Sorry for the delay in postings…we have had a couple days with very early mornings and late nights. Hopefully this post will catch you up!
On Thursday, we went to Leshan to see the Giant Buddha. The city is remeniscent of Pittsburgh, where the 3 rivers converge into a point. The Giant Buddha of Leshan (aka Dafo) is the tallest stone Buddha statue in the world, carved out of a cliff face by an 8th-century monk in southern Szechuan province. The Giant Buddha overlooks the confluence of the Minjiang, Dadu and Qingyi rivers and faces the sacred Mount Emei (with which it shares its World Heritage status). Construction on the Giant Buddha began in 713 AD. It was the idea of a Chinese monk named Haitong, who hoped that the Buddha would calm the turbulent waters that plagued the shipping vessels travelling down the river. His plans were not just supernatural - the enormous amount of rubble carved away from the cliff would be deposited in the river, altering the currents and calming the waters. The students took a boat ride to see the Buddha from the river then entered the “park” and climbed all the way down then up the mountain. It is a hike to do this since the stairs are all man-made and very uneven. Some were anywhere from 1 foot to 1 ½ feet high and them some were mear inches. Below you will see Wei lighting incense in honor of Buddha and her birthday (it was on Thursday). We also celebrated her birthday at our dinner with cake and singing! After dinner, we stopped at the Dairy Queen outside of our hotel. They were out of most everything we wanted, but the bottom line was that we got ice cream and chocolate and that made us happy. J
On Friday, we visited the place that everyone has been waiting for—the Panda Research Base. The Chengdu Panda Base was founded in 1987, with six giant pandas rescued from the wild. Now, the captive population has increased to 83 from that founding population of only six. A few students had their photo taken with a panda, unfortunately they couldn’t hold it because the baby they use for that was sick. L The red pandas (which look like a cross between a fox and a raccoon) were very active and we took lots of great shots of them. As we were heading to the exit, 2 participants in the Amazing Race Shanghai ran through and asked us where the kitchen was. It was really cool and we hoped to see more teams run through or exit, but we didn’t. At dinner, we said goodbye to our local guide and Dr. Spangler and I were quite impressed that the students gave him thank-you gifts. It was a very kind gesture. After dinner, we headed to the airport for our flight to Tunxi. Tomorrow we head to Huangshan (Yellow Mountain).
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