A day in Chengdu
Chengdu Oct 11 2010 -- pictures
The first thing we learned about China is that I will never drive a car here. As a former Boston driver, I thought I'd seen some pretty crazy aggressive driving in my life. I was wrong. Simply crossing the road in Chengdu means taking your life in your hands. The road is full of bicycles, scooters, and taxis. Thankfully you can't go very quickly due to the congestion, so any accidents that do happen are probably slow speed.
Chengdu is a city of 11 million people, medium-sized by Chinese standards. While cars are far more expensive relative to the standard of living here than in the US, quite a lot of people have them nonetheless. The subway system is under development, with only one line open so far. So, traffic is horrible. Cars don't stay in their lines, sometimes ignore lights and easily weave around pedestrians, often within inches of their toes. Even when the pedestrians have a walk sign.
Anyway, we came to China for one reason. Pandas. Cute, cuddly, black-and-white pandas. The Giant Panda Research Center in Chengdu has almost 90 of them, mostly due to the local breeding initiative. Very impressive. Most cities that have pandas can't sustain their population, but at the Research Center here, they have become experts at both impregnating and caring for the babies.
We came, we saw, we hugged.
Jerry thinks they are super cute and wonderful animals. They are super cute. Yet, the more I learn about them the the more their endangered status makes sense. Plenty of animals are endangered due to human interference. Pandas are endangered because they are designed to fail. Panda cubs are always born what we would consider prematurely at 1/1000th their adult size. They are little pink rat things. As you would expect, the survival rate in the wild for these little guys is very low. Often the mother does not have maternal instincts and abandons or injures her own cub. Also, they only release one egg at a time, like humans, and thus don't have large litters like cats and dogs. They do have twins about 45% of the time, but even when that happens, the mother is only capable of nursing one baby. The other dies.
Pandas are not ready for breeding until the age of 5. They can be bred for about 10 years. Thus, best case, a panda in the wild could have 10 cubs. More likely, she will have a couple that survive. Females need to average at least 2 cubs in their lifetime for the species to avoid extinction. This should not be too hard, except that pandas also are very picky about their mates. Those girls are always looking for Mr Right.
Pandas have carnivorous digestive tracts. However, they only want to eat bamboo. Not just any bamboo, mind you. Only a few dozen of the more than 1000 species of bamboo are appetizing to them. To be fair, there aren't many types of grass seed we like to eat, but we sure eat a lot of a few specific ones. Still, it really limits their habitats. Beyond that, they can only use about 20% of the bamboo nutritionally. So they have to eat a third of their body weight in bamboo each day. They literally spend almost all day every day either eating or sleeping. I guess that's not a bad life, at least.
After the pandas, we had lunch. Traditional Sichuan hot pot. Problem is, I do not have enough of a tolerance for spicy food. So, we had to have a split pot, "half" spicy, "half" mild. You can guess which part of the pot is the mild broth. Anyway, it was really delicious. We mostly had things we were already familiar with, but the tofu skin was much better than I am used to, and we were introduced to a vegetable they described as "lettuce root". It was good, though I am not sure which kind of lettuce has a root like that. Even after gorging ourselves on various meats and vegetables, the bill for three (us plus tour guide) was around $20 US. Things I like about China.
e visited a local city park, Renmin park. This is the life of the city for locals. We sat at a tea house, enjoying tea and a pleasant view of the lake. There are a few tea houses in the park, and we apparently went to the gossip one. There is also a Mahjongg one, where everyone plays Mahjongg together. When we sat, a number of guys with little metal instruments tried to sell us their service. Apparently, they clean your ear for you while you sit there. Given the long metal tools they had (which presumably had been in other ears beforehand) and also our faith in our personal ear hygiene, we were not interested, despite their aggressive salesmanship.
After, we wandered in the center of the park, where there's a ring packed full of locals. Every 10 meters there was a group doing a line dance, or a person singing, or an amateur traditional Chinese dance group, among other things. Plenty of folks there just to watch and be entertained. We even saw some calisthenics and some badminton. With a park like this, who needs a gym membership?
I draw a fair amount of attention when we walk in a crowd. One guy even came up to me and struck up a conversation to practice his English. He said that he taught it in school. I now appreciate why Chinese people have so much trouble with English, if guys like this are their teachers. Compared to our tour guide, he and I had a hard time understanding each other.
After, we visited a really interesting pedestrian area called Jinli street. And finally, we wandered into an ethnically Tibetan area. The only part to mention is how our tour guide insisted they love "yak butter tea". In fact, to make this tea, they use blenders, and we passed by two blender stores in the same block just for this purpose. Yak butter tea smells like a nasty cheese.
Anyway, I've written more than I intended to. Off to Taiwan now, and we'll update more later!