Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
After our night at the opera it was easy to pass on this offer. Nana tried again, saying
how happy people were to hold the panda babies. We still declined. That night, when we
asked to eat at an authentic local Sichuan restaurant, she found us a great one nearby and
then walked there with us to insure we ordered correctly.
The next day as we crawled through the thick traffic of Chengdu—a city of 14 million
people in one of the more industrialized areas of central China—Nana said she had stud-
ied two years at a government tourism school and passed the government exam, which is
largely based on memorization: what to tell the tourists about the history of the region, the
customs, the sayings and the areas of cultural interest.
She told us what they were instructed to say about the people of Chengdu: “We are like
the pandas—we enjoy life and we are lazy and we like to eat. We like to go to teahouses
and sit and talk all day.”
Then she told us she had a new offer for our panda visit that morning. We could now
pay in Chinese yuan and with new, lower prices: 500 yuan to clean a panda cage and
1,000 yuan to hold a Panda baby. We said no again.
The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding resembles Central Park given
over to pandas. The walkways through the forest are lined with open-air enclosures for
panda teenagers rolling around gnawing on bamboo like it was sugarcane; for adult pan-
das sitting like Buddhas in the thicket, their backs turned to the humans yelling at them;
and the Moonlit Nursery House, enclosed pens where dozens of miniature-size baby pan-
das were sleeping in giant cribs, some in the arms of humans willing to pay $170 to cuddle
them.
It was remarkable to see pandas climbing on gymnastic equipment made to look like
a forest; pandas swinging on old tires; pandas hugging the legs of their keepers; pandas
wrestling each other in one big ball of black and white fur. Yes, the air was as polluted
as it had been in Xian. And the crowds grew throughout the morning until everyone was
jostling at the low fence to get the best snapshots. Everyone seemed happy to be in such a
predicament. Who knows if it is tourist propaganda, but pandas do make people smile.
This panda reserve in the Chengdu suburbs is just the first stop for a true panda aficion-
ado. A popular two-week panda tour includes visits to the Wolong Reserve, the Wanglang
Reserve and a valley even farther north near Tibet, with treks in the wilderness as well as
enclosed panda viewings. Instead, we opted for the Buddhist tourism trail, beginning with
our stay in the Buddha Zen Hotel in Chengdu's historic district.
Set in a side street near the 1,000-year-old Wenshuyuan Buddhist Temple, the hotel
had the smell of a 1930s Chinese melodrama, with small rooms portioned off by sliding
doors. A Buddha statue adorned with flowers sits in the entry, perfumed by burning in-
cense sticks. An inner courtyard with a small Zen garden muffled the city noise. There
wasn't a single European-style stuffed chair in sight—only comfortable Asian wooden
chairs and stools around tables. A group of young cartoonists from Malaysia were standing
Search WWH ::
Custom Search