Chengdu: Land of the pandas

We flew back to Beijing last night after a week of galavanting through China's southwestern countryside. We left last Friday after the midterm exams and took the train for 25 hours to Chengdu. The train is arranged with small cabins, each with six bunks (three on each side) and outside of the cabin there is a hallway and small chairs by the windows. It was fairly comfortable and quite interesting to see other parts of the country besides the city. A large portion of the trip was through mountains and fields of safflowers (or rapeseed- used to make oil). It was also fun to talk to the other people (real Chinese people)- one guy taught us some Chinese tongue twisters and Chinese songs and games.
On Sunday, the entire group went to the panda research center, to see the pandas!! This was the one place I saw foreigners throughout the entire trip. The panda center was really green and lush with bamboo and little winding pathways to the panda enclosures. Sichuan's climate is subtropical, so they actually have wildlife and rain and flowers and such. It was already spring when we arrived, which was such a relief from dry, dusty Beijing. We saw giant pandas and baby pandas and red pandas and also a few peacocks wandering around. After the pandas, a few of us went out to huo3guo3 (hotpot) which is one of Sichuan's specialties and so spicy it is painful to eat. They gave us a boiling cauldron of hot peppers and peppercorns, and, because we are not Sichuanese, a small non-spicy section in the middle. Hot pot basically consists of plates of raw meat, vegetables, tofu and mushrooms that you place in the boiling hotness and let cook. Then eat. Ahhh. I have never eaten anything so spicy. Everyone had tears running down their very red faces and piles of tissues from blowing their nose. It was delightful.
After that, we went to renmingongyuan, a park, and did some paddle boating. For dinner we went to a xiaochi (small eats/ snack) restaurant. Xiaochi are another one of Sichuan's specialties and there are vendors selling kebabs, fruit, breads, desserts and other things (like chicken feet) along most every street.
On Monday we went to Le Shan, which has the world's biggest Buddha. He is 71 meters tall and very serene looking, carved out of the side of a mountain. They take great pride in saying you can have a picnic on his toenail, it's so big. Then we went to another hotel near Emei Shan, which has its own hot springs. A bunch of us went swimming in the hot springs, which was wonderful. They have different pools of different temperatures set up and then a large pool of cold water. There are also saunas, for the full temperature range.
On Tuesday, we went to Emei Shan, which is one of China's sacred Buddhist Mountains. About half of the group stayed near the bottom and hiked around the monkey zone and the other half hiked to the top. The mountain is all stairs ( I think to prevent erosion, etc) which makes the climbing slightly monotonous. And they go one forever and ever. We started at 10:30 in the morning and climbed until about 6:00 to a small "guest house" (actually is was an unheated building and we slept in a small room in the basement) where we slept over (for $7 a night). Teh owner told us to close the doors (they don't have locks) because somethimes the monkeys come in an steal valuables. The mountain has lots of small snack stands along the way, with the owners who live there year round. This is quite impressive, because it is really misty (you're basically in a cloud) and rainy and cold. As you climb higher, the mist tuns to ice and it is pretty snowy. We arrived at the guest house soaked and freezing and tired. The next morning we got up a 4:30 AM to hike to the top and watch the sun rise. It was pretty terrifying hiking in the dark up to the summit, especially because Emei has so many monkeys. We encountered the monkeys once, during the first day. There were probably a dozen of them, sitting on railings and watching us. A few of my friends, who were hiking with different groups has monkeys jump on them and try to take things. They like cameras and soda. (One monkey took my friend's contact solution and tried to drink it, but upon realizing it was not soda got upset and threw it is the woods and hit her). They are very smart creatures. We reached the summit at 7:00 ish and watched the sunrise, which was really beautiful. The elevation is 10,167 ft., so we were far above the cloud cover. Then we took the cable car down and the bus back to Chengdu.
On Thursday we went to the Wenshu monastery, a Zen Buddhist monastery in Chengdu and then went to another park and spent time at a chaguar (tea restaurant). Chengdu's pace is much slower than Beijing's and it seems as if people don't really do much all day except sit around drinking tea and playing cards. In the evening we went to get massages ($18 for two hours) which was nice after climbing the days before.
On Friday we wandered around looking at badly translated t-shirts and eating xiaochi. Then we flew back to Beijing to continue studying, studying, studying.
Photos: http://s591.photobucket.com/albums/ss353/klebling/