The great eaters of sichuan

Yeah, photos! Finally!

Chengdu is another large city in China in the Sichuan province. In all the other countries I've visited, the capital cities are huge but the other towns are small enough to get a good handle on. In China, it seems that every city is like 2 million plus. I just can't get my mind around how many people there are here!

The big draws of Chengdu are the giant pandas and the food. Sichuan food is known for its tongue tingling spice and great variety. The classic food is mapo tofu but there are so many others. I've spent the majority of my time eating through the city and it is so great. Dry-fried green beans, dandan mien, double-cooked pork... I can't rave enough about the food here. Everything from the street food to the banquet halls have such great variety. Eating in Chengdu is bliss. And luckily, I was with Yvonne and McKay who seemed to love Chinese food as much as I did. We walked all over town to make sure we got all the classic dishes.

Some classic sichuan food. I had some other pictures but they seemed to have mysteriously disappeared from my camera.

The other great eaters in Sichuan are the great pandas. This morning I visited the Giant Panda Research Center and they were so cute! They are these huge creatures but sort of roll around and eat bamboo. We saw both giant pandas and the smaller red pandas, which look like raccoons more than pandas. I even caved to tourist pressure and had my picture taken with a red panda. I know, its so touristy but I couldn't resist their little faces!

Me and the pandas. We saw probably around 10 pandas in all, all either eating or sleeping.

Munching away, hour after hour, day after day...

They are so big and clumsy but they are so cute!

A baby panda stuck in a tree.

I didn't realize pandas were so flexible. Well, I guess when you need to scratch, you need to scratch, right?

I had to pay 50 yuan (about $6) to hold this red panda but it was so worth it. He didn't care as long as he had some apple to munch on.

Traveling through China has been great in terms of food and the sights but I have to say that the Chinese people definitely have some unique characteristics. First, they like to spit. Not just spit but make these loud, disgusting hocking noises and then spit on the streets. Apparently, people used to spit indoors as well but that's been largely stamped out. The spitting is gross enough but the hocking is just VILE. The other thing they like to do is push. Lining up seems to be a foreign concept here and people mob everywhere - to buy train tickets, get entrance tickets, order food, etc. I was almost trampled trying to get on the train when some very eager passenger nearly shoved me over to get on before me. I've gotten into it also and found myself elbowing some old lady out of the way who tried to cut in front of me. Where's the humanity?!

Tomorrow I'm heading off down the Yangzi on a 3-day, 4-night cruise. Its on a chinese tour boat so the bathrooms will be basic (read: gross) and nothing will be in English. But its cheap and I even splurged on first-class tickets. Hopefully the bathrooms will be nicer since its only 2 people to a room. As you can see, my bathroom tolerance is very low. But I will let you know how it goes!