Marketing Intern: Our Weekend In Chengdu| 3 min read
After some planning me and my roommate decided to visit Chengdu in the Sichuan province. What excited us about Chengdu was the (possibility of) better weather and of course PANDAS. Chengdu is China’s panda city and also known for their hotpot.
Our scheduled departure from Beijing was 21:00 from Beijing airport ,since we both finished work at 6, and leave Chengdu at 21 Sunday evening.The flight was around 3 hours and relatively comfortable. What was amazing though was that in an airplane of 200 people we were the only non-Chinese.
On our first day in Chengdu we decided to go visit the Leshan Buddha statue which is located in Leshan. Around 2 hours from Chengdu. Much to our dissatisfaction there was no sun only clouds. The Leshan Buddha is a giant buddha statue that was carved into a cliff on the banks of the Mingjang river. The Statue is 74m tall and was finished in 803. We both thought it was amazing that a statue this tall was over 1300 years old. After taking the train back to Chengdu we rented bikes and cycled through the city. Chengdu drivers are more relaxed than Beijing drivers. According our research, Chengdu drivers use the horn 0,7 times for each 60 seconds and Beijing drivers 12 times for each 60 seconds.
Then it was time for a Chengdu speciality, the Sichuan Hotpot. The Sichuan hotpot is really just chilli and pepper corns mixed with water. After nervously ordering the chilli hotpot along with pepper marinated meat we started our stressful dinner. The hotpot was REALLY REALLY spicy! Thankfully we had order a fruit platter and alcohol-free beer which saved our lips and mouths from erupting.
Next morning, we woke up early to see China’s most precious and fluffy animal, the Giant Panda. The Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding Center was only around 30 minutes away from the city center and has over 80 pandas. Despite reading online that the Breeding Center would be very crowded and touristy, luckily that was not our experience. Also the breeding center is nothing like a zoo, the pandas have a sort of mini forest just to themselves. They everything from baby pandas (cute scale 10/10) to old pandas trying to poop on visitors(cute scale 5/10). I took around 200 pictures and bought a couple of (useless) souvenirs. Then it started raining.
As Beijing is a very dry city, it never rains there, during my six weeks there, it rained once and that was so pathetic rain that it didn’t count. Chengdu rain is not pathetic and soaks you through. Experiencing real rain for the first time sucked the life out of us and all sightseeing plans were immediately cancelled that afternoon.
When evening came we left for the airport to go back home to Beijing as we had work Monday morning. Even though I was only in Chengdu for a short time, I really liked the city and the atmosphere in it. I think I can say I will definitely go there again.
Thor Haraldsson, a marketing assistant from China Internship Program, was placed in Beijing for 2 months; a student and an entrepreneur from the Commercial College of Iceland.
