March 26, 2015 We are just departing Chengdu after spending a week hanging out in and around the city. We ended up coming into Chengdu a day early and we were glad to have the extra time to relax. After so many cities where we had jam-packed itineraries, we only had a few things scheduled here. First, of course, was to see the Pandas. Chengdu has one of the best Panda research centers in the world and it was near the top of the list of things we wanted to see in China. It certainly did not disappoint. The pandas were so cute and there were a ton of them. The research center has about 80 pandas at the facility that vary in age from less than a year old to older adults. It is located a little outside of the city in a very nicely kept up park with natural surroundings for the pandas. We found out that Chengdu is actually known as the birthplace of the pandas (they are naturally from the region and there are still some here in the wild). We had read that it was important to be there in the morning at feeding time when they are the most active. We were very glad that we got there early because just about every panda was out and about. Here are a bunch of pictures of them.

Playing in the tree

Tug of war over some bamboo

Giant Panda

Giant Panda

Playing in the tree

Giant Pandas

The best part about the research center is that there are no “fences” around the pandas. The areas are built with natural barriers so that you can’t even tell that they are inside of enclosures and you get a great view of them. They have lots of trees, play areas, and pools in their houses. We spent a couple of hours just walking around looking at them. In addition to the Giant Pandas, they have Red Pandas. They were also very fun to watch. In the nursery, they are allowed to just walk around between fences, one was about 2 feet away from Hayden at one point!

Red Pandas

The next day, we took a train to Leshan to see the biggest stone Buddha in the world…it was amazing and HUGE! It is over 220 ft tall and is carved into the side of the mountain. It is over 1,500 years old and took nearly 80 years to build. It’s amazing to think how people built things like this by hand. The park area was nice, but again…tons of steps!  There were some really beautiful Buddha statutes inside of the temples, but they don’t allow pictures to be taken.  😦

Giant Buddha

Giant Buddha

Lots of stairs

After the Buddha, we kept walking through the area to a little fishing village and an old temple with a very cool bridge. We took a bicycle rickshaw to the main part of town and I have to give a ton of credit to the driver. The lady was about half my size and was wearing a dress and heals…no joke!! I thought she was just the sales person to get us into the rickshaw, but then she jumped on the bike and started peddling. I wish I had a picture of her, but I forgot to take one. We had a typical Chinese street lunch (noodles – with a Pepsi, of course), before we went back to the train station.

Bridge at the Giant Buddha

The rest of our time in Chengdu was pretty low key. We went to a local market, had lunch out in the city a few times and then had a really great pizza with garlic knots for our last lunch before we left for the train. We are now sitting on the train heading to Kunming to see the Stone Forests.