Category — Chengdu

I just received word of this and I am truly saddened. It’s never a good thing to hear of a disaster of this scale, but it is even worse when the area affected is one you are familiar with, when the people it affects are the same people with whom you shared a smile and a hello.

Our thoughts are with them…

Chengdu Pandas from Red February on Vimeo.

Walking around Chengdu’s Du Fu Thatched Cottage (which was more expansive concrete temple than thatched cottage), Pierrick and I begun to wonder if we are not just a little “templed out”.

A sad fact of travel is that after spending an extended period of time in any one country, you start to become accustomed to all the new and exciting things you have been seeing. They become part of the background, part of everyday life. In Italy it was the churches, in France it was the chateaux - and in China it is the temple.

Red-lacquered columns flanking imposing gold-bolted doors, intricate blue frieze and little men sitting on giant chickens… The temple of good harvest, of virtue and harmony, of joy and longevity, benevolence, purity and wisdom. Every city has its drum tower, bell tower, its nine-dragon screen, its people’s park and its pagoda.

It’s not as though these things are not without worth -  they are all beautiful marvels worthy of all the accolades bestowed upon them. I think it may just be that Pierrick and I need to move on…

Despite all of the above, I feel that I must add that Chengdu is a wonderful city. Cosmopolitan, relaxed, green… and there are pandas! Pandas!

Video of these impossibly adorable and magnificent creatures to come just as soon as we find an Internet connection that will allow it.