Chengdu Part 2 + Chongqing

When I last left off, I was in Kangding preparing for my trip to Chengdu. Since Kangding and the first day back in Chengdu were more re-charge time than anything else, I won’t describe those days in detail beyond this: I slept, caught up with some planning that I needed to do, and hung out with a couple of friends from earlier parts of my travels (namely; Pep, Joseph and the people who run the hostel where I stayed in Kangding).

On Thursday, however, I was joined by two friends from Beijing: Jonny and Aaron. I won’t describe our days in too much detail either with one exception - to be announced later. The majority of our four days went something like this: Breakfast, see a sight, eat a bit more, perhaps see another sight, have some drinks, go to bed, repeat.

As far as sights go, we saw the dark and tiny tomb of Wang Jian, made a return trip to People’s Park (see the previous Chengdu post for a description of that), spent time on the main shopping street called Chunxi lu, and visited a park that claimed to have more than 120 different species of bamboo (though I think that figure may have been misleading) as well as exhibition of antiques within that park. For pictures of these places (there are only 5 - not including very similar pictures), you can start here and move forewards.

For food, we braved the exceedingly spicy Chengdu hotpot – two of the three of us survived unscathed; one, who will remain nameless, had some . . . digestive issues. After that experience, we tended toward western food, but we did have some Chinese grilled fish that may have been the best fish I have tasted in China.

Finding the right location for drinks proved to be a challenge the first night. We took four cab rides and asked every driver and young person who we could, “Where do young people go to have fun at night.” By the end of the first night, we had been to every major nightlife street in the city (save one, which was our second stop the next night), and we located the “foreigners bar,” where we saw about 40 of the approximately 60 westerners in the city. Chengdu is not like Beijing. In the end, we settled on a street of establishments with predominantly Chinese clientele that struck a good balance between price and fun. Just to give a quick image of the type of places that we went: as soon as we decided that one club was suitable and ordered drinks, the in-house music shut of and was replaced by a male vocalist singing onstage karaoke-style. After a brief eye-roll from all three of us, we decided to make the best of the situation and enjoy our drinks; it turned out to be not too bad.

I mentioned that there was one Chengdu experience that I would describe in more detail, and that experience was visiting the Panda Breeding Center. In order to follow along with this part of the journey, you can take a look at the specially created Panda Album.

If you want to learn about Giant Pandas, I’m not going to help you much here. You should instead go to this Wikipedia article about pandas. I’m going to give a slightly different analysis, because after seeing real pandas, I feel that they are largely misunderstood. Also, as a disclaimer: If anything in my description disagrees with Wikipedia, blame the Panda Museum, my guide, or my faulty memory.

Now, I won’t deny it: Giant Panda’s are very cute. They even have opposible thumbs (just like us!) that render them extra cute because their arm and paw motions tend to mirror ours very closely, at least when they climb trees or eat bamboo, the only two things that I saw the Giant Pandas do.

However, I would argue that the majority of pandas’ cuteness (and we humans' resulting fascination with them) derives from their lazy idiocy and clumsiness. I don’t know exactly how it works, but for some reason humans are sufficiently entertained watching a black and white bear accidentally smack itself in the face with sticks of bamboo that it is trying to eat that we will stand by it watching and giggling for a good 15 minutes. Sitcoms don’t last much longer than that. And let me remind you that pandas don’t hit themselves in the face very often, so the majority of the time is actually spent watching a very lazy animal sitting on his butt or laying on his back . . . doin nothing. So yeah, that’s the most entertaining part about the adult pandas: when they smack themselves in the face with bamboo that misses their mouths. Guess what are the most entertaining moments when watching the baby pandas . . .

When they fall down (Obviously).

Here is the video which proves the point.

A close second to baby pandas falling down is baby pandas fighting, which tends to lead to baby pandas falling down. However, as a side-show while you wait for the inevitable fall, you get to see them growling, gently biting each other, and swinging for each others’ faces (often missing). What could be more fun than that!

I’m rambling a bit, but let me get back to the misunderstanding that I mentioned earlier. I found the false impression most succinctly stated in the Breeding Center’s Panda Museum. I found a quote that said (almost exactly), “Pandas are champions of survival and evolution.”

No.

They’re not.

I already mentioned that they’re dumb and lazy, but if that wasn’t enough, here are two more maladaptive characteristics.

1) They are capable of eating meat, but they only like to eat bamboo, a plant with almost no nutritional value; and worse, they only like to eat about 20 of the 40 common bamboo species in their habitats. In fact, they have to eat 17 – 40 kilograms (37.4 – 88 lbs.) of bamboo every day according to the museum, which, by the way, seems to disagree with Wikipedia. Further, they can’t move around much because that wastes the precious energy which they gain from eating those 88 pounds of food.

2) They suck at procreating (cover young children’s eyes for this paragraph). They only have sex during one short period each year. If the female can’t find the right male, she doesn’t even try to have a baby. Even if she does find the right male, they often do not have enough energy to mate (thanks to the bamboo diet). To make matters worse, the male’s penis is too small for the female’s vagina, so ejaculation is not even certain, let alone fertilization. And then if the female actually becomes pregnant, when she gives birth she only births one or two babies per littler, and she doesn’t know that the thing that just fell out of her is her cub, so she sometimes tries to kill it – trust me; I saw a video, and it was frightening.

Long story summed up very succinctly: I began to doubt the theory of evolution.

But then I saw it: a board titled “Panda Predators.” There are four. 1. 2. 3. 4. A panda can count that high without using its opposable thumb! And better yet, the predators, if I remember correctly, are also very rare.

So it seems to me that pandas are not “Champions of survival and evolution.” Rather, they were a well-evolved creature that wandered into the mountains, and then devolved because they didn’t have any predators. And thanks to that unlikely lucky situation for a maladaptive species, we now get to laugh at them when they smack themselves in the face with bamboo or fall down.

That concludes the tongue-in-cheek panda description. Let’s move on to Chongqing. Exit Jonny and Aaron.

When I arrived in Chongqing (photo album, for those who want to follow), it was raining buckets. And finding a taxi in the rain in a big Chinese city is war. I had to fight a woman holding a child for a taxi cab. Yes, I know that sounds heartless, but I had already had more than 7 cabs stolen from me, and I had clearly laid claim to this one when the woman, holding her baby like a football, ran in to try and take it away. However, I got it, and I was soon on my way to the hostel where I spent most of the day.

At the hostel, I met a Mexican girl named Val, and I did most of my traveling with her. We were able to walk around town for about two hours between two downpours. During that time, we walked towards a war monument which was suggested to me by one of the Chinese kids that I met on the train between Chengdu and Chongqing. However, when we arrived we quickly discovered that the war monument was not the main attraction. We ended up at the main shopping center in the town. (Note to self - even though I already knew it in the abstract: young Chinese people love going to shopping centers. Take their suggestions with a grain of salt.) We spent a little while walking around there, and then started to head back toward the hostel. About 2 minutes before we returned, the rain started full-force again, and we were forced inside for the remainder of the night, where we watched a movie and were joined by Stu the Australian for dinner and drinks.

The second day was much more fun. It was a sunny day, and Val and I spend the morning and early afternoon wandering through down the narrow alleyways between the stilted houses on the side of one of the mountains upon which Chengdu is built. We stopped for a quick cup of tea in one of the bomb shelters, which was built during the Sino-Japonese war period. Then we proceeded to the markets where Val was appalled to see chickens and ducks sitting in cages and then being removed and chopped into pieces in front of our eyes (for meat . . . it wasn't just a killing grounds for fowel).

From there, we started working our way up the mountain again, and we discovered a cable car which crosses one of the two rivers that converge around the main peninsula on which the center of Chengdu sits. We rode the car across the river, and were able to spend the sunniest part of the afternoon walking along the main promenade next the river. The city was quite pretty when the sky had cleared up, and I don’t think the photos quite do it justice.

After all of this walking, we made our way back to the hostel and re-joined Stu the Australian and (no lie) another new Stu the Australian for food and drinks. During this time, I relaxed and prepared for my long train trip which would begin that night at 1:04 am.

My general impression of Chongqing was very favorable. I wish that I would have had more time to spend there. The people were extremely friendly compared to those in most of the other cities that I visited in China. It seemed that nearly everybody was willing to talk and answer questions; it was kind of like a big city with a very small-town feel to it. If I were to pick a Chinese city in which I would like to relax for a summer or retire, I think Chongqing would be it (provided that I could still speak Chiense at those times; English was a bit scarce there).

That about sums up my experiences over the past week or so. I wrote this about 15 hours into my 30 hour train ride from Chongqing to Shenzhen, and according to myself at that time, "I’m looking forward to arriving. However, the hard-seat experience has proven to be very interesting. I’m surrounded by a number of young children who have taken a liking to me (the foreigner who can speak Chinese) :-p. Perhaps I’ll add a description of this experience onto the next post, but I’m not sure when that will be!"

Update: I ended up moving to a soft sleeper car (which has a bed) for the second night, so I arrived in Shenzhen relatively well rested. Now in Hong Kong, I'm not quite ready put together the train ride post, but based on my current impression of how different Hong Kong is than China, it looks like this weekend will contain plenty to write about as well.