chengdu

 21-22 October

On to Chengdu.  This journey would have taken eight hours, 20 years ago.  Now on the high speed train it takes two, and as we leave the station we can see the concrete columns for the new superfast train viaduct that will cut it even further.  And we agonize about HS2!  The line tunnels and spans its way laser-like through the mountainous landscape. 

Chengdu is another megalopolis, but on the flat (where Chongqing is built on the steep slopes of river revetments), with orderly wide tree-lined boulevards and good cycle lanes everywhere.  It’s reckoned to be one of China’s most popular cities, with a mild climate, happy and friendly people, and many parks, rivers and lakes. Still that sooty brown smog though: supposedly more common in autumn.  Also a former capital and one of China’s oldest, though you wouldn’t know it now apart form the few trophy enclaves that have not been overbuilt by soaring glass-clad developments. 

Chengdu is of course home of the panda research station.  Despite dire warnings from our taxi driver that either (a) it would be closed because of visiting foreign dignitaries and/or (b) it would be incredibly busy because of all the visitors to the big trade fair starting tomorrow, we found it easy to enter and not all that busy, at least in the first hours.  The buildings and compounds of the centre are set in a beautiful park, with a lake full of black swans and ornamental carp and stands of huge bamboo plants.  The pandas are kept separately by age group (adult, juvenile, mothers with young) in heavily wooded paddocks, where they lie around lazily consuming their 15kg a day of bamboo leaves and shoots, mostly just lying on their backs and pulling down the leaves in bunches.  If they do lumber around, it seems to be mostly to mark their territory by rubbing their bottoms against the odd rock or tree trunk.  A slothful life compared with their ursine cousins, and no-one seems to know why they switched to veggies at some point in their history.   

We saw quite a number of adults singly or in pairs, living this amiable life.  Then we were shepherded through the nursery, to see five identical teddy bear sized toddlers, with the same markings as the adults.  They could have been toys, but they did shuffle about a bit, obviously destined for the same lazy lifestyle as the adults.  Cue lots of oohs and aahs from the assembled visitors, including your easily swayed author.