As Yang and I exit the hot pot restaurant in Chengdu I’m habitually checking something on my phone. I realize is a tantalizing annoying habit. I catch up to Yang and put my left hand on her left shoulder and then run it down to the middle of her back as I am want to do. A huff of a scream. A look up at me and then a full scream of fear and Yang runs away. Except it isn’t Yang as I flubbed the transition from phone to wife. A woman runs diagonally away from me and then stops and looks back. I apologize in my worst Chinese – which is my only variety – and seek out Yang to clarify. Luckily the woman doesn’t think I’m also harassing Yang – I should say luckily Yang didn’t take the opportunity to run off screaming as well. Once the woman saw my mistake she was good natured about it and just made sure to keep her distance from my wandering arm.

There were other highlights to the Chengdu trip; namely the dam that wasn’t a dam and the Pandas.

For the dam that isn’t a dam, we hired a driver – actually the driver who took us from the airport to the hotel – for the 30 mile trip westward to the Dujiang Dam. A long time ago (300 BC) Chengdu suffered from regular floods and this really smart guy (Li Bing) cleverly figured out how to split the river flow 60/40 down two separate paths. This led to a reliable water supply for the farmers and prosperity to the region. The area is still known for it’s laid back life style because of this project. Here are a couple of photos of me and Yang at the dam. It is worth noting that Dujiang Dam was the only place I saw signs of the great Sichuan earthquake of May 2008 that killed 70,000 people.

Later that same day our driver took us to the “Giant Panda Breeding Research Center” which is a heck of a name. We didn’t see any panda breeding but did see some pandas including cubs. For a kind of useless animal that takes an extraordinary amount of effort to breed/maintain in captivity, the animals are quite cute ( the bear equivalent of the stock broker who got the job because he looks like one). We saw one munching on bamboo and were lucky enough to see about 10 cubs being fed by their caretakers. We could not get too close to the Panda cubs but if you look closely to the left of the right photo you will see one being fed in the foreground and one being groomed in the background. To the right are more cubs waiting their turn.

While I’ve always wanted to do to Chengdu the timing to go now was Yang had a tennis tournament there.  Yang has been playing remarkably well recently but not so remarkable in this tournament. It didn’t spoil our time. Well, at least mine.