Pandas Are Soooo Cute!

April 28 - Dazu

We got off the boat in Chongqing, which the Chinese claim as the largest city in the world with 31 million people covering 82K square kilometers. Not sure how they measure these things but I can say it was a big ass city. We drove out of the city to the Dazu Stone Carvings, which were completed 800 years ago by Buddhists. The carvings are extremely detailed and have held up remarkably well over time - many of them still have some of their original paint. The carvings depict the Buddhist beliefs of doing good deeds and the underworld where you will be punished if you are bad. There were some seriously scaring looking punishments so I recommend that everyone mind their manners.

Dazu city itself is not a touristy place. In the evening we took a rickshaw ride around and saw very normal things - hardware stores, laundromats, restaurants, etc. We walked along a pedestrian shopping street and received a lot of attention - giggles and stares and lots of "hellos." Most Chinese people do seem to know "hello" and they are very friendly about using it.

April 29 - Chengdu

After a four hour bus ride in the morning we arrived in Chengdu. It seems to be a pretty cool city as far as big cities go. There are a lot of people out and about and it is very bustling, but there are a lot of parks and it seems cleaner than some of the other cities we have been in. We walked to the People's Park and watched the locals singing and dancing. It was a Saturday and everyone was out enjoying themselves. There were several groups of people with instruments and singers putting on performances.

In the evening we went to an excellent cultural show. It showed off the costumes and music of the Sichuan province and was very well done. I could have done without the high-pitched singing but there was a great performance by a guy who did hand shadows (we're not talking Little Bunny Foo Foo here - this guy was incredible), really cool puppets and a fire and mask show that was great.

April 30 - Chengdu

We spent over six hours on a cramped bus to see the world's largeset stone Buddha. It is 71 meters tall and is carved from a rock cliff in a city called Leshan. In my opinion, it is highly overrated and my knees would like their six hours worth of bus ride back! Oh well, you can't win 'em all and sometimes this stuff happens. On a positive note, on the way back into town we spotted "Peter's Tex-Mex Bar & Grill." We consoled ourselves with beer, margaritas, chile con queso and fajitas. We all felt just a little better after that....and Matt and I miss Dos Equis and Mexitinis just a little more.

May 1 - Chengdu to Xian

We went to the Giant Panda Breeding Center and it was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. We arrived early in the morning and beat most of the crowds and we were able to see the pandas when they are most active. It was so awesome - they were stuffing their faces with bamboo and rolling around, wrestling each other. We saw an 8-month old cub that was really shy. They look so cute and cuddly. This particular center has been the most successful in the world at breeding pandas and they have a nice facility. We saw about 15 Giant Pandas and also the Red Panda which has a face kind of like a wolverine and a body something like a raccoon. Check out the pictures because my words can't do the pandas justice.

On the way back to Chengdu we saw something very interesting. There were several blocks of buildings that had been torn down and the rubble lay in heaps. We came across one apartment building that was in the process of being torn down. It was probably still five or six stories high...and there were about 20 guys standing on top with sledgehammers taking each brick down one by one! There was not a wrecking ball or machine in sight! Can you imagine tearing down huge aparment buildings in the U.S. by hand? It's just so incredible how much manpower they have here.

In the afternoon we went to (another) temple. I'm just about templed out so am not sure what I will do when we get to Beijing, which is like the land of temples. After our vegetarian lunch at the monastery (the monks don't eat meat) we caught a flight to Xian, home of the Terracotta Warriors.

May 2 - Xian

The Terracotta Warriors were built from clay by Emperor Qin Shihuang 2200 years ago. They were placed underground near his tomb where he believed they would protect his reign in the underworld. Amazingly, each warrior has a different face so they truly are life-like. Unfortunately, after the Emporer died some bad dudes from another Dynasty came through and trashed and burned the warriors. No one knew about the them until 1974, when a farmer was digging a well and came across the first one. To date, about 8000 warriors have been discovered, most of them in many little pieces. Much work still needs to be done to excavate all of them and then they have to be put together like puzzles by archaeologists.

The area where the warriors are is separated into pits. There are about five or six that we visited, with Pit 1 being the biggest. It contains about 6000 warriors in total and about 1000 are excavated and on display. There are also horses and some amazing bronze chariots. It's incredible to think about how old they are and what they survived. The only downer to the day were the bazillions of people (it's a Chinese holiday) and some of the exhibits were overly crowded.

On the way back to Xian we stopped at a small village where people's houses are built into the side of hills. It's a very simple village with outhouses that dump into a ditch alongside the road. The stench was overpowering. Many of the villagers kept pigs so that also contributed to the smell. The houses were very basic. The cave helps keep it cool in the summer and in the winter there is a fireplace under the bed that keeps it warm. Visiting a place like this definitely makes you count your blessings. Many people in China live in rural areas with similar housing and conditions.

May 3 - Xian

It's the old man's birthday and for a gift we are giving him a 16 hour train ride to Shanghai! Lucky him! We leave this evening on another overnighter. Hopefully when we arrive in Shanghai we can have a proper birthday celebration.

This morning we rode bikes around the old city wall. It is amazing - about 50 feet wide and somewhere in the range of 9-11 miles long. It was a great little trip and gave us excellent vantage points of the city.

I'm working like crazy to get some more pictures posted so check back soon.