Day 11 - Panda Love

We got to Chengdu pretty late in the evening yesterday so we couldn’t see much that day, instead we walked around a little, had ice cream for dinner and went to bed.
We woke up early today to go to the Giant Panda Breeding and Research Base!!!!

I know there’s not much I can write here that’ll make you want to read when there are adorable Panda photos. So instead I’ll let you look at the photos and leave you with a cheesy Panda joke we were told on the bus on the way to the base.

What are a Panda’s two wishes?
I think the joke originally has three but I was in the back of the bus and couldn’t hear the last one haha

1. They wish for colour photos
Cause they’re black and white!!! get it!? haha....yeah no, I know it’s pretty bad

The next one’s a little better in my opinion though:

2. They wish for a good night’s sleep
Cause they have the black circles under their eyes!!!...huh?...huh?...come on, that one’s not too bad!



My new Panda buddy was too busy eating his apple, it was a lot more interesting than I am. I find these photos hilarious cause you really can't even see that he's holding an apple.
Gahhhh! It was so so so cute!

Oh and Look! A Mini-Giant Panda!!!

Later in the day we visited the Wenshu Monastery, a well preserved Buddhist temple filled with cultural relics, calligraphy, paintings and several beautiful buildings.





In the evening we went to see a Chinese Opera - Oh so cool!!

The horizontal photos are horribly small, but you can click to enlarge.

It's really more of a variety show than anything cause they had acrobats, dances, and a little comedic sketch (in Chinese!...but there were some subtitles on screens beside the stage hehe).








The last bit of the show was the opera/mask changing part and it was...Wow!!!
I still don't get how they change those masks so quickly. Trigger or no trigger, it's amazing!

We were told that we'd be able to go behind stage and see the performers prepare for the show. But we weren't able to. So we (our tour group) all walked around looking for an entrance, trying to ask someone. I went to the back and found the door, started going in and was stopped by a lady who didn't understand English. We were all about to go back to our seats, but I couldn't resist trying again, so I kinda sorta snuck through the door. When I got to the back I found a woman who spoke English and explained that I just wanted to see the make-up process and film it. She let me stay for about a minute... so here's a bit of what I saw (it's short and shaky, but I was being hurried, and not gonna lie, kinda nervous about the fact that I wasn't technically supposed to be there. But hey what can I say...I tried okay!?!? hehe)

PS Thanks lady who let me sneak past the other lady!