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China, the Chengdu Post
After Xi'an, our next city was Chengdu, in Sichuan province. We were only there for a day, primarily to visit the panda preserve, but it was a lovely city and we'd love to go back.
Here we are inside the panda preserve park. The park has extensive and quite lovely grounds, and houses over a hundred pandas, both giant pandas and red pandas.
This guy was the first panda we saw. Like most of the pandas at the preserve, he was mostly just hanging out and eating bamboo. Giant pandas are totally the couch potatoes of the animal world.
This is a group of juveniles pandas. Once they're adults, the pandas are solitary, but the younger ones like hanging out in groups. And eating bamboo.
And here's a little guy climbing a tree.
The Sweetie and Ros posing outside the panda nursery. This was the building where they let you hold a baby panda for a mere 2,000 yuan. (That's about $340 CDN.) It's crazy expensive, but the pandas are extremely expensive to keep, since they only like to eat bamboo that grows on mountains that need to be shipped in for them in mass quantities. Our guide told us it cost 50,000 yuan to keep one panda at the preserve for a year, so I reckon they need to get as many tourists to hold pandas as possible.
More pics of Ros with Oreo, just because.
Ros and the Sweetie posing in the restaurant in the panda preserve. (Ros stole the Sweetie's glasses and gave him her headband, for his SciFi look.)
One of Ros' favourite things on the trip was feeding fish in the many koi ponds we encountered. This was the first one, and the most densely populated by fish. (Pretty much every park and garden had someone selling ziploc bags of fish food for 2 yuan.)
A close up of the fish.
This is the JinLi district in Chengdu, and dates back as far as the Qin dynasty. It's very much like walking into a Shaw Brothers movie set, with lots of teahouses and restaurants and souvenir shops. A lot of the teahouses had blokes with guitars singing the Mandarin version of folk music.
People tied ribbons on this tree in the JinLi district to ask for good fortune.
One of the teahouses.
The three of us in front of a funky sculpture in the area. (Our guide wasn't the only one taking pictures of us when we posed here. Throughout the trip there would be people surreptitiously, and not so surreptitiously, taking pictures of us, and particularly the Sweetie. Though this time we didn't attract quite so much attention as the last time we were in China. The Sweetie once got surrounded by a crowd of people four or five deep when he had Ros in a baby carrier at the Summer Palace.
Here we are inside the panda preserve park. The park has extensive and quite lovely grounds, and houses over a hundred pandas, both giant pandas and red pandas.
This guy was the first panda we saw. Like most of the pandas at the preserve, he was mostly just hanging out and eating bamboo. Giant pandas are totally the couch potatoes of the animal world.
This is a group of juveniles pandas. Once they're adults, the pandas are solitary, but the younger ones like hanging out in groups. And eating bamboo.
And here's a little guy climbing a tree.
The Sweetie and Ros posing outside the panda nursery. This was the building where they let you hold a baby panda for a mere 2,000 yuan. (That's about $340 CDN.) It's crazy expensive, but the pandas are extremely expensive to keep, since they only like to eat bamboo that grows on mountains that need to be shipped in for them in mass quantities. Our guide told us it cost 50,000 yuan to keep one panda at the preserve for a year, so I reckon they need to get as many tourists to hold pandas as possible.
More pics of Ros with Oreo, just because.
Ros and the Sweetie posing in the restaurant in the panda preserve. (Ros stole the Sweetie's glasses and gave him her headband, for his SciFi look.)
One of Ros' favourite things on the trip was feeding fish in the many koi ponds we encountered. This was the first one, and the most densely populated by fish. (Pretty much every park and garden had someone selling ziploc bags of fish food for 2 yuan.)
A close up of the fish.
This is the JinLi district in Chengdu, and dates back as far as the Qin dynasty. It's very much like walking into a Shaw Brothers movie set, with lots of teahouses and restaurants and souvenir shops. A lot of the teahouses had blokes with guitars singing the Mandarin version of folk music.
People tied ribbons on this tree in the JinLi district to ask for good fortune.
One of the teahouses.
The three of us in front of a funky sculpture in the area. (Our guide wasn't the only one taking pictures of us when we posed here. Throughout the trip there would be people surreptitiously, and not so surreptitiously, taking pictures of us, and particularly the Sweetie. Though this time we didn't attract quite so much attention as the last time we were in China. The Sweetie once got surrounded by a crowd of people four or five deep when he had Ros in a baby carrier at the Summer Palace.
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But then, yes, cuteness has saved them. If they were a type of beetle they'd be gone! *g*
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And the pandas . . . So lovely.
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I had to laugh about Sweetie being photographed. When my kidlets went, the same thing happened to them. What was funny was one of the other family members would casually get into the picture behind my kids when they were taking their own pics so that they'd be in the picture too. E said after a while she'd wave them in and they started taking group pics of miscellaneous people. Her husby has a similar build and colouring to yours so they must be quite interesting. They were on their own also, not in a big group and said they didn't see many Westerners unless they were with tour groups. There was the occasional more adventurous European.
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You definitely don't see many Westerners outside of tour groups, but I think there might be a few more now than even six years ago. And we weren't quite the oddities that we were before. But yeah, you still get people taking pictures, especially when you're way tall like the Sweetie.
I have to say, though, that the general population in China is getting much taller. I used to be the average height when I'd go to Hong Kong or China, and now I'm on the short end again. The younger generations are definitely getting better nutrition.
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The pictures of Ros and the baby panda chilling out together are just too cute for words. Worth every cent!
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Ros is adorable with that panda (she's adorable all the time, but with the panda? Cute personified.)
And I'd swear we were at that teahouse for a performance of traditional Chinese opera.
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Ros + panda = adorable is a fact.
A number of the teahouses do Chinese opera and face changing shows, so it's entirely likely you were in that one.
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I definitely want to go back and spend more time in Sichuan province. (And Xi'an, and Guilin, and Hong Kong, and Shanghai... Oh, it's hopeless!) My travel bug sympathizes with your travel bug.
Actually, my travel bug is hoping for a Mark tour soonish, so I can indulge in a short hop over to England. *g*
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Really looking forward to your reports on these other cities! It is hopeless. All these new places to discover, but so many to revisit too...
That would be the best possible excuse to visit England! Now you've mentioned Mark....I would really love some sort of announcement soon, because dear Mr. Owen is actually totally messing up my travel plans. I have this month-long South-Africa trip in the planning, but (among other doubts) Mark is the main reason why I'm hesitant about booking, because I don't think I could enjoy the trip if he'd happen to do shows in October (I'm ashamed of the luxury of this 'dilemma' ;)). Not being this passionate about an artist made life so much easier :p
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I know how you feel. There's all sorts of the places I'd love to go back to, and all sorts of places I'd love to visit for the first time.
You also have my sympathy on booking your South African trip. At the beginning of the year I feared that Mr. Owen would tour whilst we were in China. Now, I've got no idea when, or if, he's going to tour. But I do wish he'd announce something soon, for all our sakes. (I do hope we end up at one of the same shows!)
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Someone who sympathises, could use that ;) Yeah, at the beginning of the year March seemed like a very possible tour month. If only you could've known, not even one bloody single out yet :p Patience.. Right ;) And I really do wonder whether he'll tour at all. If I could just put a line about Mr. Owen in the cancellation policy, problem solved. I'm sure every fan is going mad by now and wishing the same thing! (I hope so too!)
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