SICHUAN (四川) PHOTOGRAPHICAL SPECTACULAR, Part 2

Ah yes, the promised land...

Approximately 10 kilometers north of Chengdu (billed in tourist literature as the 'hometown of pandas') lies the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base (大熊猫繁殖研究中心), home to nearly 50 giant and red pandas. Over the course of our 5 day stay in Chengdu, Jessica and I went twice.

The 'bear-cats', as they are called in Chinese, are mostly out and about in the morning when they are fed, and feed they do, with the obvious devotion required to maintain those sexy panda curves on a diet of nothing but bamboo and the occasional apple.

You need a video, don't you? Thought so.



When not eating, the pandas are inevitably sleeping, that is, if the excited tourists can manage to keep their big fat mouths shut.

I like to imagine that if pandas could communicate directly, they would say things like this, ideally with a Russian accent and an aristocratic pout.

Here are some sleeping pandas. I especially like the one draped in the tree to the right. You can't see it very well, but he was just hanging there, limp-limbed and out like a rock. I suspect the Chinese scientists have been experimenting with genetically modified bamboo containing Ambien. What else are they going to do? Those damn tourists just won't shut up.

It being the off-season, we didn't see more than a dozen other people the first time we went, but on the second, we came a little later and had to jockey with the tour groups for space, especially around the panda cubs. This was one of those occasions though where being relatively "tall" was a real boon. I took this video of one of the mischievous little ones:



We were all on pins and needles watching this little guy climb, letting out little gasps and murmurs of concern when it looked like he was going to fall. We were relieved when the panda wrangler finally caught him and re-placed him on top of the fort.

I was surprised that there was only one handler watching over 4 naughty little pandas (who can actually move quite fast when they're on the ground). She often seemed rather exasperated, looking at them with an expression of "what am I going to do with you little national treasures?"

Oh, and one of them barked at another! Soooooooo cute. Just like #4

Of course practically speaking, the panda obsession is just one big environmental charade. Pandas have no natural place in modern China, requiring huge swaths of territory to meet their food needs, reproducing slowly and difficultly, and exhibiting enormous sensitivity to changes in their environment. This is why, like the Florida Manatee, they are held up as barometers of environmental health. But breeding them in centers (aside from potentially raising awareness), does absolutely nothing to ameliorate the environmental problems that their endangerment signifies; it only produces the illusion of environmental protection as China goes on polluting, poisoning, and generally destroying the natural world. (Speaking of which, this article, if a bit extreme, is terrifying).

But because giant pandas were clever enough to evolve a gentle, pacifist demeanor, an adorable lumbering waddle for a walk, and giant black circles around their eyes that make them look like helpless infants that just need us to love them and take care of them, fund-raising and the diversion of large amounts of government resources is certain to ensure their continued protection.

Not that I'm necessarily complaining. I can't help it. I want nothing more than to be close to them.

Sorry to disappoint, but I didn't end up holding a red panda. Not only did there not seem to be any babies around (the adults would claw the hell out of you and aren't an option), but once I got to the park I was filled with all that awe of and respect for nature crap, and couldn't stomach the thought. I know, bo-ring. I'm sorry. Here are some pictures of the feisty little firefoxes that escaped my clutches.

I'm sure I'd bore you to distraction if I even attempted to discuss how the giant panda and red panda are related (not that I understand it particularly well myself), but the information is out there should you be interested. Chinese people themselves don't seem to understand what either has to do with the other, aside from both being endangered, and both being way into bamboo. In Chinese, the red panda is simply called 'small panda' (小熊猫, xiao xiongmao, or 'small bear-cat'), without even the color to distinguish it.

I suspect that this has something to do with the reservation of the designation 'red' for a limited scope of very important things. I know it sounds like loony anthro-talk, but I'm not kidding. My teachers, for instance, refuse to recognize my hair as red. Despite being repeatedly defended against a classification of blondness by my classmates (who valiantly found magazine images of blond Westerners and held them next to me, forcing my teachers to concede that there was a difference of some kind), I have yet to be accepted as 'red'. I guess I ought to beef up on my communism.

The Panda Base is a pretty classy place. Peacocks and swans roam freely and swim in a giant artificial lake, and dense thickets of bamboo border all the trails.

But seeing that it is only 10km out of the city with the 3rd most cars per capita in China, it didn't have the sweet, clean air we craved. That was, however, to be found two hours away at Le Shan (乐山), home of Dafo (大佛), the largest Buddha in the world.

It was misty down in the valley,

but as we climbed up the mountain, past tigers,

minor gods in grottoes,

and thoughtful warning signs,

it got clean, quiet, and tranquil,
and finally, at the very top, we found real blue sky and a nice white pagoda.

The Le shan Buddha was carved out of a cliff side overlooking the confluence of two rivers. It is difficult to get a perspective of its actual enormity when starting from the top (those ears, for example, are about 23 feet long).

You can take it in part by part as you slowly descend the giant stone steps carved into the rock alongside it, but to get the full view, you have to take a ferry.

This local one, recommended by the Lonely Planet, didn't look particularly seaworthy.

Still from the very base of the Buddha, the view was pretty cool.

He didn't look quite his 233 feet, but he looked impressive, if a little naked.

I know what you're thinking: Buddha schmuddha, let's see some more pictures of pandas!

Sleeping panda!!!

Sleeping panda cub!!!

Precocious baby panda!!!

Pandas eating with unbridled abandon!!!

Hooray hooray hooray!

(That still isn't enough for you? I understand. Get thee to www.pandafix.com)

SICHUAN (四川) PHOTOGRAPHICAL SPECTACULAR, Part 1

Part lion, part dragon, part reindeer, all awesome. Random beast at Wenshu Temple.

Some people have lives so exciting and friends so attractive that they can compose blog posts out of mere photographs. Despite my seemingly exotic address, I can rarely do the same, but as I am freshly returned from Chengdu, I do have some nice pictures to share with you good people, although not the time to narrate them.

文殊院 - Wenshu Temple:

The temple's teahouse:

望江楼公园 - River Viewing Pavilion Park:

(Yes, that's Jessica, dwarfed by the bamboo and unaware of my sneaky picture taking)Around Chengdu (成都):

Tianfu Square (天府广场) and the Mao statue presiding over it:

Shops in the Tibetan quarter:

Drying meat in the late afternoon light, right outside our hotel window (center, right, and also upper left, but out of view):

Drinking tea at 人民茶馆 in the People's Park:

Immediately after Jessica took this photo, a woman at an adjacent table came over to instruct me on the proper way to hold my teacup and how to drink from it. The anthropologist in me was all that held me back from bitch-slapping her.

The tea:

A stray kitler looking for snacks in the park:

That's all for today. Stay tuned for the panda-filled Part 2!

学期的结束 (SEMESTER'S END)

Our final exams were held on Friday, thus ending my second semester of classes at IUP and marking the retirement of my very favorite notebook:

Here is the back-side:

Oh I do love me some bizarre Engrish translations! (even if this kind of sounds like it could have been spoken to General Stuharto by Vanessa)

I won't be shedding any tears over the passing of this semester. Honestly, it was a grueling one, and I wish I felt the gains I've made in Chinese were worth all the mental and physical exhaustion of the last weeks. It didn't help that there was only a one-day break between this semester and the last, and so all of us students are relishing the upcoming one-week vacation. Jessica and I are off to Chengdu, Sichuan on Sunday morning. Although it is a little cold there right now, I don't think I can wait much longer to see the Giant Panda Reserve. It seems it is prohibitively expensive (and really kind of foolhardy) to get close to a giant panda, but you can hold a red panda (aka "firefox"), as seen below, for a mere 6 dollars. I know it's kind of wrong, but I don't know if I will be able to resist...

新年快乐

I wasn't going to post on New Year's but there seems to be much curiosity among you as to whether and how the new year marked by the Western calendar is celebrated in China and so I will do my best to explain. In short, the traditional lunar calendar long used by the Chinese, has for practical purposes been eclipsed (ouch!) by the Judeo-Christian one most of us know and love. The Chinese New Year, celebrated in mid-winter (February 7th this year), is known here as the Spring Festival, and while it is a far more important holiday, both culturally and in terms of vacation time, it isn't the peak time for calendar sales.

January 1st is a National Holiday here, but it doesn't seem to have any of the weight or symbolism it does back in the states. There is no talk of resolutions or new beginnings and few fireworks or countdowns. The one thing that remains the same is that many people who normally wouldn't venture an intentionally humorous remark are all over the "see you next year" or "the chapter we studied last year" jokes.

As far as how it is celebrated, all I got from talking about it with my teachers and Chinese friends is that the evening is an opportunity to stay home and watch special programs on TV and the following day there are lots of sales at all the big department stores. Since I spent the evening out, I can tell you that the streets were generally as quiet as usual, aside from the foreigners who were determined to preserve their cultural heritage by getting batshit drunk and hitting on strangers (or fighting about Tibet, as Jessica discovered).

I spent the evening at a rock show, something I have been doing much more of recently. Jessica and I really wanted to see a couple of bands playing at the MAO livehouse and managed to drag our upstanding and scholarly friend Dan along with us.

The purpose of this picture was actually to capture the label of the beer I was drinking, a Chinese brand called SUPER COOL. Unfortunately, it was lost in the glare of my snarl. I took some pictures of the bands. None of them are particularly good, but they'll give you an idea.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were in town a few months ago and you can see Karen O's enormous influence on half of the female fronted bands in the city. The lead singer of this band, Queen Sea Big Shark overdoes it a bit, but they are still fun to watch.

This is Candy Monster. Their sound illustrates the second largest current influence on Beijing bands, which is, for some reason, the Strokes.

This is Hedgehog, who we had most wanted to see. They did not disappoint. The band is a tight little threesome with the most adorable drummer ever, hands down. She can't be more than 4'8", looks to be about 12, and plays like a monster. Unlike all the other punk rock kids in skinny jeans and stripes she wore a little lace-trimmed cardigan and mainlined Coca-cola. She looked like she was having so much fun that it made me believe in music all over again.

Like many popular Beijing bands, Hedgehog sings in English, although their lyrics are often mostly unintelligible. One of my favorite choruses, from the title track of their new album, has a simple message, delivered loudly: "we make noise!, noise hit world!"

We entered 2008 while Hedgehog was playing, but it was the first time I can remember that there wasn't a countdown of some kind. I missed it. I wondered if it would feel like the new year in the morning, once I knew that all my friends had celebrated, but it didn't really. I miss all the old rituals, small as they were. This holiday season has left me feeling rather disoriented, but with sights like these, can you blame me?