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Chengdu is your typical Chinese city - filled with skyscrapers and malls. It was a lot like Kunming, however we were happy to find that it was considerably easier as most people spoke some English. We spent much of our 5 days in Chengdu wandering around different parts of the huge city. It is incredible just how many malls there are in Chengdu. A mall is quite a big deal in the UK, however in Chengdu there are mega malls on most streets in the centre of town. Some of the malls only contain luxury shops and are mostly devoid of customers. I don't understand how they manage to stay open! It probably has something to do with the fact that people are paid poor wages in China and so the staff in the malls are cheap to employ therefore it doesn't matter too much if they aren't selling anything. But why build the malls? Why are companies like Gucci, LV, Prada and Tiffany investing in such places. China is a mystery at times. In the centre of Chengdu there is a huge square with various sculptures and a giant statue of Chairman Mao. From the statue you can see a whole host of designer shops, American multinational chains and fast food outlets such as KFC and McDonalds. It's a strange dicotomy.
One of our funniest experiences in Chengdu was visiting the People's Park. Parks in England have nice paths, trees, flowers, lakes and the occassional tea shop. The People's Park had all these in abundance however it also had something we don't get in parks in the UK - karaoke. Every 50 feet there was a TV and microphone set up with an old guy singing and dancing his heart out. These performers always had a decent audience who seemed to be enjoying themselves. The singing was appauling, and very loud. It was constant noise throughout the park. Our map told us to expect to see jolly people in the park, and we certainly saw a lot of them. It was nice to see, if not necessarily nice to hear.
We had one day of trips from Chengdu. It was an early start - we left the hostel at 7.30am. It was worth it though, because what we were going to see was the world's largest Panda sanctuary. Neither of us had seen a panda in real life so we were very excited. The first enclosure we saw contained 4 sub-adult pandas. From the look of them and the information around it was very quickly clear why pandas are endangered. The pandas were closely grouped together, lying on their backs, stuffing their faces with bamboo. They had lots of bits of bamboo all over their big bellies where they had missed their mouths. The information board said they eat bamboo for 16 hours a day. When they ran out of the food they were eating they got up very slowly, walked a couple of steps, looked out of breath and had a rest against a tree. They then ate some more bamboo. This repeated for the time we were watching them and I'd assume the rest of the day. Not only are pandas incredibly lethargic and eating machines, they are also very sensitive to the sun. When it gets to 26C they are taken inside to an air conditioned room to spend the rest of their day. Whether they make it there themselves or whether they have to be carted there we didn't see. In the next enclosure we saw a few younger pandas who seemed to have more energy and were play fighting. It was good to see more movement. After that we went into a building containing incubators holding baby pandas about 10 days old. It was amazing to see just how small they were - about the same size as a mouse. The incubators were behind a glass wall, and women in lab coats were looking after the babies. They had a metal wire that they attached to the baby somehow, then after a while they would remove it and pat the baby's belly. This seemed to help the panda go to the toilet, and the ladies collected the faeces in petri dishes, probably for testing. People were gathered around watching this process. I don't know what the baby panda must have thought! After we'd had enough of watching baby pandas, we explored the rest of the huge site on our own. It was all very spread out and kept in excellent condition. In addition to seeing lots more pandas of various ages, we also saw the food prep room, the vets and a panda museum. There were also a couple of enclosures containing red pandas. I don't know why they are called pandas because they look nothing like proper pandas. Maybe it's something genetic. At most enclosures in the park there were big signs telling people to be quiet because the pandas don't like noise. This didn't stop the Chinese tourists screaming and yelling in excitement whenever a panda moved. Some people just have no volume control! Visiting the panda sanctuary was a really good and memorable experience. It made me wonder if pandas will still be around in 50 years. I'm not so sure.
That evening we went to see the Sichuan Opera. This took place at a theatre in the centre of town and was a major tourist attraction. It was a full house. The show started with a lady telling us a little about the opera and about the first performance. The opera was made up of about 6 performances and was a bit more 'China's Got Talent' rather than what I would define as an opera. The first act was traditional music with some actors doing a sword fight. This was followed by a dancing act. After this 3 women came on stage, one with a big puppet of a girl, the other two just dancing. She controlled the puppet with sticks and was doing extremely complex movements. While the women were dancing or moving dramatically, the puppet would do things such as throw and catch a handkerchief, spin a handkerchief, and pick a flower and put it in her hair. It looked more impressive than it probably sounds. The next act was shadow hand puppetry where a guy was behind a screen that had a spotlight on it, and he made different shapes with his hands to make the shadow look like animals or people. Next up was a comedy husband and wife having an argument scene. The wife was annoyed her husband got back late so she made him put a lit oil lamp on his head. The husband balanaced it while being challenged to do a number of movements. This was also very impressive. The last act was what everyone had come to see, and that was the famous face changing. The performers wear masks and change the masks faster than you can see. Each performer wears about 8 masks. It's a closely guarded secret how they do it, and I recorded the whole performance on video and still had no idea. They were just too quick! At one point two performers went out into the audience to greet people and were changing their faces up close. When all the masks had gone and it was just their face, suddenly a mask would appear. It was weird. There was also a puppet on stage that was doing face changing somehow. It had to be seen to be believed. The show all in all was very good and it made me wonder why we don't have a similar show in the West End for the tourists showcasing some traditional British acts. You could have renditions of Greensleeves, Morris Dancing, a knight duel, to name but three things. It would be a bit hideous for us to go and see, but the tourists would love it.
We got a sleeper train from Chengdu to Xi'an. We were in a soft sleeper cabin of 4 beds with two Chinese guys, one who was a student who was very excited that we were there. He wanted to practice his English with us and throughout the journey we saw him jotting down questions in English with the aid of his translator device. When he was done he'd look up to see if we were busy and if not, ask us some questions. He also told us some information about Xi'an and he helped us when people came round checking for tickets and passports. It was great to have him there and it made the journey all the more pleasant.
Xi'an is yet another highly developed Chinese city with lots of malls and concrete. We were staying out of the town centre near the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and Happy Mall Complex. It was actually a good place to stay as the Mall Complex had a large area full of restaurants and cafes that we could go to. Apart from the usual Pizza Hut, there was a Papa Johns, Dairy Queen and Baskin Robbins, as well as a load of Chinese and Japanese restaurants. We found a place called Small World Cafe that specialised in Western food. Inside it looked like a Western cafe and it had classical music playing. We ate there several times and I particularly enjoyed the bacon and tomato sandwiches. Just opposite our hostel there was a big park which had lots of statues and water features. It was a very pleasant place to stroll. We walked to the Bell Tower in the centre of town, which was a lot further than it looked on the map. The tower is at the centre of a busy intersection and is surrounded by mall complexes. Inside the tower the walls and doors are very nicely decorated and they have music performances in the tower several times a day. Being tired from all the walking we decided to get a tuktuk back to the hostel. We have been in tuktuks in India, Cambodia and Vietnam, but without a doubt this was the scariest tuktuk ride we have ever had. It was a busy time of day but the driver seemed to think breaking was cheating. Instead of stopping we went through the smallest of gaps, pulled in front of buses and even went on the pavement dodging pedestrains. Our legs felt like jelly when we got off.
The reason we went to Xi'an was to see the famous Terracotta Army. Our day trip to see it started with a tour of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. This Buddhist temple was home to two kinds of Buddhists. I can't remember the official names but they are essentially meat eaters and non-meat eaters. The legend (according to our guide) was that one day there were a load of non-meat eating Buddhists around and a big wild goose dropped dead out of the sky. This clearly meant that it was okay to eat meat, and so the other type of Buddhism was formed. On the site of this miracle the Big Wild Goose Pagoda was built. The place felt more like a tourist attraction than religious building, perhaps because most of the original things had been replaced in the last 30 years. Our next stop on the tour was to a jade factory. We were given a brief explanation about jade and then given free time to look around the huge shop. Charlene and I have perfected the art of visiting these sorts of places - avoid eye contact and keep moving to make sure you don't get pounced on by a shop assistant. The other people on the tour weren't so wise and got hassled to buy something. We left there and were taken to a 6000 year old archealogical site. Only a small portion had been excavated and it was covered by a big building. There were no plans to excavate the rest. The site was basically a number of holes in the ground and there were guesses as to what these might have been - houses, storage holes and graves. It wasn't a well excavated site. The next stop was the Terracotta Army replica factory. They briefly showed us how to make a figure out of clay before giving us free time to explore the shop. We were then taken for lunch. We were on the tour with 4 other people. There were two girls from England who had just begun their backpacking adventure and had only been to Beijing and Shanghai. The other two were a couple from Perth who also live and work in Bali, but were spending some time traveling around China. They were great people and we all gave each other advice about the places we had travelled to. After lunch we were finally taken to see the Terracotta Warriors. Walking up to the museum felt like the walk up to Wembley Stadium. It was all nicely paved and was lined with shops and stalls. After going through the turnstiles you see the big hangers that house the army. We first went to watch a video in a circular room with screens all around. The video told the story of the unification of China and the Emporer Qin who ordered the army be built. The film was similar in style to a Quentin Tarrantino film but without the bloodshed or swearing. After the film we walked through the shop where we saw the farmer who discoved the warriors 30 years ago. He had been digging a well when he found the warriors by accident. He now spends his days in the shop signing books and posing for photos (for money of course). After the shop we were finally taken to the hanger containing the largest dig site of the Terracotta Warriors. The hanger was huge and you could see thousands of warriors in the pit beneath. In total about 1000 have been dug up but there are estimated to be about 7000 in total. The dig is ongoing. Each warrior is different and was based on a different person in he army at that time. It was an amazing sight to see. We walked all around the outside of the first pit and were then taken to two other smaller pits containing even more warriors. We took so many photos! After we had seen all the Warriors we went to the museum however it was so manically busy we didn't stay there long. Although some of the places we had been to in the morning were not that interesting, actually seeing the Terracotta Army made it a great day.
We left Xi'an to go to Dengfeng, home of the Shaolin Temple. To get to Dengfeng we had to travel by train to Zhengzhou and then by bus to Dengfeng. We thought the journey would take about 7 hours but it in fact took closer to 12. Dengfeng was tricky. The hostel owner had informed us that she would be away for a few days and that the girl she had left in charge spoke very little English. The town is not at all touristy and is in fact rather grim. There are no malls and most importantly, there are no restaurants with English menus. Much of our time in Dengfeng was spent in the safety of our room, and we only ventured out when we needed food. Luckily the girl at the hostel gave us a business card for a restaurant that had three pages of their menu translated into English. We ate there every evening alternating between the pizza and a Chinese meal. Our first three days in Dengfeng were without a doubt the toughest of our year of travel.
On our fourth day in Dengfeng we ventured out to visit the Shaolin Temple. I was very excited by this as I had seen countless Kung fu films set at the Shaolin temple but I never thought I'd get the chance to actually visit. I was anticipating a beautiful old temple complex full of coutyards with hundreds of students practicing kung fu while old Buddhist monks prayed and shared their wisdom. I was disappointed. The first thing we saw when we arrived was a big statue of an angry looking monk. After this we made our way to the entrance gate which looked like an entrance to a theme park. By the gate there were a number of Shaolin shops selling every kind of souvenir you could imagine and there were crowds of big tour groups. Each tour group was led by a person with a microphone and speaker so their voice screeched out over the rest of the noise. When we got into the temple grounds we saw a car park full of golf buggies ready to cart the lazy tourists around all the sites. We walked along a bit further and came to a performance building. Inside it was manic. We had got there 20 minutes before the show started and already every seat was taken and people were pushing past each other to get a good spot. The show lasted 30 minutes and featured some fantastic stunts. I tried to take photos but most of the things they did were too quick. Stunts included: weapon demostrations, breaking an iron bar over the head, throwing a nail through glass and popping a balloon, lying on a spear and being spun around, and having a long spear pointed at the neck and pushing it to bend it (all without piercing the skin of course). I don't know how they did these feats, however I wonder how they found out they could do it. How do you practice and build up to breaking an iron bar over your head without doing some serious harm? I don't think there are tricks involved. I don't know. It didn't seem spiritual though and they didn't seem monk like. The skills are more similar to circus or freak show performers. It's a way for them to make money I guess. We wandered around the rest of the site and saw the forest of pagodas and the Shaolin Temple itself. The temple didn't feel spiritual either and there were turnstiles and shops actually in the buildings next to the Buddha statues. The whole place felt very fake and solely set up as a tourist attraction. I wasn't enlightened in the slightest.
When we got back to the hostel after our disappointing trip, we found that Coco the manager had returned. She told us about various places we could visit in the area, however by this stage it was too late as we were leaving the next day. She ordered us take away so we didn't have to go back to the same restaurant again. It was delicious! We found out that Shaolin monks of old do still exist and that they aren't all in it for the tourism. They live in small villages and if asked about kung fu, they lie and say that the master died long ago and that there is no kung fu there anymore. Apparently it's to do with the government. If you work for them then life is good, however if you don't then things can be made very tough.
The following day we left Dengfeng and we couldn't wait to get back to civilisation in our next destination - Shanghai.
D
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