Crouching Tiger, Hidden Panda

Chengdu in Szechuan Province is famous for the spiciest food in China, forests of giant bamboo (as featured in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and the national icon that feeds on the bamboo leaves. This is my last stop on the mainland. My mom heads back to the US after this and I will continue on to Hong Kong.

At dinner, I found out that Szechuan is correctly labeled as ridiculously spicy, but it is also served with the mouth numbing Szechuan pepper that is actually a fruit and not related to chili peppers. Numb does not mean that your mouth doesn’t burn. Even the locals at the restaurant were frequently wiping the chili-induced sweat from their faces. We also learned about an interesting technique that China is using to collect taxes on restaurants. The government adds a lottery ticket to the receipt so that customers will ask for a written bill, thus enabling the government to track restaurant revenue.

The pandas are best seen at the Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Center, just about an hour outside the city. We got there right before feeding time at 9 AM so that we could see them while they were active (pandas sleep for most of the rest of the day). Pandas are really amazing- I went through 100 photos as they played. The adults and cubs were both fun to watch but we had planes to catch so we sadly bid farewell.

written by

benjgolf on May 18, 2007 from Chengdu, China

from the travel blog: Tour de Asia

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