Chengdu

Day 311 (May 5, 2019) – Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China

Chengdu is famous for two things: Sichuan hot pot and giant pandas. Of course, there is much more than that to do in the city, but those two items were on our Chengdu bucket list.

Gates near the Qingyang Taoist Temple.

Chengdu was an enormous city, like most cities in China. To put this into perspective, Chengdu has about the same population as New York City. So, think of the largest city in the US and you can imagine the size of Chengdu. The crazy part is that Chengdu is only China’s 8^th largest city. Cities with higher populations include Dongguan, Wuhan, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai. I was in awe of how many huge cities there are in China, and to be frank, I hadn’t even heard of most of them before our trip there.

The underground entrance to the metro and shopping mall at Tianfu Square.

To get around this huge city we used the metro. One of the convenient things about the subway systems in China is that they’re all essentially of the same design. Once we figured out how to ride the metro in Guangzhou, we effectively knew how to ride it in any city, including Chengdu. Many of the metro systems have been built very recently and it seems like all of them were still undergoing expansion projects. They’re sleek, fast, and efficient. They make the subway systems of New York and Chicago look like antiques. Fare is calculated based on distance and the ticket kiosks can be switched to English, which made it easier for us to purchase tickets. Security on any of the metro systems was always high. Whenever we entered a metro station we had to pass through metal detectors, have our bags scanned, and water bottles inspected. This was the same for all train stations as well. There were security staff on the platforms and riding on the trains. I have to admit; China was one of the few places in the world where I was never worried about getting pickpocketed on the subway.

Every Chinese city we've been to has had millions of bicycles. These are shared bicycles that are unlocked and rented through an app on your phone. Many are also electric, meaning that no peddling is required.

We spent a lot of time walking around the city. Like Guangzhou, the city blocks can be enormous. Going a few blocks away could easily turn into a 20-minute walk. We walked through the always crowded Tianfu Square and through People’s Park where we happened to walk right through a matchmaker’s market where parents were trying to find spouses for their adult children. We continued through Qintai Road, one of the few sections of town that even slightly resembles what Chengdu might have looked before modern times, but still in a fake sort of way (sort of like a single street version of Dali). We ended up in Culture Park, which was known for its tea houses. People would order giant thermoses of hot water, make endless cups of tea, and sit outside playing mahjong or cards the whole day.

In People's Park watching a water calligrapher practicing on the pavement.

While in Chengdu we also tried some of the famous Sichuan cuisine. Sichuan cuisine wasn’t hard to find in most places around China but being in Chengdu gave us the opportunity to try it from the place it came from. Even at home, Sichuan cuisine is associated with fragrance, boldness, and spiciness, but in China we got to experience the full force of the Sichuan pepper, which was used liberally on everything. I had heard of this pepper before, but I never fully appreciated it until we were in China. It looks somewhat like a black peppercorn, but it produces a numbing and tingling sensation on the tongue when eaten. It is most definitely a unique flavor and there were handfuls of it thrown into everything. Perhaps a bit too much for my taste. If I saw a whole one, I would try to pick it out of my food before eating it because accidentally biting down onto a whole Sichuan pepper is not a sensation I enjoyed that much. Travis thought it made things taste overly salted rather than numbing.

The entrance to Qintai Road. This is one of the few sections of the downtown area that resembles anything old. The rest of Chengdu is a strikingly modern city.

Two things characterized most of the Chinese food we had been eating so far, including that of the Sichuan region: lots of oil and an aversion to vegetarianism. I was impressed with the breadth of flavors and tastes we had encountered up to this point during our time in China. This was nothing like Chinese food at home. In fact, I thought it was much better. But that could, in part, be attributed to the liberal use of oil. Nearly every dish we finished had a puddle of oil left at the bottom. Maybe all that oil isn’t so good for you, but it sure was tasty. Secondly, vegetarianism is not a well understood concept in China. Just because a dish was in the vegetable section of a menu didn’t mean that it was only comprised of vegetables. More often than not, our vegetables were interspersed with small pieces of meat or served with a meat broth. Fortunately, we are not strict vegetarians. We just have a general preference for vegetables over meat so all was good, but I think a true vegetarian would have an exceedingly difficult time in China. Meat is unavoidable. The one place we had a lot of success was at Buddhist temples where vegetarianism is advocated and we could often find a delicious and affordable vegetarian buffet. We tried to find them in all the cities we visited, including Chengdu.

Enjoying a vegetarian buffet at a Buddhist temple.

No where were these culinary trends better showcased than in mapo tofu. We’re both big fans of this dish and we got a chance to try to real deal in Chengdu. We went to Chen’s Mapo Tofu, which claims descendance from the original creator of the dish. Mapo tofu is, as the name would suggest, a tofu dish cooked in a spicy red oil with ground pork (note that meat is never mentioned in the description) and a good dose of Sichuan peppers. It’s spicy and tingly and flavorful. I enjoyed it greatly, but Travis was a bit turned off from the inches of oil accompanying the tofu. Undoubtedly, it’s not always served so oily, but I’m glad we had the true experience.

Mapo tofu. Delicious but oily.

We also tried the famous Sichuan hot pot. This was a meal I would return to Chengdu for. A giant cauldron of broth was placed between us in the center of the table. There was an outer ring of a mild soup stock and an inner ring filled with a spicy, red, and oily concoction that reminded me of boiling lava. The waitress could tell we were new at this and prepared a dipping sauce for each of us, which consisted of a generous half cup of sesame oil mixed with spoonfuls each of garlic and cilantro. By the time she finished with the sauce the array of raw ingredients we ordered had arrived on the table. We had slices of pork and beef, strips of tofu, and lots of vegetables. From there we started throwing things into the pot and cooking our dinner. I don’t know how they made the soup in the middle, but it’s vibrantly red and intensely spicy and filled to the brim with red chilies and Sichuan peppers. After cooking the ingredients in the spicy lava, we dipped them in the sesame oil and ate them. This seemed like such classic Chinese cooking: cook something in oil, then dip in more oil, then eat. It was delicious and we had a lot of fun with dinner that night.

Our Sichuan hot pot dinner. So much fun.

Our last bucket list item for Chengdu was to see the giant pandas. We woke up early one morning and went to the Research Base for Giant Panda Breeding where they watch over hundreds of pandas. When trying to buy tickets we were again feeling left out for our lack of mobile payment capabilities. Everyone was flying past us in the ticket line as all they had to do was scan a barcode to purchase tickets, while we had to wait in line to pay cash and then have that person scan the barcode for us and purchase the ticket. The best part was that we then had to take a picture of their phone screen as proof of ticket purchase.  

Giant pandas!

We arrived at the Research Base early in the morning, but it seemed like there were already a million people there. It was advised to get there early because the pandas were fed in the morning and are most active then. If you get there too late in the day it won’t be as much fun to watch sleeping pandas.

Chewing on bamboo. That's pretty much all they did for the entire morning.

Like most things in China so far, we found the experience both good and bad. The bad was simple: the crowds. So many people were there it felt like a zoo more for people than for pandas. It was difficult to get a spot along the railing to get a good view. You had to firmly stand your ground and take opportunities to move forward as you saw them. It was craziness with all the people and all their cameras. It was almost too much.

The crowds. Far more people than pandas...

But the good was that the pandas were far more adorable and hilarious than I expected. And they really are giant. They're around the same size as an average black bear. If they weren’t so friendly and goofy looking they would be frightening. They sat up on their rump and lazily chewed on bamboo for as long as we were standing there. They ripped off the outer layer of the bamboo, letting it fall where it did, and ate the center. They ended up surrounded by a giant pile of discarded bamboo. It was hilarious. We were joking that it was like how Travis eats potato chips, with half the chips ending up on his shirt.

Getting buried in a pile of bamboo discards.

The pandas were also very slow moving and not so well coordinated. Just observing them, they don’t seem like they have the highest of intelligence. We even saw one get stuck in a tree. He climbed up into a tree, waited there for a while, and then tried to get back down. Except he got caught in a split in the tree trunk and flailed around for a while as he tried to free himself. He did eventually wrestle himself free and got back down to the ground. Another of the bears was trying to reach some food that was strung up about six feet from the ground. He was trying to walk on his hind legs to reach it, but he wasn’t so coordinated. He couldn’t hold himself up very long and would fall back down onto his behind. When he finally managed to grab the food he got a round of applause from all his spectators.

This panda was trying to reach some food suspended from the bamboo bar.

He could walk on his hind legs very briefly when trying to grab a piece of food.

But he often fell down and would sit there like this until deciding to get up and try it again.

The Research Base also had red pandas, but sadly they were outshone by the giant pandas. The red pandas looked similar to a mid-sized fox and even though they were more active than the giant pandas they lacked the quirky personality of their larger friends. The giant pandas were so incredibly entertaining to watch. I understand why so many people were there to see them, but crowds were intense, and we were happy to be leaving when we did.

The poor red pandas. I think they felt a little ignored. They're also cute, but not as entertaining to watch as their big brothers.

With our two important Chengdu boxes checked, having Sichuan hot pot and seeing the giant pandas, we were headed west toward the route of the old Silk Road. We were back to riding the high-speed trains and our first stop was going to be in Lanzhou.