Pandas!

Today is our last full day in Chengdu. We started the day with breakfast...they don't even ask anymore...they know we are "1 coffee, 1 tea". Anyssa has a daily bowl of congee and has recently started liking bacon. Since breakfast is a buffet and it's free, we spend about 45 minutes of quality family time while the smiling girl servers (who are all named "Trainee"...go figure) bring us more napkins.

We met Emily in the lobby, loaded up in the van and headed to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. It is the largest breeding area and sanctuary for giant pandas in the world. The panda is the official symbol for Chengdu. I have never bothered to put together a bucket list for one reason or another, but today I would be able to add, then scratch off holding a panda. It's something I've wanted to do ever since I found we were coming to China. Granted, you have to make a donation (RMB 1000 yuan), you only hold him for about a minute and only the person who is paying gets to go in. They take your camera and snap a bunch of pictures. It's kind of a psyche-job. They keep smearing honey on his paw to keep him busy as he's shuttled between laps. Not a bad gig if you ask me! His fur is really coarse and thick. I had to grab his ears because they look so freakin' cute! They have pretty good size claws to which is why you had to look in the trees sometimes to find them. They told us that pandas used to be carnivores, but as their environment changed and meat became scarce, they turned into vegetarians eating only a specific type of bamboo called "arrow bamboo". So I wondered that if evolution works so well at helping adaptation, why did they stay a bright BLACK & WHITE?? There does not appear to be a good answer other that God has a sense of humor. He also likes red and you can see from the picture of Laura and Anyssa and the red pandas.

After the panda sanctuary, we stopped at a silk brocade factory. Chengdu used to be a stop on the silk road so there is still a factory here doing the silk weaving by hand on looms. Amazing art and really interesting how it takes 2 guys to run the loom...one to toss the shuttles back and forth and 1 to pull various ropes to adjust the silk threads to create a pattern. This was my first experience at dealing with a squirming 5 year old. Who would have thought that a 5 year old would find a silk museum boring? It seemed pretty cool to me! Anyway, I knew there would be changes and this is one I'm learning to handle. Oh, she was good, just constantly pulling to go somewhere else. She liked the patterns too, she just chose to view each one for 3 seconds. We got 2 nice panda brocades that are framed...very affordable prices. Since the pandas are the local symbol, it seemed appropriate.

We are all going stir crazy in this hotel room. We check out at 2:00 tomorrow for a 5:00-ish flight to Guangzhou (oy, who made THESE plans?). We will probably go for a walk again just to get some air and see the city one last time.

I have to tell you something weird I was thinking yesterday. We were debating what to do for dinner so we chose to eat in the lounge on the 25th floor of the hotel. There is a large bar and instead of eating tables, there are sofas and chairs and coffee tables to sit by and eat. At 5:30, no one was there so we pretty much had the run of the place. Well, as we are sitting in a little glass alcove of plush sofas and eating noodles and dumplings, I looked at Anyssa. I was thinking of the princesses yesterday and looking at Anyssa thinking "she is like Cinderella". Here is this kid with NOTHING and suddenly she is sitting in a lounge on the 25th floor of a luxury hotel, eating dumplings and biding her time until she flies home to America. It's funny how life works.