Last day in, and leaving, Chengdu

The next day, our last day in Chengdu, Zeneta and I walked to the Bui Hua Tan Park and the Green Ram Temple. We went there by way of Qing Tai Lu (Road). Qing Tai Lu is a conspicuous shopping street and seems a bit oddly located. I say oddly located because there is no real cluster of tourist activities immediately near it. Like most of the official Chinese shopping districts, the shops feature relatively high end, and very expensive, goods.

Qing Tai Lu ended near one of the many entrances to Bui Hua Tan Park. This park was made to resemble the park described in a famous, fictional, book, in China. It features a rock garden and several small resting pagodas.

From there we walked to the, Taoist, Green Ram Temple. I wanted to make sure that I showed Zeneta a typical temple on this trip because I was concerned that she would leave with a poor understanding of the temples in China. The only others that she had been to were the Shaolin temple and the one in Xinyang. The Shaolin temple was more of a tourist attraction than a working, and worshiping, temple. The one here in Xinyang was just plain weird, it is more of a house of horrors, that one would find at an amusement park, than a traditional temple.

We spent quite a bit of time walking and visiting, the various buildings in this temple. A lot of it was under maintenance, as this was clearly the off season.

We then returned to our hostel and waited to meet Helen in order to return to the train station. We had no trouble with the waiting room as Zeneta and I had soft sleeper tickets and we made it clear that Helen, who had a hard sleeper ticket, was with us.

After a very short wait we boarded. Zeneta ended up helping Helen with her ticket and finding her car. This was Helen's first time on a train in China and it eased things for her , a bit, by showing her and talking about the rules and practices, regarding tickets.

On this train they did ask to see our passports, this is something that surprised Zeneta as she had not been asked for her passport on previous train journeys. I was not as surprised because I have been asked for mine, in the past, and it is more common in Soft Sleeper. This is because Soft Sleeper is how foreigners are expected, and supposed, to travel. As a result, the system is in place to ask for the passports. In hard sleeper the system in place only asks for Chinese to produce documents; because, that is all they expect to have in hard sleepers. (before you say that this is imposing, try to get on an airplane without official ID)

I could see this as a problem for a Chinese-American traveling in China. Once the police in the train see us they, pretty much, leave us alone and tell us that they do not need our papers. I could foresee problems with a person who is not obviously non-Chinese, yet unable to produce an identity card and does not speak the language. We, as westerners, often do not have our passport on our person, I think it would be near foolish for a Chinese-American, traveling in China, to not have theirs on their person, or at least a copy of it, at all times.

Zeneta sees the (not) Giant Pandas and an Opera

The next morning we were awaken by my alarm clock and quickly prepared for a visit to the Giant Panda Breeding Research Center. This project is not only a point of pride for the city of Chengdu; but, for the entire nation of China.

On the way we met several other westerners. They were all engaged in short tours of China, ranging from a week to three weeks. One of them, Helen, tuned out to be a resident in our Hostel. In route we talked about various points of interest in P.R. China and places that we, as a group of travelers, had either visited or intended to visit.

I hate to sound negative about the Giant Panda Breeding Research Center; however, I think that the trip that I went on with Michelle was the best of the trips made by Michelle and Myself, Debra, or Zeneta and I. I think that a large part of the trouble was the rain, it rained nearly the entire time we were in Chengdu, the other part of the time it snowed.

The trouble was that many of the Pandas were not out. While they do not hibernate, they were hiding from the weather. Zaneta's other observation was that they were not what she had expected; of course, this is part of the reason that we travel, and do other things to gain authentic experience, to separate truth from prejudice (being used in its proper form, to pre-judge, not as a pejorative). Her observation was that for a species called the GIANT Panda, they were not all that big.

The rain also kept a lot of the smaller, yearling, pandas inside. The worst of it, though, was that there was no opportunity to hold the Red pandas, which is something that Zeneta had really looked forward to. I do feel bad abut her missing this. Hearing me tell her how fun it was served as a poor substitute for authentic experience. All I can imagine is that some people had complained about being handed a lap full of wet panda resulting in that part of the tour being closed in wet weather. That was the biggest disappointment of the entire trip.

From there we returned to our Hostel and had lunch with Helen. After lunch we met with Tray Lee and traveled, with a French couple, to the Sichuan Opera.

The building itself was located in an older section of town and had a slightly rundown feel to it. This look and feel is common throughout China due to a common disdain for maintenance and cleaning (however, the toilet was surprisingly clean, and the floor was dry).

Before the Sichuan Opera began, Tray Lee arranged for, and encouraged us to go backstage and watch the application of the makeup, by the actors and actresses. Gender of the actor did not determine the gender role in the performance and women frequently played in male roles.

At this time he discussed the history, and the present, of the Sichuan Opera. As a public art, it receives no funding from the government and is financed, in large part, by private and corporate contributions. A critical amount of the funding now comes from a single woman, who has an interest in preserving this unique theater art.

He described it as a dieing art. It was easy to see what he meant, there were very few young actors. Even more noticeable, there were no young people in the audience. While the theater was near full, the entire audience, the four tourists excepted, was an older crowd.

The Opera was divided into four parts. Each was a separate scene from classic, full length, Chinese Operas and were not related to each other. So, effectively, it was four separate plays told in a short story format.

While he did not provide full translation, Lee sat behind us and told us the important points of the scenes. The result was that it was quite easy to understand. Injustice, corruption, and bureaucracy seemed to be a recurring theme.

In the first play, which takes place in a court room, a man is wrongly accused of murder. In order to be cleared of his crime the court needs a head. So, his nephew killed himself and left a note that his head be taken and presented to the judge.

The judge quickly determined that the head was not the head that was needed to clear the uncle of the crime. However, in reexamining the case it became clear that the man being held was probably the wrong man. As a result, he, the judge, promised to examine the case and ordered that the man being held was to be treated well, in prison, while the case was investigated further.

In the second act, a dutiful wife is preparing for her mother-in-laws birthday party while her husband, a general, is away. She also presents, what appears to be a part of a continuing series of requests that her mother-in-law consider changing allegiances. However, her mother-in -law refuses to consider doing this because she would risk loosing her status.

At this point, the General arrives home which comes much to everyones surprise. He is at a loss for how, but finally informs his mother that he has lost an important battle. His mother then enters into a long speech where she tells him that he should regain his losses, die trying, or kill himself, a Chinese form of, "return with your shield or on it."

The third act was, nearly, a solo performance telling the story of an agent of the emperor who was investigating a corrupt official and was thrown into the officials illegal prison. In this prison he finds the body of the last agent sent to investigate this official, along with the proof that he needs, on the body of the other agent. Toward the end of the scene he is aided in his escape by a servant woman who he promises to marry.

The final act featured the story of a young man that had been condemned to death because the father of the girl he wanted to marry objected to the marriage and, being wealthy and well connected, arranged to have him arrested and sentenced. This scene use all of the actors, bar one, and ended with the the young man imploring his intended bride to go on with her life without feelings of guilt; to go and find a suitable husband and live a happy live.

From there, we had Tray's driver drop us off at the Woodfish, the restaurant that we had tried to find previously. A quick review of the Woodfish; I didn't really like it. It was expensive and the servings were not large. It was certainly more of a restaurant than a cafe and featured western place settings.

We then walked back to our hostel. I spent some time in the recreation room while Zeneta prepared to nod off. One complaint I have to state about The Loft Hostel, which is similar to the other hostel that I stayed at, in Chengdu, last year, is the lack of heat. Chengdu, being south in China, is not considered a cold city. The result is that the heat does not work particularly well.

Keep in mind that it was snowing. With this picture of the weather, understand that the recreation room had no heating whatsoever; further, the room we were in had a radiator the never, truly, got hot. In general, the Chinese treat heating as an unnecessary luxury.

In Chengdu

We arrived in Chengdu on time and the driver from The Loft Hostel had no trouble finding us. While we, technically, only registered for two nights, we got closer to three nights of use. This is because once we got in to the room, we both, promptly, went to bed. While lights out, on the train, was at 9:30pm; things only started to quiet down about 10:30pm. Even then, there was the constant boarding and disembarking of passengers through the night. Then, about 4am, the crew started bumping around. So, when the lights went back on at 4:30am, most people were already up and awake. This made for a pretty fitful night of sleep.

After getting properly rested Zeneta and I got up and went for a walk to the Peoples Park. This park featured a memorial to the 1911 revolution and is a major attraction of Chengdu.

We spent a couple of hours walking through the park and seeing most of what it featured. I say most, not all, because as we were leaving we were approached by Tray Lee, an independent guide (or, from his card, Cultural Interpreter & Ticket Agent) , who pointed out to us that we had missed the Bonsai Garden. We then spoke to him for a while longer and he made an effort to spark our interest in the Sichuan Opera.

Of course, he was selling his services as a guide to the opera. The opera was something that Michelle and I had wanted to do on our previous trip to Chengdu; but, we ran out of time. This was still something I wanted to do and Tray Lee's offered price was less than the price of the trip offered by the hostels (90RMB verses 120RMB). He added to the pitch by claiming that the performance we would go to was the afternoon performance, not the evening performance He claimed that the evening performance was intended for tourists, while the afternoon show was for the Chinese. He stated that he would sit behind us and insure that we fully understood the performance.

I was noncommittal in the park; but, when I returned to the hostel I did a search on him on the Internet and found a lot of good testimonials. I then sent him a text message, which he promptly replied to, and we were set with an activity for the next afternoon.

Normally the hostels have their own restaurants; however, this ones was under construction. So, Zeneta and I set out to find the restaurant that the hostel was trying to steer us toward , The Woodfish. Because of the large amount of construction going on, most of the street signs were down and while the directions included the instruction to go down four streets before turning, at one point, the question has to be asked; precisely, what constitutes a street? Is it a street if it wide enough for a person the squeeze through, what about wide enough for two people to pass? Possibly, it is a street if it is wide enough for a car; but, does it need to be wide enough for a car to pass another. Of course, street can mean any of these things, depending on the mood of the person who is deciding what a street is.

As I am sure you can see, we did not find The Woodfish on that night. That was not a problem. we went into a cafe that, surprisingly enough, had an English menu. Other than having the names, or brief descriptions, of the food in English the cafe was entirely Chinese and served a variety of local dishes. I ordered several items and we did not finish all of them. I have to say that some of them we only tasted. All done though, it was still less than the bill would have been at a western restaurant (20 RMB). We than headed back and turned in early, seeing as we had a full schedule for the next day.