With our late night flight from Yichang, we arrived at Chengdu airport at 1 am. We still managed to take the airport shuttle bus to the downtown area where we then took a taxi in search of a hotel. From Yichang, Jenny had contacted a few targets hotels in Chengdu but we had not been able to secure a reservation. After visiting a first hotel too expensive, we found a very nice room at the Jingdi Hotel (our most luxurious one to date!). The following morning, we slept in to recover from our late arrival. In the afternoon, we set out to visit an important municipal park but once on board the bus, a heavy rainfall came down. So we enjoyed our bus ride for the full length of the bus route.
On Wednesday July 22, we left our hotel early morning to visit the famous Panda Breeding Center. After a bus ride followed by a rickshaw ride, we arrived at the entrance of the Center by 8am, we learned that the Center would only open at 9:30am this morning instead of its usual 9am. The reason for this delay was linked to the full sun eclipse scheduled for ~9am. The authorities wanted time to observe the behavior of the pandas during the eclipse. By 8:30, a bunch of “laoways” (foreigners) had started to show up at the entrance and started to voice their disappointment to the authorities about the late opening. The protest did not have any impact… we still ended up waited until 9:30 for the park entrance. The long wait allowed plenty of time to talk travel experience among the foreigners in line for tickets. One couple from France had been traveling for 9 months, a couple with their two daughters have been teaching English in ShenZheng for the past few years, an older couple were at their third visit to China, a couple bicycle touring in China, … but the nicest surprise of the morning was to experience the darkening of the sky due to the sun eclipse. Although the sky was fairly covered this morning, we had a few cloud clearing long enough to see the sun being covered by the moon (full eclipse).
The Panda Breeding Center was quite enjoyable and very informative (clean, well organized, great displays, …). On the way back to our hotel, we visited one of the many temples in and around Chengdu, Wendu Temple.
Earlier in the day, the group of foreigners were talking about how quickly China is changing. I certainly noticed a big change from our visit in 2004 in the type of vehicle that is circulating in the bicycle lanes. It now seems that 50-60% of the vehicle are motorcycles/mopeds and the rest are bicycles. Back in 2004, 80% were probably composed of bicycles.>