Yesterday was mostly a write-off and a disaster, because I was again having cash issues. I had tried the ATM at the airport, and even two ATMs nearby the hostel before I checked in, but my MasterCard was rejected in all of them. The hostel let me check in without paying everything I owed, thankfully.
So first thing once I was awake yesterday, I bought some Skype credit (with my MC, with no difficulty) and called both Visa and MC. Visa said they would work on getting me emergency cash, but it could take up to 24 hours to hear back from the bank. Since I could only provide them with my hostel's phone number to call back on, I was more or less confined to the hostel until I heard back.
MC let me know they had blocked my credit card due to too many ATM tries (but how did that add up with being able to use it for Skype credit?). Unfortunately, they could not unblock it and I would have to call back at 8:00 EST, or 21:00 in China.
I did leave the hostel to walk around a little bit and try the MC a few more times just in case. Even the few blocks around my hostel seemed exciting (and had even in the middle of the night!), and the Sichuan hot pot restaurants looked especially interesting. This was a mall full of restaurants.
It was also obvious that Chengdu is obsessed with their panda bears.
The highlight of Sichuan opera is what they call "face changing," which involves fairly nifty silk masks. There were probably ten or so "face changes" during this song, but I only captured two in this video:
The free sampler show was so enjoyable, I still wished I could see a full show afterwards!
Finally sometime around 21:00, Visa called me for more information, and at exactly 21:00 I called MC to get my card unlocked. Long story short, neither credit card company managed to solve my problem, but incidentally in the conversation with MC, I realized my Canadian debit card would work on the Cirrus network. A quick Bing search (Google is blocked in China) told me the Bank of China ATMs would accept Cirrus cards. I hung up on MC and ran two blocks to the Bank of China. I could barely believe it when the ATM spat the cash out. The solution had been in my wallet the whole time. I was too happy to be embarrassed.
I paid off my hotel so as to keep my room and, since it was now after 22:00, I started eating for the first time that day! I began with, of all things, a spicy duck neck! Apparently this is a street food Sichuan is famous for. I did not photograph the duck neck, but it is basically what you would expect, except longer, and more-or-less done up like a chicken wing.
It was served with plastic gloves to mitigate the messiness of eating it!
After food, I turned in, much more relaxed than I had been when the day started.
I was quite taken with this artwork at the entrance way . . .
. . . as well as this poster, which interestingly dropped the final line of the Christian hymn's stanza: "The Lord God made them all."
It is a little bit of a walk to get to the pandas, including along this lovely bamboo-lined avenue.
They say arriving early in the morning is best to see the panda's at their most active, and it was already 10:00 by the time I got to them, so I was worried they might be preparing for their day naps (apparently they usually nap from roughly 11:00-17:00!). Maybe it was because it was a cooler day (about 18 degrees, I think), but they were still very active when I arrived. Also, even though at first I felt like I was arriving late and it was the weekend, it actually was relatively empty. I had the first panda "all to myself"! S/he was munching on bamboo, branch after branch after branch. I have read that their bodies are quite inefficient in terms of how much they have to eat to derive the calories they need.
Just behind first panda bear's enclosure was another with this guy, even more active than the first.
I could not figure out which pandas were which, but signs like these gave some information, and I was surprised to see that one of the pandas had been born in the wild--as I understand it, there are quite a good number of pandas in China, but very, very few are now left in the wild. Most pandas are now born as part of some sort of management program such as the research park represents.
Speaking of births, the highlight for most people is the young. By now, as is obvious, it was getting busy! These are three lazy one year olds.
These little guys are even younger:
I was glad to have seen the young ones, but I found the adults much more interesting and certainly they were more active. Also, less popular, so I could watch them without pushing through crowds.
I have not quite captured it in this photo, but this full sized adult is WAY up in a tree, that really does not look especially strong. I was pretty impressed with panda for climbing so high and the tree for holding it!
Even though I had really enjoyed watching the two pandas at the Shanghai Zoo in 2016, I still did not expect to be all that excited about the pandas here in Chengdu. But now that I was here in person, I could really understand why they are such compelling animals. The research park has done a great job it seems to me of giving the pandas lots of space but also allowing for good viewing (maybe partly because there are so many pandas, so chances are at least a few of them will be readily view-able).
Besides the giant pandas, the research centre has some other animals as well, including black swans . . .
. . . red pandas . . .
. . . and at least one peacock!
Sometime after 11:00 I headed out to wait for the bus next to yet more panda art!
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