Visit to Chengdu (part 1, the PANDAS)

Our school's 

International Exchange Students 

have not had many opportunities to 

travel around China this year....... 

so, we invited them to come with us on a 6-day trip to Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan Province.

Caroline (from Chile), Max (from Germany), "O Ping", and Felipe (from Italy)

The biggest attraction in Chengdu is the Giant Panda   Breeding Research Center.

Click here to see the Giant Panda eating bamboo.

They eat A LOT of bamboo each day.

Click here to watch another Giant Panda eat bamboo.

Since adult Pandas are very solitary creatures, the breeding center has many separate enclosures.

 Click here to see the Panda, pacing back-and-forth.

The other favorite Panda activity is sleeping.  The center had some pretty elaborate structures on which to climb and sleep.

We spent half a day, exploring the center.

Teen-aged Giant Pandas are more social, interacting appropriately.  Therefore, they are housed together.

We saw about 20 Giant Pandas at the center.  (Others were indoors or off-limits.)


Pandas are on the "Endangered Species" list, mostly because their natural habitat is being encroached upon by urban development.  If anyone is convicted of poaching Giant Pandas, they face public execution.  Peasants are offered rewards equivalent to double their annual salaries, if they save a starving Panda.

Baby "Giant" Panda:

Another problem, as far as survival of the species, is that the Panda babies are one one-thousandth the size of their mothers.

The Research Center also had Red Pandas, which are also endangered.

Volunteers from Ohio

These tourists paid the big bucks ($100 each) to spend the day working at the Research Center.  Their tasks included washing the bamboo, distributing the cut bamboo stalks into "holder cups" around the enclosure, collecting and weighing panda feces, and bathing the pandas. 

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Chongqing City Life (part 10) ....Irish Pub, Planning Exhibition, City Park

In downtown Chongqing, 

there is an Irish Pub.  

It is a great place to hang out with Americans and Europeans, especially on holidays like St. Patrick's Day.

We met two guys (Charlie and Joe) from the U.S., who install and instruct clients about the usage of  crash-test dummies, in car factories, all over China.  They love their jobs, and spend about half their time traveling overseas.

I especially like Charlie, as he reminds me of Derek.  He has a wife and daughter back in The States, and St. Pat's day is his school-teacher mother's birthday.  Most importantly, he grew up with an 18-foot Burmese Python in the house, along with a Ball Python, other snakes, lizards, turtles, and iguanas.  Too cool!

Chris had fun at the Irish Pub, too!

***There are lots of gorgeous women in China!

We went to the Chongqing Exhibition and Planning Gallery, and learned that Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., 

is our 

"Sister City". 

How cool is that!?!

There is a gigantic model of the city.  This gallery is located out on the very tip of the peninsula.  (Notice the real people, looking down onto the model, from across the way......)

City planning....for a new district

Model of Chongqing's ultra-modern airport, in the planning stages

Model of International Circus World, scheduled to open "any day now."

We also visited an Art Gallery, nearby:

This painting of a little Tibetan girl reminds me of a similar poster that Derek has......

Embroidered, Silk  Pandas

On another day, we explored Shaping Park, near our home in Shapingba District.

Shaping Park is in the midst of a residential area, serving people from the surrounding apartment buildings.  Here, people gather near these ponds to play cards and Mah Jong on nice, sunny days.

Old men bring their bird cages to the park each day, hang them in the peach and pear trees, and let the birds socialize all day with the birds of other old men.  (The old men socialize, too, at concrete tables beneath the trees.)

Click here to hear wonderful, traditional music, being made by old men in the park.

Of course, there are the 12 traditional Chinese Zodiac animals, made of concrete, in the park.

 Our main reason for exploring this particular park was to visit the cemetery for Cultural Revolution Victims. The gate was locked, but we spent some time peering in:

Strangely, Shaping Park has its own little Statue of Liberty.........

.......and, Mount Rushmore!

Performance Art:  We enjoyed watching this man paint calligraphy (with WATER) on this building.

Click here to watch the man paint around the building.....

Chongqing with Qing and her family (part 7) ....Pear Blossom "countryside"

On a beautiful, warm, spring day, we took a trip to the countryside, to see the blossoming 

Pear Trees:

Qing, who made this whole year in China possible

Our whole group......Qing has 

LOTS and LOTS of  friends!

                                               

                             Melody

                   .......catching tadpoles

Up-close-and-personal with a working Water Buffalo

Click here to see the water buffalo in action.

This is a working farm.....

Click here to see the man carry the buckets of "fertilizer" out toward the newly planted corn seeds.

Click here to see that man distribute the fertilizer to the seeds.

This photo reminds me of one I have of my grandfather hoeing in a garden. 

We had lunch at this street-side cafe, where the nobody thought there was anything unusual about a big electric transformer being perched above the eating and ping-pong tables.

Lunch, for our party of 12.....

We each get a small bowl, a pair of chopsticks, and permission to snag food out of the communal dishes stacked in the center of the table. 

Building sites along the way reminded us of similar sites in Africa and Peru.

There were some big factories, on the way to the countryside.