Day 14 Pandas, Artifacts and Spice

Enjoyed a wonderful breakfast in the Tibetan influenced restaurant in the hotel…serenaded with western elevator music.

Then we met Jason for a long ride through the crazy Chengdu traffic to the Chengdu Panda Research Centre. What a wonderful place….so different from the pandas that we saw at the Beijing zoo. This place is one big park with large panda friendly enclosures, trees for them to climb, structures to sit on and play on, they were happier, healthier and cleaner. Paved pathways through groves of bamboo, ponds and flowers and other vegetation, peacocks were in between the different enclosures. We stood and watched the group of three and four year olds for a long time playing and eating, they are like typical adolescents teasing each other and eating non stop. Then we watched a mom and baby playing. We took lots of pictures to make up for the fact that it was so expensive ($250)to get your picture taken holding one. (which we didn’t do) We also spent time watching the red pandas, who reminded us of racoons. We didn’t see all the pandas that they have there, they are housing the pandas that came from another research centre that was destroyed by the earthquake in 2008. We also got a cache here!

With the pandas

Lunch was next after a long ride out into the country, passing by lots of huge modern highrises. It looked like a new family run restaurant, we were the first foreigners that some of them had seen. This was our first taste of the Sichuan food which is way spicier than the regular Chinese food we have been enjoying. Pam is not too happy about this but the others are enjoying it more, especially Barb. We also had stir fried canola greens as one of our dishes which was very good.

Across the road was our next stop, the Sanxingdui Museum, “the Three Stars Ruins” which is an archaeological find that dates back between 3000 and 4000 years ago. The site was first discovered in 1929 by a farmer and worked on for 10 days by archaeologists(during which time they found 600 artifacts) and then because of political influences was not worked on again until the 1980’s after which they have made more discoveries. The museum itself is a beautiful building and the collection is well presented. Our favourite piece was the money tree.

The Money Tree

Then back to the city…a drive that was supposed to be about 1 ½ hours turned out to be 2 ½ hours….the traffic was horrendous…we covered our eyes a lot! Supper was at a fancy restaurant, dinner was okay and spicier than lunch. But we learned a tip from Jason, to use vinegar to cut the heat. Jason took us for a little walk to Jinli Old Street, kind of like a Gastown walk.

Our driver dropped us off at the local firestation so Maureen could take a picture of the Chinese firetrucks,…..Jason asked but we were not allowed to and when you are in a Communist country you do not question.

Wine was next on the list on our way back the hotel, by this time it was near 10:00pm!