Chengdu...PANDAS

I'm in the province of Sichuan and in the city of Chengdu. At first, and I guess even now, and especially coming from beautiful Tibet, this place seems so dull with the constant smog or low cloud, and the miserable, expressionless faces. But, I guess like any city in China, you observe what's on the surface, because there is absolutely so much to see and then slowly you begin to dig a little deeper and find beauty in small amounts. As soon as I enetered Chengdu, I was bombarded with the images that we all see on TV. But it's never the same in reality. What you see here is much more intense becasue I guess on some level you're there watching it or being a part of it and here in china it is really important to be here otherwise all the detail would be lost in the big picture. Traffic for example, there are separate lanes for cars and those for bicycles and mopeds and all other such vehicles which have less than 4 wheels (because there is a huge variation of such vehicles, used to transport not just people but absolutely everything). However when it's time to cross an intersection, even ones with traffic lights, it's a sight in itself. Literally hundreds of bicycles and mopeds and pedestrians all gather at the pedestrain crossing side, long, long queues of cars wait on the 3 or 4 lanes and in the opposite direction it's the same. And so the light changes and everyone goes everywhere and you've got to cross at least a minimum of 6 lanes dodging bicycles loaded with all sorts, mopeds at full speed, and cars zooming by. It's an absolute skill and I must have crossed at least 10 of these intersections today and even then i don't think I have yet mastered the skill of crossing the road here in chengdu. But it's a crazy experience and after this you walk along the pavement an you pass restaurants where they have frogs and pigs ears in basins outside...what would you choose?.....or friends just pulling up a few bamboo chairs outside the shop and lunching on noodles in the middle of the pavement. Lunch time is a sight, everywhere you look, outside restaurants, on pavements, in shops, outside shops, everywhere...everyone stops and there is rice and noodles and little white bowls and chopsticks everywhere. Being a veggie, most of the time I don't even wanna think what they are eating, but the smells are delicious and lunch from the women selling the noodles on the street with some really hot sichuan style sauce, was just as delicious.

Today we also saw the PANDAS. We saw giant pandas, baby pandas, and red pandas and they were just adorable, so cute and cuddly. Wanted to hold one and take a picture with it but it cost 1000yuan and that sort of money could keep me going for a few more weeks in china if not buy me a panda so we settled for just looking at them and taking photos of them without us. It was nice though, a bit different...animals instead of landscapes. And then we walked all around Chengdu for hours, found a great indian restaurant and a traditional street which has now been turned into a tourist bazaar..but it was pretty anyway.
One more day in Chengdu and then to Yunnan and near Tibet and the mountains again.