Our Trip
In April, 2010 we found we had a couple days off school and since it was not a Chinese holiday, we decided to venture out to Chengdu, China to visit the much anticipated giant pandas. This trip has been on our list for some time now simply because it would be a travesty to live in China and not see the home of the pandas. We decided to travel with our friends: Brenda, Emersyn (age 10) and Eleri (age 5) Lyon from Shanghai and leave the husbands at home.
Our three-day itinerary consisted of a three-hour flight to Chengdu in the morning then to the Panda Breeding and Research Centre in Chengdu. After that, we drove three hours to a Ya'an, China, a small town where the panda's were moved after the deadly earthquake hit their homes in Wolong National Nature Reserve during May 2008. Here we spent one night then drove half an hour to the pandas at the Bifeng Xia National Park then drove another hour and a half to the Le Shan Big Buddha before heading back to Chengdu. Once in Chengdu, we enjoyed an amazing Sichuan Bain Lain (face changing) performance and spent the night at the Shangri-la Hotel. Sounds exhausting, and it was, but it was worth it. The pandas were adorable! The last day we chilled out at the Shangri-La had an excellent breakfast and set off to explore Chengdu on foot, before heading back to Shanghai that evening.
First of all, Sean and Sophie (ages 8 and 10) thoroughly enjoyed this experience. I would recommend it to anyone living in China, as it's really nice to see the pandas in their natural environment being pampered and well fed. You can always go to a zoo and see one or two pandas but we've found the animals in Chinese zoos are poorly cared for and the experience can be somewhat depressing.
By far the most interesting part of the research center was the short movie they showed depicting panda life and how pandas mate and give birth. Sean and Sophie were fascinated by this part of the park. It explained how hard it is for Pandas to find mates that they like and sometimes they have to be artificially inseminated to birth a cub. What happens, and this is what Sean and Sophie found hilarious, is they anesthetize the female panda and inseminate. (The gestation period for a panda is somewhere between 83-163 days.) When she gives birth she has no idea she was pregnant and the cub (looks more like a rat) pops out of her body and lands across the floor. She is scared to death at this point and sometimes tries to kill it. This is when the "nurse" has to come in and scoop the cub up to get him/her to safety. We were utterly amazed at how little discomfort the mama panda seemed to experience during birth, as if she really had no idea what was going to happen. And, how in the world can this really ugly baby animal morph into a cute, lovable baby panda? I wish I had a picture to show of a newborn panda, but I'm sure there is one online.
After the breeding center in Chengdu we headed to Ya'an to spend the night. Our hotel was the Hongzhu Hotel and probably one of the best hotels in town. It was obvious to us that they hadn't had a lot of western visitors yet as the hotel was not up to western standards. I think we would have been more comfortable at the panda reserve sleeping with them. But, after traveling around China for the past 3.5 years we have grown used to "going with the flow" and we managed very nicely after a few glasses of wine and chocolate mints brought from Shanghai. While Sean and Emersyn read books, Sophie and her friend Eleri kept themselves happily entertained by playing hotel "Ayi's" (maids) by cleaning the toilets with the complementary toothbrushes wearing their complementary shower caps. They used every towel we had and had a great time. It wasn't until we finished our second glass of wine that we realized we had no clean towels for the next day. Lesson learned.
Then back in the van for a 1.5 hour drive back to Chengdu for the buffet dinner at the Shangri-la. By this time we were all dying for some decent food and the Shangri-la hotels never disappoint. Earlier that day, we were on a very tight schedule and craving a cheeseburger after the hotel food at Ya'an. We told our guide to find a McDonalds and we'd eat it on the way to see the Buddha. There are like millions of McDonalds in China and for some reason when we really wanted a cheeseburger, none were to be found. Our guide convinced us that this new chain tastes just like McDonalds and is known for their cheeseburgers. So Brenda and I went to place our order and decided to 'test" a cheeseburger before we ordered. Needless to say, we all ended up getting lousy chicken sandwiches for lunch. But, of course the Shangri-la for dinner was amazing as always.
That night we all stayed up past midnight talking and sharing the last of the bottle of wine we brought; the kids in one room and Brenda and I in the other. Maybe it was all the tea we drank at the Opera that kept us up!
After a relaxing morning of sleeping in and a long breakfast, we explored Chengdu paying tourist prices for things we later found in Shanghai for ½ the price. Story of my life...
Fun Facts &Tips
Chengdu is located in Sichuan Province home of China's giant pandas and known for it's spicy food and spicy girls.
Our guide told us the story of where the term "Spicy Girls" comes from as we see the term in various places around Shanghai. Scott has his own version that we'll let him keep, but the real version is so prevalent that they included a scene from a show we saw depicting a "Spicy Girl's" life. It is believed that Sichuan girls start at a very young age enjoying the spiciest of spicy Sichuan food. Because of their tolerance for the spice, they become very dominating as adults. They enjoy being in charge and reprimanding their "lazy husbands" when they see fit. It was very funny.
Giant Pandas in captivity are found in three main provinces in China: Gansu, Shaanxi and the largest number in Sichuan province. There are currently fewer than 1,000 pandas living in the wild today mainly in Sichuan province. The Chengdu breeding center was developed to create the ideal environment for breeding the pandas and other endangered spices of China. It's quite large covering 92 acres. Inside the park is a museum with video viewing area to learn more about the spices located in the park.
Bifeng Xia National Park is located southwest of Chengdu in a small city called Ya'an. This area has bamboo growing everywhere. There are six kinds of bamboo that grow here and lucky for the pandas, it is their favorite food. It is currently the world's larges panda eco-park of it's kind covering a total area of 60 square kilometers (almost 15,000 acres) with 90% of that forest. There are currently 16 giant pandas living on base and are living in an outdoor environment to encourage outdoor living for when they are ready to live in the wild. In the next 5-7 years it is the hope of the park to have 40 giant pandas in captivity.
Leshan Big Buddha was awarded by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1996. The Buddha statue sits at the intersection of three (Minjiang, Dadu and Qingyi) rivers. Construction of the Giant Buddha started in 713 AD by a monk with the purpose of calming the turbulent currents to allow boats and barges to pass by safely. It wasn't completed until 803 AD due to a lack of funds from the government. Even though the reasoning for the Buddha was spiritual, the act of carving the stone away to make the Buddha meant the stone was falling into the rivers, thus slowing the currents and allowing boats to pass.
Today after 1200 years the Maitreya Buddha (also known as Dafo) has been well maintained. Even back then they thought to put drainage holes throughout his upper body to prevent erosion. He is the tallest Buddha statue in the world measuring 233 feet tall. One of his eyebrows is 18 feet long!
If I were going again, I'd definitely hire a good guide but would choose my own places to eat. I know the food is outstanding in Chengdu but I felt we were only taken to the "tourist" places to eat and the food was mediocre at best. I'm disappointed I didn't get to experience the true "taste" of Sichuan food.
Welcome to Chengdu, China
We started our panda adventure at the Panda Breeding and Research Center in Chengdu. We happened to pick the day that I think every school in Chengdu was on a field trip. When we arrived it was just crazy with thousands of elementary kids wanting to take our pictures and practice their English. As we were dodging the crowds, we got to see lots of different endangered animals but mainly the giant panda and Sean's favorite the red panda.
The next morning after a lousy breakfast in Ya'an, we were out the door at 8:00 (not soon enough!) and on our way to Bifeng Xia National Park. It is here that we paid the big bucks to spend some "quality" time with the pandas by putting our kids to work cleaning the area. We also arranged it so they could have some one on one time actually interacting with the panda. This experience should have been a lot better. When we arrived back in Shanghai we learned that ten baby pandas were sent from this park to Shanghai for the Expo. I think if the baby pandas were in Ya'an we would have got to spend some more time with them. Our pandas were quite large compared to the baby pandas. So for an extra 1,000 rmb we got to spend 5 minutes with the panda. It's a lot of money (and it goes right back into the park) but also a once in a lifetime experience.
The Bifeng Xia National Park is absolutely beautiful. The pandas are well taken care of and their homes were clean. As far as we could tell, the pandas seem to have to perfect life; they eat all day then sleep at night. Every panda we saw had a bamboo in its mouth and for treats they were given carrots. They appeared very content eating all day long. The younger pandas had a great playground that they loved. We spent a lot of time here.
After about four hours at the park we were back in the van for the 1.5 hours to Le Shan Big Buddha. This was not at the top of my list but as Sean said "we have to see the biggest stone Buddha in the world Mom!". And, honestly it is pretty much impossible to visit anywhere in China without seeing at least one Buddha. So we arrived and yes, it's one big Buddha! Just its toe will fit 20 people. And 100 people can fit on one foot. Probably 100 Asians and 75 Americans!
We took a boat ride past it first, then hiked up to its head. It was very cool.
After dinner our next stop was a Sichuan Opera performance at the Shu Feng Ya Yun Tea House. This was another stop that I really didn't want to make. Brenda talked me into it and I'm so glad she did. It was all in Chinese but was humorous, beautiful and great fun for everyone. All four kids stayed awake, even after the extremely long day and loved it. They served tea and peanuts during the show. Today, Sophie is still working on her shadow puppets and Sean loved the Changing Faces and Spitting Fire act. We've seen lots of these shows and usually end up sleeping through them, but this one was excellent.
