As it was the holiday weekend, the train we had tried to reserve was fully booked. It was a nice excuse to have our first domestic flight experience to Chengdu. It made me realize I could have booked more flights as it was cheaper and faster than the train. The airport was beautiful with views of the surrounding mountains from the large windows lining the gates.

Once we arrived in Chengdu we checked in to our hostel which was downtown and lively with other travelers. Many of the accommodations up until this point had been mostly empty and we were starting to wonder where everybody was; turns out they were in Chengdu. Our first attempt at dinner was a fail. A girl excitedly greeted us with her menu outside a restaurant, but when we started looking at the menu a man emerged from inside and took it away from us. It was the strangest thing. Seemed like he did not want us there, but it ended up being the best thing to happen to us since it made us go to the best dinner spot ever. There we ate cucumber salad, Mongolian cheese pancakes, garlic roasted perch with onions, and rice. I may or may not have made Nick get this exact same dinner a few nights later, too.

Sadly we did not realize the Dragon Boat Festival was still happening on our arrival day as we would’ve hurried to a river to watch some races. Instead we went to Xinjin the next morning, where we walked up and down the river in the main town area to see the remnants of the festival. There were still food stalls and people could paddle the boats (now with the dragon parts removed). We enjoyed coffees, a giant bucket of mouth watering blueberries, takoyaki, and dumplings. The stall women had a blast laughing at trying to communicate with us. I misunderstood the price as 50 instead of 15 yuan which was a widely enjoyed comedic relief.

Before our guide picked us up for our show that evening, Nick and I got some garlic for dinner. Under the garlic were shrimp somewhere. Post dinner we arrived to the Sichuan Opera Shu Feng Yan Yun theatre for our pre show ancient Chinese style back massages. This experience was cool for the novelty more than being effective back massages. The masseuse slapped, pinched, rubbed, and shook various body parts for 10 minutes. There were other options including face painting, souvenirs, dessert, or ear picking. At our table, second from the front, we enjoyed the all night tea service and sunflower seeds.

The show itself was incredible and so entertaining. There were 8 acts which were all introduced for 1-3 minutes in Chinese, followed by one sentence in English if we were lucky. The first act was a live band and some dancers. This performance was the most basic, just to get the audience warmed up.

A second act was a master puppeteer. The puppet had so many strings and options which were particularly impressive when watching the hands. The puppet even had motion in each finger joint and could grab and twirl things. Act three was a soloist playing the erhu, a 2 string Chinese violin. He was delightful to listen to and really got into his music.

Nick felt like the following act could have been slightly shorter in length but I thought he was pretty funny. There was another musician soloist, this time a man playing a trumpet of some sort that sounded similar to a bird. I believe it was a suona. It was slightly deafening in terms of volume, but the player was so enthusiastic and playful with the audience that it was still enjoyable.

No Chinese performance is complete without acrobats, and they came out doing many tumbling passes on the small theatre stage. This performance we missed a fair amount of story telling due to not understanding the dialogue, but we enjoyed it anyways. At some point the acrobats were joined by a king of some sort, followed by fighting with a pig faced man. We’ll probably never know what that was all about.

A woman performed hand shadow puppets for one of the acts as well. If you asked me prior to this show if that would be entertaining enough for a stage performance I would’ve guessed no. Turns out I would have been wrong! She did the classics: ducks, rabbits, dog, etc. However, her twist was that she could make them run, eat, and interact with other shadow animals. Some favorites of mine were two birds cleaning each other, a rabbit running, and a dog eating a rabbit.

One of the longer acts had a slow start due to us not understanding the dialogue, but we could tell it was funny based on how many children were laughing. This was a husband being punished by his wife by was doing various tasks while balancing a dish with a flame on his head. He moved the bowl on his head only by scrunching his face, he balanced, and he slid under benches. His performance kept building in difficulty and is hard to describe how cool it was to watch.

The grand finale was the fire breathers and face changers. This was what we had been waiting for and it did not disappoint. Many performers took the stage all face changing and moving to the live music while a fire breather swiftly moved between them. At one point the master face changer stood in the center and put on a performance that proved he really was a master. He did it so smooth and had excellent comedic timing. Just when we thought he was done and we could see his bare face and not another mask, he lifted his fan, then lowered it to reveal a mustache.

In the morning we were picked up directly from our hostel by our guide for the day, Jason. I asked him how he got his english name and he admitted that he got it from doing a funny online quiz. My follow up question was if anyone else calls him that or just the tourists and he confirmed it was just his name for tourists. It was a 1.5 hour drive to the first panda center we went to which was the Wulong Panda Center. Once we arrived we left our belongings in a locker, got dressed in our overalls, and started to walk the grounds to see the enclosures. This center is one that does not focus on release to the wild, so it mainly focuses on research, a nice retirement for pandas from abroad, and breeding.

This center had a lot of mother pandas with two babies each. All the babies we saw were between 1 – 1.5 years old. They were so playful and adorable to watch. We stood for long periods of time watching babies sleep in cute positions wedged between branches, wrestle each other, and navigate climbing in a clumsy and endearing way. As it turns out, there are also ‘famous’ pandas. Pandas all get to retire in China so there were pandas from all over the world there. It was easy to spot when there was a famous one because there would be a crowd with huge cameras, but the panda itself (at least to Nick and I) didn’t seem all that exciting.

After watching the pandas in their enclosures we got to go inside one of the pandas indoor areas to watch the keeper feed him his treats. They informed us that pandas used to be carnivores/omnivores, but due to laziness decided to just stick to bamboo. Pandas digestive systems, however, remain the same so they do not digest very much of the bamboo. To ensure they get the proper nutrients keepers supplement their diets with carrots, some apples, and ‘panda cakes’, which have lots of protein for them. To make it easier to take their blood for testing, they teach them to put their arm through a small slot while receiving treats. It was fun watching a panda eat that close up, just a few feet away. They hold their food with their paws much like a raccoon. We were not allowed to take photos inside, but a very cute panda posed for us before we went in.

Once the panda was done eating it was time to help break some bamboo. Pandas live 5+ years longer in captivity in part because their teeth don’t get warn down as fast (due to getting help breaking their bamboo). It was harder than it looked to get it to splinter. Nick of course could do his sticks in one swing against the pavement. Mine took a few more attempts.

Post bamboo workout we wandered outside the enclosures one more time while making our way to get panda popsicles. There was a kid with another group who was excited to take pictures with us and ask us questions. At one point he seemed nervous and did ‘rock, paper, scissors’ with his dad to determine who would ask the next question in english. A tray lunch was provided, too.

By the end of the day there it ended up only being 20 minutes near a panda. The rest of it was all pretty similar to what we could have experienced with a regular entrance ticket. The volunteer program used to include helping maintain an enclosure, holding and feeding baby pandas with a bottle, and other interactive activities. The itinerary we got still had a solid 2- 2.5 hours of interactive time, but that was not what happened. We are happy we went because it goes to a good cause, but personally we felt like they either need to lower the price or increase the value in some way. The experience still costs the same as it used to even though it is not nearly as worth it.

Our guide was very nice, though, and easy to chat with. He took us to a second panda facility on the way home so that we could see the red pandas, too. Dujiangyan Panda Center had the giant pandas and the red pandas. We were told that they are working on releasing pandas into the wild. The red pandas seemed a little sleepy, but it was cute to see several in the same enclosure. For the giant pandas there were not many babies at this facility and the adults were tired from the afternoon heat.

Our final day in Chengdu was a day to explore the city that was park heavy. We started off by going to Huanhuaxi park where they have the Du Fu Thatched Cottages. I found the layout of the park to be confusing as there were so many paths and they intersected in many areas with other paths. It was hard to feel confident we did any of our walking in an efficient way.

The park had a pond, a straight walk way line with red walls and bamboo, and some museums. As is tradition at this point we shared a fancy popsicle, pistachio flavored this time. We had one uncomfortable experience at the park inside one of the museums when a man who was filming everything got in my face filming me. Luckily Nick answered his questions for me as he could see I was tense. Most people have been very respectful when they have asked for pictures with us, so that incident stood out a bit.

Following the cottages we meandered to the People’s park, which was very popular. We thought it should be renamed the People’s Tea House Park because there was a tea house every few minutes. There was more tea house seating than greenery. It was fun to watch people row their little boats in the small lake.

A quick walk through Tianfu Square was our last stop on the way home. It had a lot of empty space and a few sculptures. Our dinner was some dumplings and amazing candied strawberries. We agree these may have been the best from our time in China. It was a great way to end our time in Chengdu.