Days 3-5: Chengdu

Day 3 was actually spent mostly in transit, as we caught the early train back to Guangzhou from Hong Kong, then headed to the Guangzhou (Baiyun) airport to get our plane to Chengdu. Our flight turned up as "delayed: bad weather" on the board, but then a flight from another carrier to Chengdu took off during our "weather" delay, and after a loud and large shouting match between passengers of our flight and employees of our airline ensued, the board posting for our flight changed to "delayed: reason unknown." Hey, anything's better than a volcano, right? Regardless of reason, we finally eventually took off, and landed in Chengdu after nightfall in the midst of a thick fog. Chengdu is in a valley surrounded by mountains, so it seems like the fog and pollution sit heavy over the city much of the time, especially in winter. Makes for some poor visibility, that's for sure. We stayed both nights in Chengdu at the Loft Hostel, a fantastic (and cheap - $7 per night for private double with bathroom!) place in a small alley surrounded by teashops, restaurants, and tall (of course) residential buildings. We didn't do much the night we arrived, but got up early to get the van ride out to the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base. Chinese tourists seem to prefer their entertainment to be interactive, so it wasn't surprising that the red pandas seemed to be begging for some food to be tossed into their compounds. In general, though, the Base is a very impressive conservation site, with an unrivaled giant panda breeding record. There are compounds with pandas of different ages, including cub, sub-adult, nursery (for breeding mothers), and several adult panda compounds, as well as an indoor area where newborns are attended to. Of course the babies are the stars of the show, and we got there early enough to see several cubs eating and wrestling with each other, which is hilarious to watch -- pandas are too lazy to properly wrestle, so they sort of lie next to each other and bat each other with their paws, and then maybe take a bite at the other's ear or paw if they can get up the energy. Most of the time they just lie around, then eat, then eat while lying around. We had lunch just down the alley from our hostel at a small local restaurant serving up Sichuan cuisine - my favorite. Unfortunately they toned down the spice for us Westerners, but the food was still excellent: dry-fried green beans with salty fish, ma po doufu, fish-flavored eggplant (just the name, no fish involved!), and gongbao (kung pao) chicken. I learned how to play snooker in the afternoon from a British/Afrikaaner girl who was also staying at the Loft, and then we set out for a walk down Chengdu's pricier pedestrian-only walking street. To cap off the day, we attended a Sichuanese Opera, which was more of a variety show featuring "rolling lamp", a comedy about a wife ordering her husband to do ridiculous acrobatics with an oil lamp on his head, table-juggling, face-changing and fire-breathing, and of course some music. Altogether a fabulous show. We got to bed after that, since we just had time for running a few morning errands before setting off for the long train ride to Kunming.