China - Pandas and more .... Chengdu (Sichuan Province)

After the trip up the Yangtze River we spent one night in Chongqing, a gigantic, fast growing Moloch of 30.000.000 people. I would say in the entire city you could not find a building older than 50 years. All boring but functional apartment and office high rises, lots of construction everywhere. There was not really much worth taking photos. In the morning we boarded a train to Chengdu in the Sichuan province.

Impressions from the train ride. Rice fields and the "rapps" (need to research the English word) everywhere. I loved the yellow fields rushing by the train window.

Did I say I loved the yellow fields ..... ?

On our first night in Chengdu we visited a "culture show" in which local artists performed. I liked this artist, she was juggling with anything you can imagine, one of the items was this table.

Another group of artists performed a dance with "changing faces". I do not know exactly how it works, but they were multiple face masks and change them frequently at such high speed that it is almost impossible to notice how they do that. Of course the photo does not to the spectacle enough credit, but at least it gives you some impression. In the background you see a big puppet. It was interesting to see that they made the puppet change the face mask as well and even spitting fire.

Pandas, pandas and more pandas .... boy these creatures are cute. We visited a breeding and research center, which is also kind of a Zoo.

This little guy was playing with a piece of bamboo. I took a full series of photos until he almost fell into the moat.

They call the "Red Pandas", but they are actually not Pandas. They below to the family of "Raccoons".

Of course I had to have a shot taken with the Pandas in the background.

More Pandas ... they were just happily eating up their bamboo.

Chengdu was actually one of my favorite cities in China. Although it is growing rapidly as well, it seems that they are trying to make the city look nice.

We visited the "Wenshu Temple" in Chengdu, probably I have seen too many temples by now since I was not too impressed.

Selling candles can be very tiring. This monk was overwhelmed and just fell asleep at his desk.

Another smaller Pagoda in the garden of the Wenshu Temple.

There were many quite modern and attractive buildings in downtown Chengdu. I liked the futuristic look of this one.


The city square is "controlled" by a huge statue of Mao.

The bicycle is still the major means of transportation. They even have parking lots for bikes ... and of course you have to pay.

I watched these construction workers for a little while. All the labor was performed manually, these guys are digging through a slab of concrete just with hammer and chisel.

The Chinese love to sing ... Karaoke is huge! Here we have a street musician performing close to our hotel.