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Chinese New Year 2008, London
China Town, and seemingly the rest of central London, was locked down & dressed up for a huge Chinese New Year Festival!
Thousands of people showed up for food, music, fireworks, dance, and of course my favorite, Kung Fu!
RTW: p45d - Xi’an, Bell Tower, Terracotta Warriors
[click for LARGE PANO view]
There is something different about Xi’an. It’s a small walled in city, very clean, spacious, low-rise buildings. And they don’t seem to give a shit about tourists! It’s great! No hassles, even in the markets, they just treat you like normal people. Awesome.
I stayed at the Bell Tower International Youth Hostel, which is literally next to the Bell tower! Fun and practical hostel with a hotel next door for families etc. They have two cute kittens who play around, and local Chinese students come in to practice their English and have a chat. Very friendly atmostphere and a great view at the Bell Tower opposite from their balcony. The rooms even had international plugs, no adapters required!
This is the best place to start in going to the Terracotta Warriors, with a public bus going directly there (the bus ceiling was about the height of my shoulders). There are three warehouse like structures over the excavations and helping protect the statues. Its quite a site when you first walk in. There are literally hundreds of statues in formation buried underground. They have different facial expressions (the artists are said to have looked to each other and in mirrors for inspiration), different clothes, weapons, horses and carts etc. There are over 8000 statues, and many of the soldiers are taller than me at 6′5″! They were buried with Emporer Qin, to help him rule in the afterlife. Amazing.
While soaking it in, I saw something that then really shocked me - originally there were structures and wooden beams covering the statues, which eventually caved and destroyed many of them, shattering them into pieces. Yep, most of the statues Currently in formation were previously parts of a jig-saw puzzle. Can you imagine? “Ok, see this statue here, and see that massive pile of broken bits and pieces there? They, have to look like this….”. It’s a nightmare! But somehow they managed to fit the pieces together and glue them back to their former glory, adding a little coat of dust covers up the cracks and you’d never know! 
They are still working on putting them back together.
THEN, we hear there is PAINT on most of them! Most of the statues are actually painted in detail as well! But they don’t yet know how to remove all the dirt and keep the paint preserved, so thats why they have a thick dirt covering.
RTW: p45c - Chengdu, Grand Buddha
Another road trip, off to see the Leshan Giant Buddga! This is the World’s Largest stone Buddha statue, and was carved into the side of a cliff in the Tang Dynasty, with the intention to calm surrounding waters that terrorized passing boats. It took almost 100 years to be completed! Apparently the monk who began the project gouged out one of his own eyes when the projects funding was threatened, AND because of all the rock mass moved around it actually DID alter the currents and make it safer for boats! And now you can actually go on tourist boats which sit directly in front of the statue on the water, calmly, letting you see it in full glory.
This thing is seriously huge, you start at the top and you can walk down stairs on the side to the bottom, his toe is the size of me.
The walk back up is via stone carved steps into the cliff. Amazing what you can accomplish with man power and time 
Tags: buddha, chengdu, giant buddha, grand buddha, leshan, statue, 乐山大佛
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RTW: p45b - Chengdu, Pandas are cool
We got a group together to head off to the Chengdu Panda Breeding Center. Initially I thought it was kind of a fenced reserve area naturally populated by pandas, but it is basically a zoo. However it is very natural, they are successfully breeding pandas and releasing them into the wild, and from what we saw they are very happy! There are no bars, high walls stop them from getting too close but I really wanted to just give THEM a big bear hug! They are soooo cool and just look like big Teddy Bears! Our visit was timed to be just after breakfast, so they were very active, happy, playful, and totally putting on a show. Chasing each other, playing games and climbing trees etc, I could watch for hours!
RTW: p45a - Chengdu, Sim’s Cozy Garden Hostel
Sim’s Cozy Garden Hostel is a great hostel in Chengdu. Run by a Japanese and Korean couple who were backpackers in their youth, they set up a very COZY place with all things a hostel should have, based around a beautiful quiet garden. Very cheap, very helpful staff speaking a bunch of languages, internet, lockers, secure baggage room (only place I’ve been that actually takes and tags the bags and doesn’t just give you the key!!), organises tours, good food, everything!
Apparently they have now moved (Dec 10, 2007), and he new place looks even nicer! This photo is from the NEW place! Look at it!!
RTW: p44 - Shanghai
Shanghai gave me the chance to meet up with Bao Qin who was there for work and Dave from Postmodern who jut finished the Trans-Mongolia route!
Bao Qin was very busy but we managed to checkout the great Jujube restaurant - its name means “hurry up and become a vegetarian” The food here was great. I ordered way to much but ate it anyways.
I met up with Dave - the 1st familiar Aussie face Id seen since I left! We checked out some markets which were just crazy. Huge and very crowded.
“Hello watch! Hello Bags!” How did they know my name? But as foreigners you can only haggle so far. Then I went back with Bao Qin the next day and prices magically dropped! haha
DVDs, Shorts, t-shirts, Binoculars etc.
Hang on what does my bag weigh again?
Tags: bao qin, dave, shanghai
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