Entrance to Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding
We spent a restful night in the Tibet Hotel because we slept in a comfortable king-sized bed. We checked out of the hotel at 9:00 A.M. to start our adventure at the Panda Research Institute. Wang Yi (Jonathon), our guide, led us all over the park pathways. We saw adult, young, and baby giant pandas in beautiful settings like they were in the wild. Besides the giant pandas, we also saw the endangered smaller red pandas. We enjoyed watching a movie in English with Chinese subtitles about the research institute. The next showing was in Chinese with English subtitles.
Baby Pandas
Sub Adult Giant Pandas
Endangered Red Pandas
We also ate a delicious Chinese lunch at the restaurant there which included one of my favorite dishes, Kung Pau Chicken. After lunch we walked by Black Swan Lake where we could see swans and koi. Both children and adults had bought food to feed them.
Black Swans
Then we rode in our bus to a Chinese Buddhist Temple which was quite different from the Tibetan temples. This was more open with lovely courtyards and gardens. We went into a library that was available for everyone to use. There were round seats for people to sit while they listened to lectures. The seats were hard so that the people sitting in them wouldn’t fall asleep.
An elderly retired man was playing the Piba, a beautiful 4-stringed instrument, at one end of the room. I walked over to listen, and he seemed very pleased that I showed so much interest. He posed for me while I took his picture.
Man Playing Piba
As we all walked back through the gardens to the bus, Wang Yi said to Anita, “Look over there. That rich monk has iPhone 6.” due to his pronunciation,she thought that he said sex instead of six, and that the monk was watching sex on his phone. However, our guide in trying to make her understand, told her that the iPhone 6 had just come out a few days ago. We all got a good laugh out of this. It is amazing how the wrong pronunciation of one word can change the meaning of a sentence.
We then went to an old section of town to walk among shops and restaurants for a while. After that, our van maneuvered through the very crowded city streets toward the airport. We stopped for dinner at Ba Guo Bu Yi, an upscale restaurant with delicious food. We decided that Chinese food is far superior to Tibetan food!
After dinner we drove about half an hour to the airport. When the bus was maneuvering through the heavy traffic, Wang Yi said that there are now 4 million cars in Chengdu and 1,000 more are added every day! Beijing has 5 million cars. There are no laws in Chengdu like in Beijing where the license number of the car determines which days cars can be on the road.
We flew to Guilin. Our guide, Li Jian Feng (David) met us. He is very knowledgeable,and he speaks excellent English.