Chengdu - even more of China

Well, we are getting closer and closer to Tibet but you still have to be a little more patient because we first had to stop in Chengdu in order to get our permits. In order to get there we took the train for the first time in China - and were suprised by the modernity of this country once more! Seriously, we don't have train stations like that in Germany. Of course, China is profiting from the fact that they are contructing everything just now and can rely on techniques and styles that are up to date while our infrastructure in Germany dates back to the 50th but still. Those people here know how to do a job right and how to organize a country with 1.3 billion people! I am more and more impressed by this country. It might seem that we are starting to idealize the country but you can be sure that we don't forget that China is also a country to (...sorry, I had to take out what I wrote here because our site got censured!) but still, traveling through this country and meeting its people has shown to me that not everything that is reported in Western press is correct and that there are many more, and more positive aspects about this country. I think traveling here is truly an eye-opener. Well, anyhow, I am losing my subject here. :) We were actually traveling to Chengdu and that via night train, which was not at all like the trains in India. Here, everything was spotlessly clean, much more spacious, and very quiet. It was actually a relaxing pleasure to be traveling thus!

Chengdu itself is a rather typical Chinese city of a couple of million people, more useful than beautiful with enormous infrastructure and huge, ugly building blocks, shopping districts and industrial areas. However, it also has some tradtional
and very charming old quarters with lots of wooden buildings, great restaurants where you can try the local speciality "hot pot" (which is really, really, really, really, really, spicy - etwas fuer dich, Michi) and beautiful tradidional shops. Around the corner, however, you suddenly find that you have left Chengdu and even China and, within two steps, you have traveled back to good old Germany and Frankfurt! Well, I have to admit, the writing and all the scooters are still a little irritating but we won't be too strict on that! :)

In Chengdu, we stayed in a beautiful little hotel called Sim's Cozy and we were very lucky to have found that place because they did not only offer an awesome atmosphere during the long days of rain we had in Chengdu, they also provided the best food in the region, and were able to obtain train tickets to Lhasa for us within three days and the permits for Tibet within two!! The curiosity of the place: their domestic animals that ran around the place and continuouly demanded food and attention of the tourists were two pigs! Yes, we were quite shocked by the idea at first and even in the end we prefered the cats and the fun dog, but at least we could see how the meat for our food had grew up! Strange concept though!

Of course we did not just sit around and do nothing and read Harry Potter all day long - even though that was quite tempting. One of our excursions took us to a panada centre that turned out to be really, really great. We were a little afraid of how people here would treat animals and keep them in a zoo, but this centre was really well adapted to the animals needs. While walking through the enormous territory we saw many of the cute animals and could watch them sleep, eat, and play. They are great fun when they decide to move!!



Sometimes, we were not quite sure what was more fun to watch, the pandas or the tourists struggling to get through the crowd to get the best shot! Terrible! One panda, however, has developed the best technique ever to treat the horde of tourists starring at him all day long. He just ignored us completely and munched away on his 20 kg of bamboo. It is actually amazing how those animals eat. They are very good (not at all like bears as we had seen in Darjeeling) at using their paws in order to strip the bamboo of its bark and break the interior into eatable bits. However, they still look so funny when dropping on their big back in order to eat and sitting there like my old stuffed teddy bear!



We also did something for our cultural education and went to see a Sichuan Opera. I was a little afraid at what the evening would be like because I really can't stand this extremely high Chinese opera singing but the show turned out to be a real treat. Of course, we did have some real inaudible music and singing (maybe my ear is just not used to those sounds but it didn't seem to be melodic and harmonic at all!!!), but we also had some wonderfully staged dances with beautiful, traditional costums telling us the story of the victory of the emperor over a rebel, a very strange piece of comedy that showed us that we are no experts of Chinese humor yet, and, as you can see below, some truly amazing and great music played on traditional instruments that reminded me strangely of Vanessa May, and Chinese shadow plays (I loved the owl!).



The evening also included traditional Chinese acrobatics, a women dancing with puppets on sticks, and the famous "changing faces". There were about eight different persons on stage, each wearing different masks and within the fraction of seconds, they would change those masks into completely different ones. It took a visit from one of the amongst the audience and a closer look for us to figure out how they actually do it. Very impressive!



Overall, we spent a surprisingly good time in Chengdu and glimpsed some more of this fascinating Chinese culture. I was almost a little reluctant to leave "Chine" so soon again as I was learning something new at every corner but then, who could be reluctant for a long time if the next destination was the Roof of the World?!?!