All about the Pandas

Sat in my flat on a cold January, scarely able to function, just lying in bed listening to accounts of a new virus spreading across China it is very hard to credit that I had the confidence and energy to travel through bit of China and that I felt so safe there,  but I did.  However, by the time I got to Chengdu, I did know that the adventure was coming to an end, which did not entirely suck the energy out of it, but did shift meaning in some ways. My hotel for a start was completely different. Stuck on the edge of town, though closer to things than I realised,  the promise of a view of the flyover, strangely was not sufficient for me to opt to change my room and have a view. Instead womblike I luxuriated in my internal and therefore cheaper room with a mini bar (though I only used the tea and snacks) and welcomed the other hotel facilities like the laundry and restaurant.

Prior to arriving in Chengdu my plan was potter day one, pandas day two, shopping day three and home day four.    However, being lost and being confused impacted some of these choices.  First though was pandas.  Having checked online I knew that in theory there was a shuttle bus to the location, however, a German embassy staff member, who sat next to me on the Xian Chengdu train and with a much better guide book than me, did not mention the shuttle,  based on the guide she planned to get get up early and go by metro and then taxi and the hotel staff just said taxi.  And nothing online helped me further,and as the location for the taxis and the location for the shuttle were not on the same line  I was a bit uncertain about my plans, but first I wanted to get to know Chengdu a little. Using the free hotel bus pass I just got on and went where the bus took me and luckily and accidentally landed in an area I had planned to see, an interesting sort of Camden town area, and then headed back to the hotel where I was happily esconsced in the restaurant eating wonderful food and watching the large business groups of Chinese visitors woof down their shared meals before having an early night in readingness to go the taxi route.

Hotel restaurant

Panda mad Chengdu

For a fleeting moment as I showed the driver where I wanted to go to, I was scared, especially when I realised I had left all my extra cash at home, what if the price for the taxi was higher than expected, what about the charge to enter the panda pads.  And then as my taxi speed along past the shuttle location and very cheap shuttle buses clearly in operation my anxiety escalated, but luckily at 7.30 in the morning there is very little traffic even going to the panda place, and the price of the taxi was less than my daily coffee, so that shamed me,  and then to my delight entrance to the Chengdu panda place was free.  I have seen shots of the entrance so often, yet even inside the site I could not quite credit I was there.  Like everyone I rushed through determined to get to the pandas as quickly as possible but the site is big. Many people use the inside shuttle, but money conscious as ever and unsure how it worked, I ploughed on through the bamboo as quickly as possible.  Luckily the smog of the day before seemed clearer the short distance from town and when I saw the sign to the Red Pandas I decided to detach myself from the crowd before going onto the main event. I was handsomely rewarded as the Red Panda, perhaps thinking I was the keeper with the food, checked me out and checked me out again.  I was alone when this happened. I held my breath and hoped the pictures conveyed how magical it was. How ever, unfortunately the short video is still too big to upload.

Many many many years ago, I remember that the sight of men and women in Mao suits bringing the panda Chi Chi to London Zoo was a great spectacle, but that is as nothing compared to the sight of coming around the corner and seeing pandas dozing high up in the trees cuddling each other, or munching down the bamboo macheted for them in the park.    I just wandered where the paths took me, often not really knowing where I was in the park.  I had imagined, I would easily spot the two other people I knew to be there that day, but the place was too big and the areas the pandas in two large to enable this, so I gazed adoringly but had no one to share it with until a small group of people were clustered outside an unsigned class enclosure where the keepers were cleaning out one pen.  Here we could very easily see the pandas standing up restlessly waiting to see if the keeper was there and when the first panda came into the now clean area each panda clearly marked out the area with their scent, so it was amazing to see such behaviour close to but the most amazing bit which got everyone simultaneously holding their breaths, trying to hold their cameras steadily and in the end laughing out loud was when two pandas were fighting and one fell off the platform.   Despite their biffing and biting I was captivated along with everyone else. Unfortunately the video is too big to upload.

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I was less happy when I struggled to be allowed on the shuttle bus back as it relied on my having a picture of the evidence of my payment to the shuttle company and my camera and phone were out of power, but in the end after much tooing and frooing and huffing and puffing I got on board and thought I was going to the monastery in town.  Instead I was dumped somewhere completely different. A woman on the bus indicated my location and then a man, with very good English, who thought my map was bloody awful, helped me work out where I was - which was somewhere in the vague direction of the People's Park - again on my wish list, but  suddenly I realised I recognised the road I was in and instead decided to hope on the bus back to my hotel.  I had no desire to go around  more of Chengdu so retreated to the hotel restaurant again and watched Chinese opera on TV before sleeping and dreaming of beautiful black and white bears.  It had occured to me, I could return to the park!!!.