Jake persuaded me to come to Chengdu which is the capital of the Sichuan province, sort of central China.
Sichuan is famed for its cuisine – spicy, very spicy – and generally delicious. Apart from these evil peppercorn like things they put in the dishes which are so spicy they numb your mouth and taste a bit like soap. I ate too many and couldn’t speak properly for a few minutes – a bit like the feeling you have after dental work.
Chengdu is a big city – apparently in the country’s top 10 largest. I have to take a moment to recommend the guesthouse where we stayed – Sims Cozy guesthouse, which although was outside the main city centre, was an urban oasis, complete with Chinese garden, friendly staff and great guests and strangely enough, a lot of them on their way to Nepal or Tibet.
China attracts a different sort of traveller and tourist. Slightly older, and more mature, there is a different sort of hedonism with them. Less about drinking and partying (although there is lots of that) more about mad experiences (think bungee jumping off a river gorge in Nepal) and a bit more culture. There’s a mix of old and young, European, Isreali and strangely a lot of Americans.
That night we got to sample to Sichuan barbeque, which was awesome and cheap. Although the guesthouses choice of film for the open air movie screening (Drive Angry with “actor” Nicholas Cage) was an ill-advised one (read – don’t EVER watch this movie).
An early start the next day to visit Chengdu’s panda centre. Most of the tourists come to the city to see the pandas – Sichuan is famous for them and the city is blazened with panda mottos.
I’ve never seen a real life panda before. It was pretty awesome and we arrived just in time for feeding. My observations about pandas (see below pictures):
- Pandas eat a LOT of bamboo – and usually only bamboo , which is strange as it’s not that tasty nor that nutritious
- Pandas are VERY lazy – they mainly eat and sit down. Apparently this is to conserve their energy as the bamboo doesn’t give them much
- Pandas are big, although their babies are tiny – like the size of a large finger nail and the young grow very fast
- The Chinese are very proud of their pandas. Apparently one of the pandas was the global ambassador for Earth hour – our group thought she had slept her way to the top, rather than deserved it by merit.
- China loans pandas to other countries, although if a baby panda is born outside China, they take it back for incubation
- There are two types of pandas – the giant panda which is black and white and the more vigorous and a lot smaller red panda which is apparently related to the racoon – and looked a lot like one
At the end of the tour we were greeted by a board with pictures of visiting foreign dignitaries. I was as surprised as any other to see John Prescott’s picture alongside one of Bill Clinton. I think the centre’s staff must have mistaken him for a visiting panda.
That night we went to a “Sichuan Opera”. My mum made me watch a film called “Farewell my Concubine” when I was too young to care which is essentially a Chinese opera, so I thought I had some sort of grounding in the art. Whilst there was little opera – it was more of a variety show, the performances were pretty impressive. Hand shadow puppetry, clever puppets that could sign and breath fire, ornate dresses, an impressive performance by a man that played what looked like an upturned large violin, and mask changing. Mask changing is an art form where the performer’s mask changes in a split second by one move of their body. The video below demonstrates - I was pretty impressed anyway.
(That night we headed to a Chinese club. Note to self – don’t go to a Chinese club as they always seem to have some sort of cabaret performance which is genuinely awful.)
Another one of China’s idiosyncrasies, which I hadn’t before appreciated, is Karaoke.
KTV (essentially a chain of bars with private Karaoke booths) pepper China like a Wetherspoons, where hordes of young Chinese sing their hearts out till the wee hours of the morning. So, obviously, with a group from the hostel, we had to go.
The KTV bars have a good selection of western pop tunes and a compendium of Chinese tunes, which dominated the first half of the evening. A George Michael, Shakira, Blue and “Come on Eileen” later, and the Westerners had taken over. The difference being that the Chinese take their singing seriously and sing in tune. Westerners shout to reach the notes, and bang the provided for tambourine out of sync with the music. And then home I headed.
A little random excursion the next day to the mobile phone store. I’m a massive technology geek and have always wanted an iPhone- I’m in China for a while so I figured it would be worth getting one here. As soon as I walked into the shop, out was ushered the obligatory English (or “Chinglish”) speaking store assistant to deal with me. Whilst very nice and proficient in English, asking about “data caps”, “3G” and “pay plans” was not, understandably in her vocabulary. But that doesn’t stop the Chinese. Out came her laptop and “Google Translate” – which has become as invaluable to me in China as my right arm – to negotiate mobile phone language.
After 2 hours of automatic translation and a lot of hand signal sign language (I can’t remember what my hand sign language was for data cap, but it was pretty inventive), I came out the shop with a brand new iPhone. All configured in Chinese. An hour later and the world was mine. P.s. Google Translate is a very useful tool in China as it prints the Mandarin script which you can then hold up to the native speaker so they understand what I’m trying *(emphasise trying) to say. “Do you speak English” – Nui hui Jiang yingyou ma? – and “Do you think my friend is sexy” have been wheeled out on numerous occasions.
Later that night, with iPhone in hand, we headed out where we met a Chinese guy and girl who were insistent that we hang out with them for the night. You always have to be a bit over cautious in China as whilst the people are very friendly, there are some who employ these sort of tactics to get you into a scam. Nonetheless they were both very nice and one of them fancied my friend – so proving the use of Google translator ;)
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