A Han Tomb in Xian

On the way into Xian from the airport, we stopped for a quick visit to Hanyanglin Museum, the site of the tomb of the 4th Emperor of the Han Dynasty.

The Chinese found a number of burial pits around the main tomb, but these were of a more modest scale than Emperor Qin's tomb with all the terracotta warriors (that we were scheduled to visit the next day).  The Hans typically created their retainers and soldiers for the afterlife at one-third scale and with molds, so they weren't all individually featured like the more famous terracotta warriors (who were created at a scale larger than the average male 2,000 years ago)

This was a fairly new museum, so everything was displayed very well.  We walked on a glass corridor that was above the burial pits, so we could look down and see all the figures.  Each pit had a specific function - the kitchen and pantry pits were the largest ones, reflecting the importance of food in Chinese culture.  That's where I get it from!

Taoist Temples and Tea

Our second day in Chengdu started with a visit to a old taoist temple where we had a brief overview of Taoism and met with a monk to chat about his life and to see his dormitory on the temple grounds.

He was pretty nice although I am not sure everything he said was being well-translated for us.  He had a nice room with a computer, mobile phone and lots of other modern appliances.  He did a short tea ceremony for us with both oolong and green tea, and another monk came by and gave us a short tai-chi demonstration.  He and Anders then decided to try and see who could unbalance the other first.  The kids thought that was hilarious.

 

We also did a fortune telling ritual with shaking the sticks out of the container, one of my favorite pursuits from a child when I visited any temple.  Then our monk interpreted the fortunes which were printed on a piece of paper that matched the number of the first stick that fell out when you were shaking.

I still remember our trip to Taiwan when I was a child where we learned that although I would have "middling fortune", my sister would have "supreme fortune"!  Our fortunes on this trip were nowhere near as specific or amusing!

And so, we said goodbye to Chengdu and took an hour long China Southern Airline flight (in a nice new Airbus A330) up to Xian for the next stage of our trip.

Feats of Engineering

We were hot and exhausted after our panda adventures and went to a very good Sichuan lunch in a nice place with unfortunately poor air-conditioning and a distinct lack of ice for their drinks!

We were originally slated to visit a museum after lunch but decided to change our plans and go see a 2,200 year old irrigation system at Dujiangyan instead.  In the temple at the top of the project, we saw a model of the whole system with an island built out of rocks placed in baskets in the middle of the river, called the fish mouth.  The island has since been rebuilt out of concrete.

The whole river diversion project was pretty impressive and the 2 mile walk would have been lovely if the weather had been slightly cooler.  As it was, many of the Chinese tourists were taking golf carts around, which zipped by us on the path at breakneck speeds, honking all the way.  Mei, who really wanted to ride the golf cart, would moan every time one zipped by!  This meant that our walk was not quite as relaxing as I would have anticipated ;)

There were a couple of fun swinging rope bridges for us to cross, which most of us enjoyed (Pooh was, of course, completely freaked out!)

Dinner that night was hot pot, a big Sichuan specialty - we had two pots of soup (one spicy, one not). The big difference for me was that we had an attendant cooking everything and serving us the whole time.  We later went down to a different level of the building and watched a brief show of face-changing, something that Sichuan Opera is famous for.  The masked performer basically tilts his head quickly and his mask changes - he did this about 10 times with 10 different masks, showed us his real face, then finished up with one final mask.  It was pretty cool to watch!

Pandas, Pandas Everywhere

Early morning on our second day, We set off with our little entourage to the Chengdu Panda Breeding Reserve in the northern suburbs of Chengdu.

After walking about a mile uphill in the stifling heat, we stopped at the Panda Kitchen to learn a little about their diets.  As we hear more about pandas, it's a wonder that there are any left in the world these days, after learning about their picky eating habits and impossibly small procreation windows!  There are around 200 pandas in captivity (about 87 at this particular preserve although only 60 on premise since many are loaned out to zoos around the world) and an estimated total population of around 2,000.

We then went to one of the enclosures, quartered a handful of apples and fed some pandas!  We first had to put on these goofy blue robes and shoe covers, carefully spear the apple onto the end of a 7-8 foot long bamboo pole and dangle it in front of a panda, making sure to only give it the apple after it stood up on its hind legs.  They are truly adorable animals, the black and white faces, and the cutest ears.  And greedy.  And super lazy (though this is more understandable given the heat).  And they make little growly noises when they want more apples!

Then we walked over to another area of the park to have our picture taken with a 10 month old baby panda.  This was the highlight of Mei's trip although it was all a bit rushed and they were very nervous about panda handling - smearing the little panda's paws with honey to keep it distracted as the photos were being taken!  That little panda was heavy!

We wandered around a few more enclosures, visiting a playful group of 5 young pandas and also saw a lot of red pandas, which looked a lot more like red raccoons with long striped tails.  And watched a movie about panda breeding - newborn babies are pink, hairless and generally creepy looking!

 

We were a little panda-ed out but still managed to buy countless little panda knick-knacks on our way back to our little bus.

The Best Breakfast Buffet Ever

We all awoke early on Day 2 in Chengdu, still vaguely jet lagged and headed down our to hotel restaurant for breakfast.  The restaurant was set up as a wide series of stations (or theatres, as they called them).

 There was an amazing choice of food - the usually boring egg/omelette bar and standard western breakfast stuff, but also lots of Asian selections.  The Japanese station had sushi and cold soba noodles with tofu (Mei had this).  The dim sum station was enormous, with very good cha siu bao (roasted pork buns - the kids had 3-4 each every morning!).

And my favorites, the noodle bar (where I was completely unable to order what I really wanted) and the congee bar (where I had yummy shrimp congee every day). Congee is a savory Chinese rice porridge and a wonderful warming breakfast - especially when eaten with fried Chinese donuts (you tiao).

I finished off with a handful of sweet lychees and some nice local melon, while the kids had waffles with an insane dollop of whipped cream (we are on vacation after all!).

Our First Day in China

We arrived in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in the early afternoon and were met by our Swedish guide Anders, our local guide Rebecca and our trusty driver Mr Shi who never said a word the whole trip.

Why all the fuss?!  Well it turned out that I hadn't done a whole of research when I booked this trip and we ended up booking throughout a very highly regarded, but also extremely high end tour company! In hindsight I learned that I could have gone through A&K and just had the one guide and probably saved a little money. But one big benefit of this trip was that we had complete flexibility and could easily change our plans on the fly (which we often did). I certainly didn't regret how it all worked out - although it often felt that we had quite the little entourage going everywhere!

Anders was fluent in Chinese and had a Masters in Chinese history, lived in Shanghai and would stay with us throughout our trip.  He was our lead guide and any little comment or mild preference we expressed, he rushed to take care of.  He was also a very interesting conversationalist on a pretty wide variety of topics. Rebecca's English was good but not nuanced, and she would just be with us for the two days in Chengdu, her native city.  And Mr Shi capably (if rather insanely!) drove the little bus we took everywhere, liberally applying his horn to get us there quickly.

And so we arrived at the Shangri-la in Chengdu, which closely resembled the various other Shangri-las I had been to (Bangkok, Singapore, HK).  Something wasn't quite right with our rooms and Anders started off demonstrating his advocacy for us by arguing at length with the front desk.  It was all quite amusing!

We finally checked in to a gorgeous pair of rooms on the 27th floor with a view of the river and the city.  And promptly headed down to the Lobby Lounge where every other Shangri-la Hotel serves afternoon tea.  Alas, not in Chengdu!  My limited Mandarin was shown to be completely inadequate when it took me multiple tries to get a Diet Coke.  And we ended up ordering off the room service menu that they brought us.  It was all very good, just not quite what we expected.

We later met up with our little entourage to head out to a little renovated pair of walking streets for a stroll before a nice Sichuan dinner that we would have been completely unable to order without Anders. Rebecca hung out with us and told us about Chengdu history, culture and customs, but left before dinner.

I especially liked this beautiful Starbucks we saw.  Starbucks has the quite the presence in China!

It was stiflingly hot even in the evening, at least 90 F and amazingly high humidity.  It might possibly have been more humid than Bangkok!  After buying Mei a hand-painted panda fan to start our shopping for the trip, we headed back to the hotel and called it a day.

Why I Wasn't Blogging from China

We're in Bangkok right now, and have been in Asia for about 12 days - most of which were spent on holiday in China.

So why wasn't I blogging that trip on a daily basis like I usually do?  Well, despite super fast internet access and other technological marvels, internet access to Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is blocked by the Chinese government.

I did manage to make a few FB updates from the mobile FB app on my Blackberry.  I think that may have worked because it's on an international data roaming plan not controlled by the Chinese government.

So, delayed by a week or so, let the trip blogging begin!