April 25, 2026

Chengdu is a city of some 22 million people about a 90 minute flight northwest of Guilin that is the capital of Sichuan province. Renowned in China as a center of comfortable lifestyle and warm hospitality, it is also the home of the Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Not to mention the center of Sichuan cooking, so culinarily essential that UNESCO recognized it as a City of Gastronomy in 2010. 

Our first evening here was spent at the Sichuan Opera and Face Changing performance. A real cultural reveal as our small group was taken backstage to be put into cosplay costumes for pictures while the players put on makeup before we were escorted to the front row seats for the show. It was really sort of a quasi circus production, comprised of a local form of Chinese opera, puppetry, a comedy act with acrobatics and several unusual musical instrument pieces. But the unique thing here were the costumed dancers in the finale who changed masks repeatedly in a round of simultaneous, slight of hand magic.

The following day was spent at the Giant Panda Sanctuary where we wandered the 1500 acre reserve filled with some 240 pandas, easily the largest collection of giant pandas in the world. This is where all of our Ling Ling’s and Ping Ping’s come from. We watched them eating bamboo, sleeping in trees, playing and pooping…which is about all they do. But they are undeniably adorable.  The environment there seemed clean, varied, humane and interesting to the pandas.  Their track record of survival over the last 20 years when releasing young pandas into the wild is 8 in 10. The strides they have made in mated pairs birthing and longevity are remarkable by any measure.  Also on site, they have beautiful extensive gardens to enjoy.

That night we were taxied out some 65 minutes to a city outskirt for an evening with a Chengdu couple for dinner in their home. Fascinating! While we glimpse headlines of our US leadership referring to Chinese immigrants to America as coming form “hellholes”, nothing could be further form the truth. We spent some 4 hours with a 40 something couple who cooked up an incredible meal for us in their ultra modern 1100 sq ft apartment and found that we had much more in common than not. They surprisingly are able to retain an apartment closer into the city for their child to study and a country spot for more tranquility some twenty minutes further out, an enviable lifestyle for anyone in this day and age. She is a travel consultant and he is a tax accountant. They live in a Manhattan like 6 story apartment complex amidst a myriad of 25-30 story high-rises. All the locals were out for their evening stroll, checking out their community garden plots and curious to chat with us. We talked about how no one minds the relatively recent 5-10 year ubiquitous presence of surveillance cameras here because everything is clean, safe and ever improving for most everyone’s lifestyle.  But they couldn’t resist asking WTF is up with our leader ”as he changes opinions and policy as much as he changes clothes.”

The following day we attended a Sichuan cooking lesson and made Mapo Tofu, Kung Pao Chicken, and stuffed steamed dumplings, really fun and informative. Then we were supposed to browse the cooking museum there but it was school visit day and we were overwhelmed by hundreds of middle schoolers, who all mobbed us like we were the Beatles in such a din that we had to abandon the museum plan entirely.

We spent the late afternoon at Chengdu’s People’s Park wandering by tea houses where people play Mah Jongg and cards, eat snacks and read through the hung up listings for matchmaking. It’s a hugely popular city park commemorating the suffering of the Japanese bombings in the 1930s, but quite beautiful.

For dinner that night we skipped the tour group banquet and hit the street food corridor behind our hotel.  For two servings of Dan Dan noodles, soft serve ice cream and two Satsuma oranges, we spent 32 yuan, about $4.65 total. 

Before leaving this morning we went to a Chinese medicine facility where we were treated to a pulse and tongue health evaluation, chair massages. Several of us got traditional treatments for complaints. I have had mild vertigo for two weeks and they burnt some smoldering item above my head that heated up my scalp and the skin on my face — we will see how I do.  It seems some better today but the test is in laying down and turning over, so that will be discovered tonight.  Now we are on the bullet train for 4 hours, 580 miles heading north to Xian and the Terra Cotta Army.