Two weeks in China went by in a whirlwind of rice, chopsticks and panda fur! We started in Beijing with a trip to the Great Wall, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Forbidden City and Tianeman Square. Then we were off to Chengdu and up to Y'an to the Bifengxia panda preserve for three wonderful days working with the Giant Pandas! This was absolutely the highlight of my time in China as we were up close and personal with the pandas. To the pandakeepers, we were really just cheap labor but to us, it was a dream come true! We started the first day with our photo op with the pandas and then moved in to two full days of cleaning cages, stocking bamboo piles in their cages, sweeping the outside areas, feeding them panda cakes, carrots and apples and the best part of all... cleaning panda poop! Ok, it's not really the best part but all in a day's work right? For our second photo op, I spent a few minutes feeding the 1-2 year olds milk and carrots. I was just enthralled!! I didn't want to leave at the end! I swear, pandas are by far the cutest animals on this planet and working with them in their homeland was an honor.
After our panda excursion, we flew to Xi'an to visit the Terra Cotta Warrior museum which was both awesome and disturbing. Over 2,500 years ago, one crazed ruled forced over 75% of his people to spend 12 years building the warriors, horses, carriages that would protect him once he died and went to the afterlife. And then it was all buried until it was discovered in the 1970's. Just insane. I was impressed but felt like we shouldn't be extolling the result of such horrible labor camps. Did I mention he placed mercury around his tomb so it would never be opened? Weirdo.
Deep up in the mountains of China, a tribe of women carry on the tradition of never cutting their hair. Well, except for special occassions and even then, the cut ponytail of hair is wrapped in with the rest of their long hair in to a neat pile on top of their head. We spent the day hiking through these villages and admiring the longshed rice fields. Although I'm sure the jagged rice fields stepping down from the mountain are more scenic during the spring, I was again impressed at their ability to farm in such precarious location but also reminded that this is what happens when a country has such a large population to support. Over 1 billion Chinese (and growing even with the one child policy) are a lot of people and I really felt like I encountered atleast a good chunk of them. People were everywhere! Next up was the mystic and cloud (or pollution, take your pick) shrouded rocks of Guillin. We took a boat cruise through these towering rock formations, enjoyed yet another Chinese meal and snided at the hoards of Chinese tourists who took about a million self-portraits during our day-long cruise. Why are Asian cultures so narcissistic? Besides all that, it was a nice cruise.
We ended back in Beijing where I spent one more day to go to the Badaling portion of the Great Wall. Since it was closer to Beijing and accessible via bus, it was like swimming through the crowd to hike along it but after I got farther out, I was able to enjoy some crowd-less views. Now off to Korea!
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