Chengdu – Panda Park, Zhaojue Temple, Travel to Xi'an

Woke up early to so as to make it by bus to the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base in time to see the Panda before their 9:30 AM feeding time, after which they apparently tend to go to sleep for the rest of the day. The pandas were pretty cool. They are quite ridiculous-looking animals, and all the more so for eating bamboo! It was really neat to see the Giants in person, and the Reds were really cute and pretty active.

From Chengdu

From Chengdu

From Chengdu

From Chengdu

From Chengdu

Once we'd had our fill of panda watching, we moved on to Zhaojue Temple. On the way, we saw a bunch of beggars, which had been conspicuously absent elsewhere we've been in China, so much so as to make a person wonder where they'd gone. Outside the temples apparently. There do seem to be relatively few beggars in China.

We ate lunch at the vegetarian restaurant at the temple, which was quite an experience. You had to queue for a good while to order, so the previous labor-intensive way we've ordered in the past seemed pretty much out. Instead there were little papers with the full menu in Chinese, and you were supposed to check off what you wanted. We spent quite a bit of time comparing characters from Lonely Planet with those on the menu, finally identifying only 3 dishes completely: fish-resembling aubergine, three kinds of seafood soup, and white rice. We ordered the fish-resembling aubergine (which was okay), the white rice, we-have-no-idea-what bean curd (too spicy!), and some random vegetable dish that Josh saw at another table and got the other patrons to show him on the menu (pretty good).

The temple complex itself was pretty boring. Lonely Planet's description made the temple grounds of groves and paths sound much more interesting than they really were. The hanging banner things were kinda neat though.

From Chengdu

After, we went back to our hostel to hang out, book our hostel in Xi'an, eat dinner, and so forth. In the evening, we got on our overnight train to Xi'an, from which I am writing after a surprisingly restful night.

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Train ended up getting into Xi'an pretty late (2pm instead of 11am), so by the time we got checked into our hostel, there wasn't really time to do anything. It was a relaxing evening though.