We arrived in Chéngdū in rain that didn’t stop for two days. It was big, fat straight-down rain and the sort of weather that didn’t really encourage anything other than relaxing so….. that’s what we did and very happily too!
The place we stayed in was a huge hostel, run by Sim (Singaporean) and his wife (Japanese). They had two young girls and, up until Dec 07, had run their hostel from a small cozy place in Chéngdū but had had to move, so found themselves a business partner (who later dumped them) and moved to this massive four storey hostel on the edge of Chéngdū city. Having been left stranded by their business partner, the couple openly admit that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew and are struggling to keep heads afloat while keeping the prices reasonable for travellers. The place really was huge in more ways than one. It had two communal gardens, developed in Japanese style, many different communal areas, a full kitchen with food so good we almost didn’t go anywhere else to eat and so many resources (DVD and book library, travel service, bike hire, free wi-fi) and it really was the best equipped hostel we’ve stayed in thus far. It was called Sims Cozy Garden Hostel and if you’re ever in Chéngdū, its an excellent place to stay. Their girls were just gorgeous and the older one, at six, was already translating between three different languages. They were so outgoing, sharing their sweets with all of us and I spotted them helping one of the guys at the hostel service the bikes on the weekend. This is the younger one, three I think.
There clearly had been loads of rain and the gardens were drenched and very muddy. The plant to the left of the photo below was pretty cool as the leaves would fill with water, tip and empty, then refill and repeat. It sounded like someone sloshing a bucket of water every minute or so and we went to see what the noise was.
There were things that made a massive splosh whenever you walked near the water. I went to investigate what the splosh was in the dark but stepped off a step and went wooshka on the mud and went down big time (but didn’t spill my beer!). Result? One very sore knee.
We only seem capable of relaxing for one day max so ventured out to Lèshān, about 2 hours bus ride from Chéngdū, rain or no rain. Lèshān is home to the biggest Buddha ever at 71m high. Trying to find him was surprisingly a mission! We travelled there with Yuval and Leeat, an Israeli couple we’d met on the train from Píngyáo and they were great company.
Most of the people we’ve dealt with in China have been wonderful and do as much as possible to help us, but there are still some who try it on. The taxi driver who took us to the park where the Buddha was was one such character who quickly halved his fare after the four of us walked away. He then spent the entire 20min journey telling us in very broken English how lucky we were and how cheap his ride was. Regardless of the fact he tried to rip us off, he was very entertaining nonetheless and clearly enjoyed practicing his English. No shame whatsoever!
The Grand Buddha is in a large park and faces the river so unless you catch a boat across the river and view him from the water, you have to enter the park (for a rather steep fee) and hike for a bit before you find him, carved in the cliff by the river. On the way to the Grand Buddha, there were some interesting caves in the park, some of the carvings within which had a distinctively Indian look to them.
Other carvings near the cave entrance were covered in spongy moss that made them look a bit more interesting
and there were also some impressive figures carved into the hillside
There were temples dotted all round the park and this was one of them with really steep steps
and the roofs at the bottom of the steps covered more large carvings, one of them a laughing Buddha.
The hand railings of the steps up to the temple were covered with 1000’s of padlocks, all engraved. We’re not sure what they were but presumably they’re for good luck. There was a stall at the top of the steps selling new ones and the demand was clearly high as space to hang any new locks was difficult to find.
The Buddha (when we finally found him!) was massive
and just dwarfed everyone. I’m leaning on the railing in the top right of the below picture. A mere speck and I did try to jump up higher but I think some Chinese behind me thought I was going to jump off the edge so were shouting madly at me. I felt I should get down, so I did.
The site must get hugely crowded as they had all these gates to control the masses and we couldn’t believe they were empty!
We came to the conclusion that it was quiet because the ferries, which are the easiest and fastest way to get to the site, weren’t running plus it was raining. In the photo below you can just see Lèshān city at the fork in the river (we have a continual struggle with camera settings in the light wherever we go here it seems).
We were very lucky as the staircase down the side of the cliff was really narrow and funnelling 1000’s of people down there wouldn’t be fun or fast.
Spot the tourist!
Halfway down you came level with his hand and the further down you went, the bigger he looked.
Here you can see how he was carved. The cliff side had been dug away and he’d been carved out of the rock deep into the cliff-face, facing Mt Emei. Apparently the carving had started in AD 713 but took over 90 years.
This is Yuval and Leeat who we hung out with for the day.
Then, early the next morning, were the Pandas, the main reason we came to visit Chéngdū. The Chéngdū Panda Breeding and Research Centre is about 10km out of Chengdu city and is laid out more like a very green spacious park. The pandas are absolute kings and it is clear that every single one of them is completely spoilt rotten. I guess that’s what you get if you’re endangered! They were actually awake when we were there as it was early and they’d just been fed. Check this guy out; lazing back, arm resting, legs all spread out.
When eating, they sort of slump on their lower backs, up against a slope or pole and concentrate 100% on eating. They look very lazy and content, and make bamboo look very delicious
and nothing else seems to distract them
It will sound very cliché but they really were incredibly cute
We watched one of the keepers trying to persuade one of them to come down from his perch and he was having none of it. Everything was done in panda time and when he looked like he was going to get up, no, he decided to have a scratch on a post, then go back to lying with his legs dangling through the gaps in the platform. Then he was tempted by apple and he made a move. They seem very flexible, floppy almost, and seem to have the ability to completely flatten their bodies to the ground and could easily run the risk of looking like a rug!
He looked very awkward coming down, preferring to go backwards, hooking one hind leg over the rung before dropping his other down to the rung below. It really looked like he was going to go head over heels.
When he came down, he sat down straight away (conserving energy!) and got a pat on the head before he got up and waddled off after his keeper.
There were at least seven panda cubs in the nursery. The four youngest (one month old) were still in incubators
but the other three, about 2-3 months old, were in a playpen and all were snoozing (check out the guy in the middle - he looks like a hot water bottle cover!).
I’ve never seen pandas before but presumably you’d see them in much the same state in a select few zoos around the world but not in the numbers that are in Chéngdū. Before visiting the Centre, we didn’t realise that pandas had been around for 8 million years and were on the planet the same time as the sabre-tooth tiger. It might sound stupid but we also didn’t know that they were such good climbers. This guy was asleep high up in the tree and I suspect that, if you don’t get there at around 0830, there is a high chance that you might not see them move at all!
We spent the afternoon wandering parts of Chéngdū and visiting the Wenshu Monastery, one of the four major temples of Zen Buddhism apparently. It was interesting and very peaceful
but I liked the turtles and the fish. There were turtles covering almost every available bit of rock in this huge pond
There were teahouses in the monastery and they seemed very social places where you just sit, drink, play cards and have your ears cleaned! We’d heard that people used to have their ears cleaned in the teahouses but we thought that this was an old tradition. Not so! This guy had so many different things to stick in the ears – I am a bit partial to sticking things in my ears (shhh) and thought it would feel quite pleasant but Euan wasn’t at all convinced. In the end I was put off by the fact that the bits and pieces might be all dirty from someone else’s ears.
The streets around the monastery were really lovely
and we found another tiny eating place where had lunch and had no idea (again) what we were ordering. This was part of the kitchen. They had bowls all half prepared and if you wanted noodles, they just grabbed a bowl then threw in whatever else needed to go in it
but Euan ended up with rice noodles that looked like, and had the consistency of, worms. I had quite a good dish but man was it spicy. That old Sichuan pepper again!
We came across this food market. Neither of us could bring ourselves to try what we think were chicks
or the unidentifiable rodents in the below. Rabbits or bamboo rats maybe?
but these looked good to chew on!
This stall was selling what looked like a make-it-yourself potion.
The flasks came with sealed bags of dried bits and pieces. Among the items were starfish, lizard, spider, what looked like a gecko, scorpion, what looked like a small rat and loads of other things.
I think you just added hot water and left it all for a bit to hydrate, then drink it. There were samples but I wasn’t game and neither was Euan (who eats and drinks just about anything). It did look vile and I can’t imagine it would have tasted very good.
This statue was worth also a mention. He was very out of place and looked like something out of a perverted Wallace and Grommit movie. What on earth was the sculptor thinking??
This old guy just stopped and started talking to us and he really was quite cool. He had no teeth, smiled a very broad smile (whenever he wasn’t talking at least!) and was just happy to talk and talk. A very friendly chap.
We hadn’t seen anything of the actual city so we thought we’d better go and see at least some of it before heading onwards. We went into the centre and headed for the Peoples Park and it was, unsurprisingly, absolutely chocka full of people, as was the centre of town
The park was a wonderful place for people watching. A great place for kids and there were all sorts on offer such as fairy kits
and these were the best balloons I’ve ever seen! They were helium but not light enough for the balloon to float away, so it looked like the dog was walking. I was very tempted...
This lady was making toffee shapes on a stick and doing a roaring trade. She made each one in about 5 seconds, drizzling hot toffee from a ladle then rolling a stick in it before separating it from the board and handing it whomever was buying it
so basic but a really novel idea
We were bound for Guìlín that evening and because of the travel time have, somewhat guiltily, opted to fly the ~1600 km rather than take the train for 25 hours. On 1 October its National Day and there is a nationwide holiday. It is estimated that 60% of Chinas population of 1.3 billion are on the move…. we wonder what we are in for!
View Larger Map
The place we stayed in was a huge hostel, run by Sim (Singaporean) and his wife (Japanese). They had two young girls and, up until Dec 07, had run their hostel from a small cozy place in Chéngdū but had had to move, so found themselves a business partner (who later dumped them) and moved to this massive four storey hostel on the edge of Chéngdū city. Having been left stranded by their business partner, the couple openly admit that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew and are struggling to keep heads afloat while keeping the prices reasonable for travellers. The place really was huge in more ways than one. It had two communal gardens, developed in Japanese style, many different communal areas, a full kitchen with food so good we almost didn’t go anywhere else to eat and so many resources (DVD and book library, travel service, bike hire, free wi-fi) and it really was the best equipped hostel we’ve stayed in thus far. It was called Sims Cozy Garden Hostel and if you’re ever in Chéngdū, its an excellent place to stay. Their girls were just gorgeous and the older one, at six, was already translating between three different languages. They were so outgoing, sharing their sweets with all of us and I spotted them helping one of the guys at the hostel service the bikes on the weekend. This is the younger one, three I think.
There clearly had been loads of rain and the gardens were drenched and very muddy. The plant to the left of the photo below was pretty cool as the leaves would fill with water, tip and empty, then refill and repeat. It sounded like someone sloshing a bucket of water every minute or so and we went to see what the noise was.
There were things that made a massive splosh whenever you walked near the water. I went to investigate what the splosh was in the dark but stepped off a step and went wooshka on the mud and went down big time (but didn’t spill my beer!). Result? One very sore knee.
We only seem capable of relaxing for one day max so ventured out to Lèshān, about 2 hours bus ride from Chéngdū, rain or no rain. Lèshān is home to the biggest Buddha ever at 71m high. Trying to find him was surprisingly a mission! We travelled there with Yuval and Leeat, an Israeli couple we’d met on the train from Píngyáo and they were great company.
Most of the people we’ve dealt with in China have been wonderful and do as much as possible to help us, but there are still some who try it on. The taxi driver who took us to the park where the Buddha was was one such character who quickly halved his fare after the four of us walked away. He then spent the entire 20min journey telling us in very broken English how lucky we were and how cheap his ride was. Regardless of the fact he tried to rip us off, he was very entertaining nonetheless and clearly enjoyed practicing his English. No shame whatsoever!
The Grand Buddha is in a large park and faces the river so unless you catch a boat across the river and view him from the water, you have to enter the park (for a rather steep fee) and hike for a bit before you find him, carved in the cliff by the river. On the way to the Grand Buddha, there were some interesting caves in the park, some of the carvings within which had a distinctively Indian look to them.
Other carvings near the cave entrance were covered in spongy moss that made them look a bit more interesting
and there were also some impressive figures carved into the hillside
There were temples dotted all round the park and this was one of them with really steep steps
and the roofs at the bottom of the steps covered more large carvings, one of them a laughing Buddha.
The hand railings of the steps up to the temple were covered with 1000’s of padlocks, all engraved. We’re not sure what they were but presumably they’re for good luck. There was a stall at the top of the steps selling new ones and the demand was clearly high as space to hang any new locks was difficult to find.
The Buddha (when we finally found him!) was massive
and just dwarfed everyone. I’m leaning on the railing in the top right of the below picture. A mere speck and I did try to jump up higher but I think some Chinese behind me thought I was going to jump off the edge so were shouting madly at me. I felt I should get down, so I did.
The site must get hugely crowded as they had all these gates to control the masses and we couldn’t believe they were empty!
We came to the conclusion that it was quiet because the ferries, which are the easiest and fastest way to get to the site, weren’t running plus it was raining. In the photo below you can just see Lèshān city at the fork in the river (we have a continual struggle with camera settings in the light wherever we go here it seems).
We were very lucky as the staircase down the side of the cliff was really narrow and funnelling 1000’s of people down there wouldn’t be fun or fast.
Spot the tourist!
Halfway down you came level with his hand and the further down you went, the bigger he looked.
Here you can see how he was carved. The cliff side had been dug away and he’d been carved out of the rock deep into the cliff-face, facing Mt Emei. Apparently the carving had started in AD 713 but took over 90 years.
This is Yuval and Leeat who we hung out with for the day.
Then, early the next morning, were the Pandas, the main reason we came to visit Chéngdū. The Chéngdū Panda Breeding and Research Centre is about 10km out of Chengdu city and is laid out more like a very green spacious park. The pandas are absolute kings and it is clear that every single one of them is completely spoilt rotten. I guess that’s what you get if you’re endangered! They were actually awake when we were there as it was early and they’d just been fed. Check this guy out; lazing back, arm resting, legs all spread out.
When eating, they sort of slump on their lower backs, up against a slope or pole and concentrate 100% on eating. They look very lazy and content, and make bamboo look very delicious
and nothing else seems to distract them
It will sound very cliché but they really were incredibly cute
We watched one of the keepers trying to persuade one of them to come down from his perch and he was having none of it. Everything was done in panda time and when he looked like he was going to get up, no, he decided to have a scratch on a post, then go back to lying with his legs dangling through the gaps in the platform. Then he was tempted by apple and he made a move. They seem very flexible, floppy almost, and seem to have the ability to completely flatten their bodies to the ground and could easily run the risk of looking like a rug!
He looked very awkward coming down, preferring to go backwards, hooking one hind leg over the rung before dropping his other down to the rung below. It really looked like he was going to go head over heels.
When he came down, he sat down straight away (conserving energy!) and got a pat on the head before he got up and waddled off after his keeper.
There were at least seven panda cubs in the nursery. The four youngest (one month old) were still in incubators
but the other three, about 2-3 months old, were in a playpen and all were snoozing (check out the guy in the middle - he looks like a hot water bottle cover!).
I’ve never seen pandas before but presumably you’d see them in much the same state in a select few zoos around the world but not in the numbers that are in Chéngdū. Before visiting the Centre, we didn’t realise that pandas had been around for 8 million years and were on the planet the same time as the sabre-tooth tiger. It might sound stupid but we also didn’t know that they were such good climbers. This guy was asleep high up in the tree and I suspect that, if you don’t get there at around 0830, there is a high chance that you might not see them move at all!
We spent the afternoon wandering parts of Chéngdū and visiting the Wenshu Monastery, one of the four major temples of Zen Buddhism apparently. It was interesting and very peaceful
but I liked the turtles and the fish. There were turtles covering almost every available bit of rock in this huge pond
There were teahouses in the monastery and they seemed very social places where you just sit, drink, play cards and have your ears cleaned! We’d heard that people used to have their ears cleaned in the teahouses but we thought that this was an old tradition. Not so! This guy had so many different things to stick in the ears – I am a bit partial to sticking things in my ears (shhh) and thought it would feel quite pleasant but Euan wasn’t at all convinced. In the end I was put off by the fact that the bits and pieces might be all dirty from someone else’s ears.
The streets around the monastery were really lovely
and we found another tiny eating place where had lunch and had no idea (again) what we were ordering. This was part of the kitchen. They had bowls all half prepared and if you wanted noodles, they just grabbed a bowl then threw in whatever else needed to go in it
but Euan ended up with rice noodles that looked like, and had the consistency of, worms. I had quite a good dish but man was it spicy. That old Sichuan pepper again!
We came across this food market. Neither of us could bring ourselves to try what we think were chicks
or the unidentifiable rodents in the below. Rabbits or bamboo rats maybe?
but these looked good to chew on!
This stall was selling what looked like a make-it-yourself potion.
The flasks came with sealed bags of dried bits and pieces. Among the items were starfish, lizard, spider, what looked like a gecko, scorpion, what looked like a small rat and loads of other things.
I think you just added hot water and left it all for a bit to hydrate, then drink it. There were samples but I wasn’t game and neither was Euan (who eats and drinks just about anything). It did look vile and I can’t imagine it would have tasted very good.
This statue was worth also a mention. He was very out of place and looked like something out of a perverted Wallace and Grommit movie. What on earth was the sculptor thinking??
This old guy just stopped and started talking to us and he really was quite cool. He had no teeth, smiled a very broad smile (whenever he wasn’t talking at least!) and was just happy to talk and talk. A very friendly chap.
We hadn’t seen anything of the actual city so we thought we’d better go and see at least some of it before heading onwards. We went into the centre and headed for the Peoples Park and it was, unsurprisingly, absolutely chocka full of people, as was the centre of town
The park was a wonderful place for people watching. A great place for kids and there were all sorts on offer such as fairy kits
and these were the best balloons I’ve ever seen! They were helium but not light enough for the balloon to float away, so it looked like the dog was walking. I was very tempted...
This lady was making toffee shapes on a stick and doing a roaring trade. She made each one in about 5 seconds, drizzling hot toffee from a ladle then rolling a stick in it before separating it from the board and handing it whomever was buying it
so basic but a really novel idea
We were bound for Guìlín that evening and because of the travel time have, somewhat guiltily, opted to fly the ~1600 km rather than take the train for 25 hours. On 1 October its National Day and there is a nationwide holiday. It is estimated that 60% of Chinas population of 1.3 billion are on the move…. we wonder what we are in for!
View Larger Map
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