Taoism is a philosophical/religious tradition that believes that the "Tao" is the key principle that underpins everything that exists and that one must be in harmony with it. The order is focussed on "naturalness" and that one must act simple, spontaneously, compassionately, frugally and humbly. It is where the principles of yin and yang come from.
I then visited two parks; the Cultural Park and the more popular and Communist-sounding People's Park. The Chinese are really big on their parks and these two were just about as good as any park I have seen in Europe; both had artificial lakes and both were immaculately kept. There were loads of people around and why not; why wouldn't you make the most of something that the local council has put so much effort into.
More than anything however, I was shocked by how advanced and clean the city is; in cities like Shanghai and Beijing, you would expect to see flash malls, big brands and bright lights; but I wasn't expecting to see it in Chengdu! The Chunxi Road area in particular was very busy (it was a Friday night after all) with mostly young people out and about and it seems they must have loads of cash too, judging by the brands present; Prada, Dolce & Gabbana and Chanel just to name a few. I was quite simply, stunned. Skyscrapers are everywhere and more are being built. On this evidence, China truly is one of the world's leading economies.

Also in the middle of town is a reconstructed old alley full of food merchants. Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province and admittedly one of only two things that I knew about Sichuan was how spicy the local food is. There was one local speciality in "food alley" though, that I just had to try; rabbit's head! The Chinese really do eat the weirdest things; picking up snacks from a store at Kunming's train station showed that the Chinese really are the leading purveyors of preserved, vacuum-packed goods. All sorts of weird delights are vacuum-packed; jerky of all types in chilli oil; dried fruits; even cooked chicken thighs, amongst a whole lot of other unexplainables. As for the rabbit's head, it was actually pretty tasty and packed a lot of spice. You have to really rip it apart - the jaw, the skull, the nose - in order to get to everything that is edible, including the brain. Good thing they give you plastic gloves, as it's a mess. Not for the faint-hearted or animal lovers. Unsurprisingly, there isn't a lot of meat on it and it takes a bit of work! I also had mapo tofu while I was in Sichuan. It was also very hot but somehow my mouth and stomach were able to handle it. Perhaps it was the Sichuan peppercorns which numbed my mouth and my gut to the fire I was eating.
Ordering the rest of my dinner was more problematic; there is literally no English on any of the menus. I could only order at places where I could point at stuff. I can speak a few sentences of Mandarin but my vocabulary is pretty basic and quite random; for example I know the word for banana but I don't know prepositions or conjunctions such as "with" or "or". Even numbers are a bit sketchy and I have to try and pick up what number was said and then think about it a bit to work it out. And outside hostels, there is very little if any, English spoken; and when I speak Chinese, I say things almost perfectly meaning that locals think I speak it fluently and suddenly find it weird when I can't say a simple word or sentence. The language is proving problematic, just like I had expected it to, for things more complicated than asking for a price or asking if I can put something somewhere. For example, I would've killed for a bubble tea but I didn't know how to order one! I can accuse someone of flatulence but can't ask when the next bus is; I can order a spicy rabbit's head but struggle ordering a can of lemonade; I can tell someone I'm going to go have a shit but can't explain to someone where I am from. And it is a bit different this time; because I sort of look like a local - most real locals aren't quite sure - and because I can say a few perfect sentences in Mandarin, I get embarrassed in front of locals when I suddenly run out of words. If I was a white person or if I didn't know any Mandarin at all, then I wouldn't feel so sheepish, but I am Chinese and I do know some Mandarin, just not enough! I just feel that I should know more Mandarin than I do - I almost feel ashamed at my level of Mandarin.

Speaking of white people, there are hardly any around. It's much like India; there probably are a decent amount of tourists in China but because there are 1.37bn locals, they get almost completely diluted.
Another thing that China has in common with India is hoiking. After not seeing and hearing it too much while in Southeast Asia, hoiking is back with a vengeance. Disgusting.

The only other thing I knew about Sichuan and Chengdu in particular, is that it is the unofficial home of pandas! Sichuan's mountains are one of just three places in the world - the other two being in neighbouring provinces - where wild pandas can still be found.
The Giant Panda Breeding Research Base aims to get pandas to breed in order to increase the number of these endangered animals. It also allows you to see them up close and learn a bit about them in the process. It is a wildly popular attraction - who wouldn't want to go and see large numbers of cute pandas - especially with kids and especially on a Saturday, as I battled with huge crowds of locals. Chinese tourists are annoying at home too. It was a little disappointing that there were no giant pandas in any of the big outdoor enclosures - this is because it was another insanely hot summer's day and the pandas have to be kept inside temperature controlled enclosures to stop them overheating - but I did still at least see some, including tiny newborns in the nursery that don't even look like pandas yet. There were red pandas in the outdoor enclosures though and seeing these racoon-like creatures was a treat. I also learned a bit about giant pandas; like how they still have stomachs like carnivores even though 99% of their diet is bamboo. This makes their stomachs extremely inefficient at digesting bamboo and only 17% of what they eat - which is about 50kg (half their body weight) a day - gets properly processed. This means they spend half their day eating. Doesn't sound like a bad life though honestly, does it? The males also have small dicks, which makes insemination and breeding difficult. Bless them.
The centre is pretty blinging, all the buildings are pretty flash, the grounds are very well kept and the pandas even have health facilities that are better than most of the ones used to treat humans! It was a cool half day trip to do, something that you really oughta do if you're in Chengdu, animal lover or not. I just wanna hug a panda now.

After my panda visit, I went to the Wenshu Monastery which was the most atmospheric of the three temples I visited in Chengdu; with incense burning, monks singing perfectly in unison, the place was serene. It was free too! It made my visit to the Wuhou Temple the previous day look more and more silly and regrettable. There was some beautiful architecture in there too and you could wander around just about everywhere.
Not free was the amazing-looking restaurant and tea house next door amongst some of the old, gorgeous buildings that were once part of the monastery - I guess they have to pay for the upkeep of the place somehow.

I would loved to have stayed for a meal but China was proving expensive. Food and accommodation is actually reasonable - it's just the transport and entrance fees that are costing me dear, with all the long journeys I have to do.
And my trip has been a long old journey too and it is starting to show a bit in terms of my equipment. For example the extendable handle on my backpack that allows me to wheel it easily takes a bit of shaking and wiggling to get it out now; the focus ring on my camera lens started to jam in Kunming - I can ill-afford to have to repair it; one of the zips on my camera bag has snapped clean off; and that wallet I bought in Chisinau has finally fallen apart. It's a sign that this journey cannot keep going for much longer. I hope everything can hold out for just another four months.

And there are some days on the road when I really wonder why the hell I am doing this. The day I left Chengdu for Jiuzhaigou was one of them.
Things didn't start off great as despite my tiredness, I just couldn't sleep - so I only got about four hours of it before my eight hour bus journey.
I then found out just before leaving, that my accommodation in Jiuzhaigou had been cancelled due to something in the dorm being broken by a guest - that was what I could make out from the broken English text anyway. It had been hard finding decently priced accommodation - 93% of beds in my price range were booked up according to Booking.com - so now I faced having to go door-to-door looking for a place to stay when I arrived. Not ideal.
Then about 1-2 hours from Jiuzhaigou, the bus pulls over. There was a big traffic jam ahead and people were out of their cars. Police cars racing their way towards the scene suggested that it might've been and accident or more likely, a rockslide. An hour of waiting later and we were back on the road - going back the way we came. It was obvious that whatever lay ahead wasn't going to be fixed up anytime soon.
With the most direct way to Jiuzhaigou now blocked off, we now had to take the long way round - 630km around, to be exact. I have to say that I've never had to take a detour the same distance in length as the distance between Madrid and Barcelona before. I didn't quite realise just how far it was at the time.
As we crept along a gravel, cliffside road and as lightning and rain started coming down from the sky as the night set in, I suddenly got nightmarish flashbacks to that journey from Kathmandu to Phaplu. I suddenly also realised that I didn't have a place to stay once I got there and that every cheap hostel or guesthouse would be closed for the night. I ain't paying for an expensive hotel room for a few hours sleep so after almost two years on the road, I was now almost certainly looking at my first night sleeping rough.
In the end it was almost as bad as that journey in Nepal; what should've been an 8-hour ride had turned into a 20-hour overnight one. I hadn't eaten anything in that time apart from three cupcakes and a small packet of biscuits.
I did however turn my misfortune into an opportunity - and you really need to have been a skint backpacker at some stage of your life to understand this.
Arriving at 4.30am, I knew that to get a bed I would need to wake someone or several people up; but I'll be damned if I was going to pay twice what I was paying in Chengdu for less than half a night's sleep. But...if I could just hang out somewhere for a couple of hours until everyone wakes up, then I could save myself a night's accommodation - around £10, which is gold in backpacker terms. Walking towards the hotel I had originally booked I walk up to the closed reception of what I think is the hotel I am looking for, only to discover it is not; only to discover there is a second entrance to this hotel which is completely open, completely unattended and completely dark. There are a few armchairs in this foyer; it was perfect. After a cheeky hour's kip, I now found myself having saved a whole day's' budget (I literally didn't buy anything that day) and ¥50 under budget!

It was now 7am and I decide to check into my hostel. I would have to pay for two nights to access a bed now or wait until 12pm and pay for just one night.
"You can visit the park today!", says the receptionist, rather helpfully.
Given my severe lack of sleep, I didn't think that it'd be a great idea to now go hiking for a day. But then if I could get it over and done with, I could leave this rather expensive place after just one night. I could do with making up some days too, so I thought that after breakfast and a few free coffees, I would charge on through.

If I thought that the crowds in Chengdu were big, then I was wasn't quite prepared for what awaited me at Jiuzhaigou National Park. It is summer, so it is the most popular time of year for locals to go on holiday and today, 38,000 of them were literally queuing up to get in. I have never seen tourist crowds like I have in China so far. It was like I was waiting to get into a music festival or a football match. But I must say that everything was very well organised and efficient. I was through what looked like an hour in the queue in less than fifteen minutes and another fifteen minutes later, I was on one of the many buses on this seemingly never-ending carousel of them, taking people up into scenic depths of the park.

The first part of the park I visited was "The Primeval Forest", an area of forest which was admittedly rather unremarkable apart from some mountain cloud scenery that wouldn't look out of place on the intro for Twin Peaks.
But Jiuzhaigou's biggest draw are its pristine lakes which come in all shades of different hues. The Bamboo Arrow Lake is grey; the adjacent Panda Lake is a milky yet bright shade of aquamarine; and further along is my favourite lake of them all, the Five Flower Lake, which has water of Listerine blue and green, yet is so clear you can see every single tree trunk that has fallen onto the bottom of it. It is quite the incredible sight.
The wide Pearl Shoals waterfall was very impressive despite having had all waterfalls ruined for me after visiting Iguazu.
However, what should have been an amazingly peaceful hike from Bamboo Arrow Lake to Pearl Shoals was somewhat ruined by the incessant number of local tourists. Every boardwalk was clogged up meaning you were always held up and trying to manoeuvre your way through throngs of crowds; and every photostop was a literal fight for the best vantage points. The locals aren't afraid of shoving you out of the way or cutting in but you're fine as long as you stand your ground and sneak in a few cheeky elbows into some rib cages, you'll get the angles you want for your photos.
From here I jumped back on the bus that took you up to the magnificently scenic Long Lake that looks like it could be in New Zealand, Canada or Norway. The water is cobalt but like everywhere in the park, is crystal clear in the shallows.
A short walk away is perhaps one of the park's highlights, the "Colourful Pond", which is exactly what is says it is. There are about five different shades of blue and green caused by the various residues and carbonate chemical reactions in the pond.
I then took the bus to the Nuorilong Waterfall which is just as impressive as Pearl Shoals - some might say the two waterfalls look identical - before catching the bus back out of the park. I get off however about one kilometre from the park entrance; having already walked more than 13km on almost no sleep, I decided not to walk the same distance again back to the park entrance, but felt I had the legs to at least enjoy one kilometre of hiking without any crowds whatsoever and it was the most relaxing kilometre of the entire day.
The crowds did somewhat spoil the experience for me as did the constant rain; autumn would be the best and most spectacular time to visit as you would have the amazing autumn colours contrasting with the beautiful lakes, without either rain or crowds. But I can't be everywhere at the right time and my time in Southeast Asia seems to have proven as much.
So after all that travelling to get to Jiuzhaigou, I was only there for a day. It was an amazing destination but this story has definitely been more about the journey.

Some other observations/thoughts on China that I have made so far;
- The place definitely feels foreign yet it is familiar; I grew up with the smells, the food, the culture and the language so I have this strange sensation of feeling like I know the place while consciously knowing that I don't.
- Electric scooters are big in cities. They are so quiet you don't even notice if one is sneaking up behind you. Are they just cheaper to run or are they part of a deliberate push towards clean energy?
- My ¥50 under budget became over ¥400 over budget in one day. The Jiuzhaigou entrance fee is a staggering ¥310 (40€) and I am not sure I will be able to pull this all back later on.

With so much of this vast country to cover in just thirty days, I had to keep moving and so now it was time to move onto one of China's highlights. And as you'll find out in the next entry, I was mighty lucky that I decided to leave when I did!

再見 (zài jian),
Derek

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Photos

Five Flower Lake, Jiuzhaigou
The colour and water clarity is just out of this world.

Yuantong Temple, Kunming
Shame the artificial lake was empty, it would have made an already impressive sight even more spectacular.

Giant Panda, Chengdu
Sadly, all the giant pandas were inside their indoor enclosures and a combination of my deteriorating camera lens and dirty glass ensured this was the only decent photo I managed to take of one.

Bright Lights, Chengdu
Parts of the city are ultra-modern, which I wasn't expecting at all!

Panda Lake, Jiuzhaigou
I love the colour shade of the water. Spectacular.

Downtown Kunming
Like many sizeable Chinese cities, Kunming has a pretty flash city centre.

Green Lake Park, Kunming
Wonderful spot for the locals to chill at.

K-Train
The "hard seat" carriage I took overnight from Kunming to Chengdu.

Wuhou Temple, Chengdu
The calm atmosphere being spoilt by big crowds is perfectly illustrated here at the Wuhou Temple.

Qingyang Temple, Chengdu
Chengdu's oldest Taoist temple. All about yin and yang.

Culture Park, Chengdu
Serene park right next to the Qingyang Temple.

Tianfu Square, Chengdu
Chengdu's massive main square. In the background you can see just some of the flash buildings prevalent in the city.

Spicy Rabbit Heads, Chengdu
Yep, those are cooked rabbit heads. A spicy Chengdu speciality.

Reflections, Jiuzhaigou
The Five Flower Lake. Not only is the water pristine, but just look at that hue of blue.

Long Lake, Jiuzhaigou
More amazing scenery that looks like it could be from New Zealand, Canada or Norway.

Red Panda, Chengdu
I spotted a red panda in its outdoor enclosure at the Giant Panda Breeding Research Centre.

Wenshu Monastery, Chengdu
The most atmospheric and serene temple complex I visited in Chengdu.

Colourful Pond, Jiuzhaigou
The pool has five different shades of blue/green, due to residue and chemical carbonate activity.

Nuorilong Waterfall, Jiuzhaigou
One of the two main adjacent waterfalls inside Jiuzhaigou National Park.

Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jiuzhaigou
Five Flower Lake. I know I have used this photo caption title a few times, but this time it is entirely justified.

Small Waterfall, Jiuzhaigou
Showing off my camera's capabilities inside Jiuzhaigou National Park; this despite the fact that the lens is starting to pack up!

Clear River, Jiuzhaigou
Despite slowing down my camera's shutter speed, you can still see how clear the water in the river is.

Twin Peaks?
Could well be. By the Primeval Forest inside Jiuzhaigou National Park.

Crowds At Jiuzhaigou
This is the queue to get into the national park. I have never seen crowds like this at a national park; a football match or a festival maybe, but a national park?

Crowds At Panda Lake, Jiuzhaigou
Thankfully you could still take some decent photos despite the crowds. Just had to literally fight a little.

Aquamarine Lake, Jiuzhaighou
Another view of Panda Lake inside Jiuzhaigou National Park.

Pearl Shoals Waterfall, Jiuzhaigou
Jiuzhaigou has amazing waterfalls as well as virgin forest and breathtaking lakes.

Bamboo Arrow Lake, Jiuzhaigou
Probably the least spectacular lake out of all the main ones inside Jiuzhaigou National Park. Says something, innit.

People's Park, Chengdu
A park full of dance, song and taichi on the weekend.

Calling All Ornithologists
This very interesting bird was chained up outside a roadside restaurant; can anyone identify it? Some sort of eagle?

Streets Of Kunming
Or in this case, some sort of pedestrian overpass shopping complex.

East Pagoda, Kunming
One of two almost identical pagodas built during the Tang dynasty (around 600-900AD).