Day 4 (9/18): Jiuzhaigou > Chengdu > Mount Emei

Its packed breakfast again as we needed to take the morning flight back to Chengdu. The flight was on time and trouble free except:

1) There were three smokers under a “no-smoking” sign inside the airport café and even asked for ash tray from the shop manager. The airport staff told us that it’s not within their authority to interfere. When we posed the same query to the “Armed Police” the answer was that one can smoke if the shop staff allow. Well where’s the right of the non-smokers?
2) Jiuzhaigou/Huanglong is one of the few airports in China that prohibit battery inside the checked in luggage. Bob, Dinny and Victor were asked to open their baggage for hand search. Instead of batteries the custom people could find only hair curling iron (they even asked Dinny to operate it), ethernet cord and transformer. And I did inadvertently check in my Nikon EN-EL4a battery (the size of two packs of playing cards on top of each other) but nobody found out and summoned me ;). They should have put up a battery identification chart at the security area.
3) The baggage checks seemingly took forever (short of man power or machine break down or whatever) and we all boarded minutes before the flight took off.
4) Lastly my wife felt unwell again. She and a few others busily exhausting the oxygen stock as we couldn’t bring them onboard of the plane.

After a good lunch at the Folk Inn Restaurant (Lisa ordered on the spot the famed extra hot & spicy “water cooked fish”) we proceeded to the Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Center. We were taken to the nursery by means of a four-row (three seats each) golf buggy. We saw the week-old pinkish panda twins inside their incubators. Sorry no photo as its not allowed. Then we strolled to the open area and then the public feeding ground. Two European ladies were tidying and setting up the stage. They told us they’d to pay RMB600 each and applied one month in advance for one day odd job at the Center. Then out came four grown pandas which seated themselves right in front of us and starting their meal without a single glance towards us and the crowd. They’re the perfect bamboo eating machine. They all hold a bamboo in each hand. With a few rapid movements the panda chewed off the tough outer skin and down go the fleshy part. Immediately it’d snatch up another bamboo and simultaneously started attacking the bamboo held in the other hand. This went on uninterrupted during the 15 minutes when we gazed in trance at the four adorable creatures. Its totally automatic motion just like Charlie Chaplin in the movie “Modern Times”. Then Miranda was told by Jo Jo that she could go back to the nursery and pay RMB 1,000.00 for an up close and personal encounter with a nine-month (or is it six?) old panda including photo taking (by the staff of course as only the paying guest can enter the “holy ground”).

After the panda we proceeded to the Leshan Giant Buddha Scenic Area. The Giant Buddha was built during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). It is carved out of a cliff face that lies at the confluence of the Minjiang, Dadu and Qingyi rivers in the southern part of Sichuan province in China, near the city of Leshan. The stone sculpture faces Mount Emei, with the rivers flowing below his feet. At 71 m it is the largest carved stone Buddha in the world. We took a ferry and cruised pass back and forth in front of the statue with ten minutes stoppage time right in front of it for picture taking, particularly for the official onboard photographer (occupying the best spot) to do business. Typically its very foggy at this intersection of the three rivers.

Then we moved on to our next stop Mount Emei for dinner (the so called Emei style meal) at a local restaurant. From the photos you can see that its nothing special but not bad at all.

We checked in the Mountain Emei Heavenage Hot Spring Hotel. We didn’t try the free spa as we were told they only sanitize the place once in a blue moon. Instead, Danny (my partner), Peter, Bob and I played an hour bridge at the floor lobby. We won a rubber each and called it a day around 22:45.

Equipment Used: Nikon D3 + 70-200/f2.8; Nikon F6 + 17-35/f2.8 with Fujifilm Reala ASA 100 film (aka Fujifilm SLP800, the film scanner) and Lumix LX3 mainly for the food photos.
Peter: Canon Powershot SD400
Miranda: Casio EX-Z40