China: Ni hao, shun mao!

I am alive! I can't say I had the best night's sleep, but I am 3000% (approx) drier than I was, and I feel tons better. Good job too, today the pandas await. Breakfast was actually included with this hotel too, things were looking up. I saw sliced bread for the first time in weeks, and there was nice coffee from a machine. No cereal, but you can't have everything!

The panda centre was only a short drive away, and on the way, William gave us an info dump. The Chinese for panda is 'shun mao', or bear cat. They grow to around 300 kilos, eat about 80 kilos of bamboo a day, but only 30% is digested properly, and bamboo isn't super nutritious, which is why they are lazy. Their natural predators ('enemies') are wolves and tigers, and they live to 25-30. The panda centre we were visiting is the first to be opened in china (and probably the world though I couldn't swear to it).

We got to the panda centre just after it opened. Add in the fact that it is raining (more spitting really) today and it meant that the park was very quiet initially, we had the first group (Pack? Pod? Pride? Squish? Who knows) of pandas pretty much to ourselves!

Omnomnomnom bamboo

"I am suspicious of your intentions towards my 2 bits of bamboo, human"

One with some of the less photogenic pandas in; they deserve screen time too!

We continued to wander the park, watching the pandas lie about and/or eat bamboo (that's mainly what they do), as the park slowly filled. We were lucky to see the babies before it became a scrum!

Spot the panda

There he is!

Quiet, he's sleeping!

The cutest baby

The toilet was complex to say the least!

"Oh me, I'm just hanging out here..."

This position was clearly more comfortable to sleep in

Omnomnomnom bamboo mk 2

Do... do they really use that?!

The one at the bottom is my favourite!

Curse you wolves! Shakes fist

Our friend found himself a more comfortable and flattering position

The park started to get really busy by this point, but we still needed to fight our way through to the red pandas. I'm glad we did, they aren't as derpy as proper pandas, but they are super cute!

"They'll never spot me here!"

This one is less stealthy

I had a really good time looking at the pandas; they are really funny to watch, and since we managed to beat the crowds we got plenty of time to watch them in the morning when they were marginally more active.

Unfortunately William decided we needed to kill time from 10:20 until midday so we would not get caught up in the lunch rush at the People's Park. First we had half an hour to watch a 10 minute video (which was pretty good, but then there were 20 minutes spare...) followed by 20 minutes at a panda museum which was basically just pictures of pandas, then 30 minutes for Swan Lake, which seemed to only have a single swan, and was alright to look at, but the novelty wore off after about 5 minutes. I and many others quickly got bored in this mundane sequence; it wasn't horrible, but suffering the aftereffects of my cold I wasn't particularly entertained either.

The best part of the museum

The black swan of swan lake

Thankfully then it was back to Chengdu for lunch and a look around the aforementioned People's Park. The People's Park is basically a park with some war memorials, and a bonsai and magnolia garden; basically a fairly posh park. It was nice to walk around, Chinese enough to be different to your average park.

China meets hobbiton

The most photogenic bonsai tree I could find

Lion watch: the child is not hungry, but both mother and child appear anguished

What is this? Seriously, it isn't on the internet!

After that it was a lazy afternoon; the only real thing to do that we hadn't planned was wander about and look at shops, or go to a daoist temple. I looked up the temple because I was interested, but it seemed to be exactly the same as the Buddhist temple I have seen a million of, so I decided to pass.

Tea was exciting though; a Sichuan specialty, Chinese hot pot. I went for mildly spicy broth, which translates to hot in the uk, and then you get meat and veg to throw into your own little pot to cook, then fish it out and eat it. It was very nice, if a little more pricy than the other stuff we've been having (75 yuan, or £10 including a beer, so not exactly breaking the bank!)

Hot in more ways than one!

Everyone went for a little wander in the streets before bed. There was nothing much to see aside from every designer shop known to man, but it was a pleasant evening, and the (thankfully pedestrianised) streets were lively, so it was nice. Tomorrow we are going to "colourful alley", and getting the bullet train to start out Yangtze river cruise!