My last blog predicted pandas, spicy food, and fewer stairs. I'm happy to say all those are true.

Chengdu calls itself the panda city, and oh my god they mean it. I started counting pandas the first full day we were here, and I gave up at 30. That doesn't count the gift shops every 100 meters selling panda dolls, hairbands, bookmarks, key chains, underpants, particle accelerators, you name it. If I did that, it would be in the thousands. It's pandemonium over here.

(Ba-dum tssst)

It's only an hour or so train ride from Chongqing, but we left late enough that we just went out to one place, Kuanzhaixiangzi. It's an old street, not unlike others in China. This one has a bit more personality though, and, this is key, there was a 5G, AI-powered KFC food truck. Yes the future is here in Chengdu, where you can get all 12 herbs and spices by jacking into The Matrix.

To be honest, the first day or two I wasn't really vibing with Chengdu. It didn't have anything interesting that really jumped out to me. We went to the big tourist sights, which are mostly temples, gardens, etc.. Like, one was home to a famous poet called Du Fu, who lived around the year 700. I'm sure he wrote great poems. But I didn't get anything out of it. One place I did get something out of was Wuhouci, a garden devoted to Zhuge Liang. Unless you're a fan of Chinese history, or, like me, play the Romance of the Three Kingdoms / Dynasty Warriors games, you may not be familiar with him. Chengdu was the capital of Liu Bei's empire during the 3 Kingdoms era, so it was kind of cool to see stuff about them. 10 year old me could never have predicted I'd one day visit "Lee-ohh Bee-ee's" city.

But I'll save you some time and cut to the chase - pandas. We woke up really early to go to the outskirts of town to visit the Panda Research center. Really early actually, around 5am - Because the place gets crazy busy, and because pandas are active in the morning. In typical rural Chinese fashion, we were lined up in an orderly manner until one group of jerks cut the line. That makes it look like there are 2 lines, which opens the floodgates for everyone to just cram into wherever, and it turns into a clusterfuck. Fortunately we were close enough to the front it didn't matter too much, but it's something I've become used to in China. Oh well. The place itself is basically just a zoo, but replace every animal enclosure with pandas. And... that's it. That's all it needs to be though, and this is the first time I've seen pandas not behind glass, so that's cool. And it turns out yes, they are quite active in the morning. We saw a little cub fighting with his mother who was having none of it, and some big one running around looking for a good tree to climb. And yes, running. Those guys can actually move really fast if they want to, and wow - on dirt, each step sounded like an anvil hitting the ground. I knew they were heavy, but being that heavy makes you appreciate that animal could completely mess you up if it wanted to. Amazing experience overall, and one I'm really glad I did. Anyway, you're here for pictures and videos of these dumb, adorable floofs, so here's a bunch are. If you want to see more, there's plenty on Youtube/Facebook.

Right when we were finishing up, a torrential amount of rain started falling. So, yeah, good time to go. We hid under a tree for about 10 minutes until it let up, then made a quick exit. Fortunately panda town is near an Ikea, which was an ideal place to dry off and enjoy the first black coffee in days. I love you Ikea.

That's it for pandas, but if you're still here, we did some other notable things in Chengdu. One was the Three Star Pile Museum, which I saw nothing about on English websites, but Ella was eager to go to. So eager in fact, when they canceled our tickets to film a documentary that day, we stayed an extra night. I'm glad we did, because this is a weird place I certainly had never heard of. Like all good archeological finds, it starts with a farmer digging and finding some jade. Years later a giant site has been uncovered, with lots of artifacts more advanced than the rest of China at the time. They used a lot of jade, bronze, and gold, but more uniquely they look sort of alien? It's hard to describe but they're sort of other-worldly. Combined with sacrificial altars (fun!), it reminded me of some occult Mayan, ancient aliens sort of thing. Worth a visit I'd say, but really unknown to foreigners as I saw virtually nothing written about it. Maybe because it's rural enough you'd need to read Chinese to navigate there, as it's actually not even in Chengdu, rather the next city over. It just goes to show you, the domestic and foreign tourist industries really focus on different things, and to get the full China experience, you probably need to know some of the language. Anyway, their loss, our gain. Here's some photos of this kooky place.

Keeping the museum train going, we went to the Sichuan Museum (fine) and the Chengdu Museum (great!). The Chengdu Museum had an exhibit on shadow puppets that was really cool, and some joker even threw in Kermit among the dolls. I noticed, joker guy, and I appreciate you. The basement had taxidermied animals from around the world, and fortunately / unfortunately, they were all really well done and did not have any examples of that beautiful, beautiful lion from the Shanghai Natural History Museum. In case you've forgotten how glorious of a specimen he is, I'll put a reminder below:

Before we separated from mom and dad, we took them out to this art exhibit in a mall. I wasn't sure if it would be their sort of thing, because it's a kind of fun-house where you can get interesting photos for your Instagram / Pengyouquan. I loved how silly it was, and to my surprise, mom and dad also were super into it. Mom especially was very excited, telling people to stand here and do that while laughing at the absurdity of it all. It was a nice finish to Chengdu, as they took a train back home to Yunnan. We're keeping summer travel going though, with one more city - Xian. Famous for my favorite Chinese dish, Biang Biang Noodles. Also Terracotta Soldiers or something, but whatever. Hopefully they sell noodles at the concession stand.