A day at People's Park - Chengdu

Chengdu is a really nice city. It is more laid back than Beijing and the people seem nicer.

On our 2nd day in Chengdu, we decided to explore the city. The city has a famous park called the People's park. Warren and I were expecting something similar to the Beijing parks we have been too. Calm, old people singing, maybe some birdie hackey-sack. 

What we did not expect was crazy dancing, a talent show and some intense badminton (and a bonsai garden).

The park also had creepy, old rides for kids as seen below:

I watched some people play Badminton but chickened out of asking them and we moved to the bonsai garden. In addition to Warren and his parents enjoying Chinese horticulture, we also found bubbles ! I decided to try out my telephoto lens to take some pictures of bubbles and thus, I made friends with the bubble girls who gladly blew bubbles and posed for me to take pictures. They were a giggly, happy bunch and let me take a bunch of trial and error bubble pictures.
   



After the seeming quiet of the bonsai garden we followed the crowd to hear loud music. Guess what we found - A Chinese talent show ! There was singing and dancing and much applause involved. It was pretty entertaining and Warren and I creeped and took some pictures of the performers. We then saw some tai-chi-esque dancing but nothing prepared us for the crazy line dancing that we were about to enjoy (and participate in).

Following the music we got to this open stage and saw people just breaking it down, Chinese style. Here is a short video for your enjoyment:

Being the only foreigners, one of the guy's made Warren and I join the dancing. The first sequence wasn't too bad, but we gave up when the dance moves got too complex. Next to the dancing, there was a kids fashion show and Warren wanted to steal a baby but compromised by taking pictures of babies.

We found a really cute girl whose dress matched the yellow flowers in the background and her parents were more than happy to let us take her picture and even let Warren pose with her !



After much dancing, laughing, and amazement at the belly dancing Chinese man we moved on to the "boating area". Usually when I think of boating, I think of this:

                                      

          NOT this:

                                     

But I guess it is China.... In their defense though, it was National Holiday and everyone and I mean every single person in China was out and about, traveling.

On our way out, we saw more dancing and the last group was Waltzing. Warren's mom taught him how to square dance - correctly as she believed her son was not doing it right the first time :p

At the exit, I saw some people playing Badminton and mustered up my courage to ask them if I can play. It was fun, the guy went really easy on me and did not make me look like a fool.

Our day ended, by eating at a Chinese restaurant and ordering food without a menu or pointing at pictures. It was eventful to say the least.

If only Piedmont park was as entertaining...

PANDAS !!!

I may not be entirely lying if I said that one of my biggest reasons of coming to China was to hug a panda.
(The truth is my reason to come here was to steal a panda but I have realized that is not going to happen).

This national holiday, I traveled to Chengdu with Warren and his parents. Chengdu is where the world's largest panda breeding center is located. They started with 6 pandas and now there are 88 pandas that stay there. They use special panda breeding techniques as they showed us in a documentary. (That documentary in itself was very interesting/funny and I am debating having a post just about that)

Anyway, getting back to PANDAS !

We got to the Panda base at around 8am. It is sort of an exclusive Panda zoo. There are both giant pandas and red pandas as well as the cutest Panda cubs ever. The pandas are lazy. All they did was sit (or sleep) and eat bamboo. No wonder they are going extinct. The most common panda pose was them sitting on their huge behinds, leaning against a tree and munching on bamboo.

Then we walked around to where the panda cubs were. They were the most adorable things ever. They were sleeping in a crib on their pink blanket. It was sometimes hard to figure out what part was their eye and what was their ear as they looked like cute fuzz balls.

After walking around in the bamboo forest, seeing cute pandas and taking a gazillion pictures, it was time to hug a panda. I had to wear gloves and shoe covers before going into the panda enclosure. There was a line of people there. And then the panda arrived ! It sort of waddled halfway and then decided it was tired so just plopped down on the ground. One of the volunteers then picked up the panda and took him to a bench. It was a baby panda, not full grown and hence, could be picked up. To ensure that the panda did not fall asleep/posed for pictures, there was one volunteer whose sole job was to dip bamboo into honey and offer it to the panda. The panda would dutifully chew the bamboo up to the point of where it was dipped in honey and then would promptly throw it away and wait for its next honey dipped bamboo. Still it was the cutest thing ever.

Finally, it was my turn to hug the panda. As soon as I got next to him, the panda had finished munching its honey bamboo and was not paying any attention to the camera/me but wanted more food (disinterested panda in the picture on the left).After the volunteer did his job, the panda was back to pretending to like being hugged, petted and taken pictures with.

I have a ton of panda pictures but won't upload them all. But I ended up buying a panda hat that day which I wore for the next 2 days and pretended that I too was a panda. Albeit one of its kind - a skinny brown panda from India.