Chengdu

After spending a free morning in Tibet, we flew from Lhasa to Chengdu, which, at approximately 10 million people, is the capital of Sichuan province. Most of us were expecting the flight to be quite turbulent, as the airport is surrounded by the large mountains that make up the outskirts of the Himalayas. Fortunately, save for some slight turbulence upon takeoff, the flight was relatively smooth.

Chengdu has easily become one of my favorite cities in China. I don’t know that I could ever live there because I’m not really partial to such a tropical climate, but it was a wonderful place to visit. There were times when I’d feel like I was in Florida. Downtown Chengdu is very developed, with large office buildings, nice restaurants and bars, and upscale shopping. However, it has still managed to retain a distinctly Chinese character. Some of my friends and I, after indulging in a huge dinner of spicy Sichuan food, bought some ice cream bars to cool off and wandered around the part of the city near our hotel. It was a superb evening – warm and humid but with a nice cool breeze. Most of the stores kept their doors wide open late into the night, and people were sitting out on the sidewalks chatting with each other, eating, drinking, playing mahjong, or just enjoying the pleasant weather.

Chendu city scenes:

A popular type of Sichuan restaurant in Chengdu is called hot-pot. A hot-pot restaurant has tables with a burner or two in the center upon which a pot of broth or a pot of spicy oil (usually both!) are placed. The waiter (fuwuyuan in Chinese) brings out plates of various meats and vegetables that you put in the boiling broth or oil to be cooked. When whatever you’ve put in the pot is done cooking, you take it out and eat it, either by itself or often with rice (mifan). It’s delicious!

As I toured the city, it became apparent that Chengdu is attempting to be one of China’s most environmentally-conscious cities. It is much greener than China’s other major cities, with many parks and squares and trees planted along the sidewalks and along roadways. We even came across a sculpture of melting glacier that is supposed to remind citizens of the dangers of global warming. It’s all very admirable, but despite seeing all Chengdu’s strides toward going green, I couldn’t help but keep in mind the fact that the Chinese government as a whole still has not taken the steps it could be taking to lessen their contributions to global warming.

Melting glacier sculpture:

Becky and I working out in an exercise park:

Our main group outing in Chengdu was to the Panda observatory. It was pretty cool. It was nice to see pandas in their original habitat, although I kind of felt like I was back in the States because there were so many Westerners there. All in all though, it was a good time. I’d really like to return to Chengdu someday.

Pandas sleeping:

I never even knew red pandas existed until I came to Chengdu: