Chengdu and Dujiangyan

Day 16

The morning started at 6:45 when we woke up to eat and get on the road early to go see the pandas. We had a bus that seated 20 for the day, just for the 7 of us.  Complete overkill.

I read for a bit on the bus. I'm finding that my book, The Goldfinch, drags a bit. I sucked on Cepacols to calm my throat. I dozed off and the next thing I knew we were there.

Donna had a friend who arranged to have an English speaking guide and a member of the staff meet us there to show us around. It was fantastic. The place was immense, with over a dozen pandas that we could see including four juveniles. Unlike the pandas I'd at the National zoo or Binder Park, there was no rush, no crowd, and no rule forbidding photographs. The park itself was immense, immaculately clean, and had modern buildings, well maintained roads, and the by far cleanest public bathrooms I’ve seen in China.

After the pandas we went to lunch, which was good because I'd been sucking Cepacols all morning and really needed something to get rid of the taste. We divided into two groups, our family that wanted spicy, pork free, heavy on the vegetables and Donna, Ray, the guide, and the driver who preferred bland dishes with pork.

We got Kung Pao chicken, garlic shrimp, beef jerky, tofu in hot sauce, and a green leafy vegetable. I also tried the fish from the other table. There was a lot of food and we shared our shrimp and chicken.
We strolled through pleasant streets lined with shops and with a beautiful stream on one side (albeit,  in a concrete channel) complete with little waterfalls, a water wheel,  and small sculptures.

We then walked into a park to see the Dujiangyan irrigation system. I was expecting a series of little streams and floodgates but this was on a different scale entirely. It is a World Heritage site. Built in 256 BC the system diverts 40% of really large river in the wet season and 60% in the dry season to Chengdu about 45 kilometers away. It is designed to automatically divert more when the river is low and less when it is high so that there is never flooding and never drought. It is a real feat of engineering. The initial construction took 31 years.

Once we returned Chengdu we went looking for a replacement for Zachary's backpack, which he had overweighted with school books all year and is about to lose a strap but everything we saw was to expensive. We went back to the hotel to take a break.

Dinner was a travesty. I've happily gone wherever the group decided on going without even voicing an opinion because I figure we're a hard enough group to feed but this finally got me to take a stand. We started late, Donna intercepted us on the way out to talk about the plans for tomorrow morning. Eventually she decided to join us even though she had already eaten. When I first tried to buy street food Andrea objected, saying that there are no effective food safety inspectors in China and clearly the food I wanted had been sitting out a while. From then on, I was a bit more careful about what I bought, making sure that it was heated in front of me. Apparently though the concern does not extend to sushi. Shortly after Andrea admonished me for buying lukewarm street food I pointed out that maybe letting Ari eat sushi two out of three nights was a bit risky. Tonight she and Ari dined at an expensive kaizen sushi restaurant. Joshua, Zachary, and I went across the hall to a cheap pizza buffet she or entire meal cost about as much as two pieces of sushi and everything was cooked.

Speaking of Andrea, I caught up reading her blog bozokiblog.blogspot.com and it is at times hard to believe that she is on the same vacation that I am on. I think that perhaps she read one too P. J. O'Rourk or Bill Bryson book or whoever wrote Planet China; you know the books that make fun of foreign countries for being different from home. Moreover, there are the comical descriptions of me "stoic," impatient with my kids' behavior - -  pffft. In any case it is highly entertaining and I suggest that everyone read it.

While I'm riffing on Andrea, light of my life and center of my universe, I just want to let her know that now that she has posted which of my body parts got heat rash on this trip she can never again accuse me of oversharing on Facebook.
One final note: I mentioned to Andrea that I don't see a gender imbalance. I expected to see more males than females but I don't.  Donna explained that that was really a rural problem and not an urban one.