China travels - big Buddhas, baby pandas and Dragon's Backbone

We are back from a wonderful vacation to Chengdu, Gulin and Dragon's Backbone.
Here are some of the photos!
Our first few days were spent in Chengdu, a large city in south-west China. It is famous for it's spicy food - what we know as Sichuan food in the USA (including Kung Pow Chicken - correct (Chinese) pronunication is Gong Boa Chicken), it's teahouse culture and pandas!
We spent a great morning at the Panda Research Center where they have been very succesful breeding pandas - some are sent to zoos around the world, and some are released back into the wild. We were very lucky to see baby pandas - this one is about a year old ...

 The center also works with the endangered, but lesser known, red panda - smaller and more aggressive (despite looking like teddy bears).

 One of the mature pandas eating bamboo. We saw about 30 pandas in total - cool!

We really enjoyed Chengdu - the food was fabulous and the people very friendly. We spent a couple of afternoons doing what the locals do, and hanging out a teahouse - never ending cups of green tea and people watching. One day we got chatting with some local kids at the next table, and they invited us to play Mah Jong - they even taught us how to play!



We had an adventurous day and took ourselves off across the province in a series of 6 local buses - 3 there, 3 back (all figured out and made happen with our improving Chinese - Ev's pronuniciation and Andy's vocabulary! - hurray us!) to visit the town of LeShan - home of the biggest Buddha in the world - 1200 years old and carved out of the cliff face. You can get an idea of how big it is by the size of the people on the left side of the picture - the toe nail is about the size of an average person!



 A preserved street in Chengdu called Jin Li - old store fronts and a great food market where we tried various local specialities.

 One of the things we love about Chinese people is they really don't give a *#@! what other people think - I mean, you gotta love this girl! Ever seen someone sitting under an umbrella on a bus before?

Next, we flew to Guilin in southern China to visit the world famous River Li and mountain scenery for 3 nights - we spent a wonderful day cruising the river and soaking up the amazing views.

 We also managed to get onto a tour to a local village (Baisha) to visit the comorant fishermen and the 600 year old Dragon Bridge (where we are standing) - we managed to do this for free .... The rest of our boat tour group wanted to go and we didn't want to pay the extra $40 so kept saying 'No thanks' - in the end the tour leader told us to come for free but not to tell anyone else!

Final stop on our tour was two days in the rice growing village of Ping An - up in the mountains 3 hours from Guilin (what a bus ride ... :<) - in what is called the Dragon's Backbone. Fabulous rice terraces have been cut into the sides of the moutains and there are no cars or buses in the village. Peaceful and relaxing and gorgeous views.

 We basically spent two days drinking and going on short hikes. Wherever we went, the views were amazing.

Now we are back in Shanghai and taking it easy this weekend. We went out for a big Chinese dinner with some of Andy's students the other night to try lots more interesting food.

We are looking forward to our visitors - Helen and mom, and thinking about our next trip in October - to the Terracotta Warriors and Xi'an. Chinese language is going well, and we are now also learing to read Chinese characters! A little easier than it seems once you get the basics down.

Until next time ...