Chengdu can do

China adventures 2016

On the 27th day of March 2016 my good friend Amber and I touched down at Chengdu international airport to be awaited by Yin, our Green Lion correspondent, starting our giant panda adventure.

The first 3 nights we stayed in the Mrs. Panda Hostel, a quite delightful hostel.

We didn’t do much on our first afternoon. 
Our second day however, was all planned out for us.

First up was the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.
Funfact! This base was founded in 1987 and started with just 6 pandas which were rescued from the wild! 

As we had gotten there early in the morning a lot of the pandas weren’t out yet, but as we walked through be beautiful park they started coming outside to have their bamboo or play in the water. It was great! Certainly as we neither of us three had seen a panda in real life. 
It was an awesome way to get to know these creatures to start with, and made us (well, me at least) very eager to start the volunteerwork!












In the afternoon Yin walked us through the city (We/us being; Margaux, a French girl who would stay 3 weeks at the base, Amber and myself), she showed us Tianfu square; located in the centre of Cengdu city and where the first people ask for u picture of us,
the peoples park; where there were a bunch of people all dancing their own dance and we had a little tea party where we all got to taste the real green tea!

And we had a little tea party where we all got to taste the real green tea ! which tasted very bitter and  went a bit like this :











And then lastly through the cute (and crowded) streets of Kuan-Zhai.








 After a short, but hectic, bus ride back to the hostel we had a traditional Sichuan hot pot dinner, which was good fun!

Basically it’s the same idea of a fondue; there’s this boiling pot of water combined with all kinds of herbs and veggies in the middle of the table and than you just put in the food you want, wait a bit for it to cook through and then you just have to go fish it out again.

It was a great day to start off the week.















On Tuesday morning we stepped on a bus heading for the Bifengxia Giant Panda Base, a good 16km up the mountains from the closest city Ya'an. Here, our panda volunteering adventure awaited us...

more soon,

xoxo Lizzie