Pandas & Buddhist Chairlifts

The first stop on Monday was what everybody had been waiting for. The panda reserve. On the way there, Sky told us all the statistics about how endangered the pandas are. As soon as we saw them, it was clear why they struggle to survive in the wild. They look like couch potatoes. They eat 20kg of a specific kind of bamboo a day, of which they can only digest 20%. This keeps them busy eating pretty much all day. Nothing about them indicates that they would have what it takes to survive in the wild.



Next was a holy Buddhist mountain that I’ve since forgotten the name of. It has a temple built at the top, with a continuous stone staircase running all the way up the side of the mountain. Oh, a chairlift, too. The lift took us most of the way up and climbed the rest of the way. At the top were the temples and gift shops, but no view. A different kind of mountain than the ones I’m used to.

Half of us walked down the staircase instead of taking the chairlift. Apparently, every mountain worth climbing in China (excluding Tibet) has thousands of stone steps for a trail. We probably went down a little faster than we should have on the slick, wet stone, and ended up beating the chairlift to the bottom. It felt good to get some exercise and warm myself up, as I hadn’t been warm since leaving Shanghai. A lot of Chinese buildings don’t have heat, and when they do, it’s usually not on at this temperature. For this reason, it’s sometimes said that winters in Shanghai are harder than winters in Harbin (close to Siberia) because most Shanghai residences have no heat. Chengdu is about the same way.