Last weekend the 7 BC ffice:smarttags" />Chongqing people all went for a trip to Chengdu. This was something that we kept saying we’d do, and kept putting off, and I realised last week that time is running short, and it may be now or never. So I rounded everyone up and off we went. It’s supposed to be less than 4 hours’ bus ride away, but our bus took 5 hours and the one that some of the group got on earlier in the day took 7.

fficeffice" /> 

When Chongqing was in Sichuan province, before it became a separate municipality, Chengdu was the capital over Chongqing. Chongqing, however, feels much more like a capital city. It’s bustling, there are neon lights everywhere, and loads of cars everywhere, and people rushing everywhere, and people hanging around everywhere. There’s always something going on, there are many centres with many shops and many things happening. It’s simply chaotic. Chengdu is so much more laid-back that it feels like it may just drift to a halt. The streets are wide, tree-lined, with few cars on them. Being flat, as opposed to hilly Chongqing, it is much more cyclist-friendly, and there are wide cycle lanes separated from the road by a line of trees, where a flow of people pedal along, together with an occasional rickshaw. It seems eerily silent, coming from a city where the horns don’t stop day and night. And while it was pleasant, and we had a nice time there, I think most of us felt quite pleased that we had been sent to Chongqing, which seems so much more full of character and life.

The one thing that reminded me we were in the capital and a big city were the foreigners. We were taken, by the Chengdu BC teachers (including Ali & Carl who I met in the Spring Festival holidays), to an Irish bar which was packed with non-Chinese people. There are hardly any foreigners in Chongqing, even if you go to somewhere like the Newcastle Arms, and it was really strange, and really hard not to forget that everyone can understand what you’re saying for once. Fred, Olli and Ian spent the whole weekend in that bar and seemed to have a very nice time. The rest of us saw a bit of Chengdu, but to be honest there didn’t seem to be that many things to see. We went to the panda centre, which is one of the main places in the world for saving pandas from extinction. We saw loads of gorgeous pandas and it was really surprising how much they act like humans. Then, in the information centre, we watched a very interesting video about panda reproduction techniques. The funniest thing I saw was to be found in the gift shop. There was a toy panda there, and if you pressed its paw it would sing and dance. You pressed its paw, and it started dancing energetically and blaring out ‘London Bridge is falling down’ with all its might. I almost fell down with laughter when I heard it.

Saturday afternoon, after popping into the bar to have lunch with everyone else, Jenni, Julia and I found a lovely park to walk around. There were trees and flowers and streams and that was one thing I did kind of wish I lived near. The only park near me in Chongqing has giant paper trees, a mouldy swimming pool, and costs far too much to get into.

On Saturday night, we went to several places before finding ourselves at a very dodgy Chinese-techno club. On the dance-floor, a girl came up and hugged me violently, then looked at me and said ‘you are beautiful’, before disappearing into the crowds with a man. This was clearly not a genuine compliment, and this suspicion was confirmed when a Danish girl who we were with found that her purse was gone from her bag after a similar encounter. Later on, Ali found that his very expensive mobile phone had been stolen from a buttoned pocket, so the night ended on a bit of a downer.

Sunday, and yet again everyone gravitated towards the Irish pub. I dropped off my bags there and went for a walk into the centre of the city to have a look. After walking for about 40 minutes along a seemingly never-ending tree-lined avenue, I suddenly came to its end, where a giant stone Mao greeted me. This was supposedly the centre of Chengdu, but there didn’t seem to be a lot going on. There were people and traffic, and building works and shops, but no atmosphere and nothing interesting to see or do, so I turned around and found myself a pedicab to take me back to the pub for a quick bite to eat before we all went to catch the bus back to Chongqing.

(photos uploaded)