Chengdu

Last week was the Mid-Autumn Festival of the Chinese lunar calendar. It's tradition to spend this holiday with your family, admiring the full moon and eating moon cakes. A word on moon cakes, they are comparable to fruitcakes in the U.S. in the sense that no one actually eats them and no one wants them, but they're given anyways as a gesture of kindness....or maybe just so you can ask for a favor later. Anyways moon cakes are round disc-like pastries filled with anything imaginable, but mostly fruits, beans, meat, or egg. I did try a few different kinds but didn't make it much past the first bite. I think they would find a better use as a hockey puck. So instead of gorging on moon cakes for the holiday a group of us foreign teachers went to Chengdu!

Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan, an easy 2 hour train ride away from Chongqing. Our hostel was located in the Tibetan part of town so we feasted on yak meat and sweet creamy Tibetan tea at least once a day, it was all delicious! Our first night there we decided to walk around and explore and find a bar to sit and have a few drinks. Well, we ended up in a private room in a bar making friends with some local Chinese people, loudly karaoke-ing the night away to Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On, and of course devouring skewers of rabbit, which we didn't know was rabbit til the end of the night as our host hopped around the room to demonstrate what we had been eating. A little different then what we planned, but an awesome night nonetheless! The next morning we took a trip to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding to see some pandas! This is the largest giant panda breeding facility in the world; the pandas are mostly going to zoos but the ultimate goal is introduce them into the wild in hopes of increasing the natural panda population. Until that point though the pandas are happy to sit and do nothing but eat and sleep.....easy photo ops.

The following day we explored the city a bit more by visiting a historic monastery and enjoying an afternoon in Chengdu's first tea house. Chengdu is well known for its tea houses, which suit the cities' relaxed culture. At a tea house you pay for your cup and loose leaves and then tea pourers will come by your table and fill up your cup with hot water for as long as your heart desires. And I mean as loooong as you want. We easily adopted this local activity, filling ourselves with tea for a good 2 hours. We all really enjoyed our trip to the capital city, and I'm sure we'll be back for more tea and pandas soon!

Here is a link to photos from Chengdu

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2078384&id=1019820015&l=3810841254

 

And this link is for photos from Beijing, Chongqing and Beibei

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2077076&id=1019820015&l=6b2c7e0998