I am the panda whisperer.

What’s awesome and way behind on blog posts because of laziness and a computer battery that unfortunately doesn’t last very long for the free time that only seems to present itself while aboard overnight trains?

Also, it has two thumbs and likes to wear panda gear.

This guy.

I’ve gotten far enough behind on my posts that this time I’ll be talking about days nine through eleven of my trip and I’m emailing this to the ghost writer on day fifteen. By day eighteen, I plan on having written posts for my time and Xi’an, which is wrapping up today, and Beijing, which I’m leaving for in a few hours.

So, several days ago I was about to taste my first chicken foot. This was truly a crowning achievement because the whole conversation of eating crazy things had started in my classroom with one of the Vietnam episodes of “No Reservations” and Bourdain’s first chicken foot.

Someone asked me if the language barrier was difficult to overcome. For the most part, you can get by with a few key phrases (hello, okay, thank you, what up girl) or use a calculator to negotiate prices or find someone who speaks some English. But at Liao’s Bon-Bon Chicken – one of two chicken fast food joints that we’ve seen in China – the guy didn’t speak English and I didn’t look closely enough at the sign.

Thus I bought not one chicken foot but half a kilo of chicken feet.

They’re very crunchy and I ate about three before I decided to sell out and get McDonald’s. However, I justify that decision with the following picture which somewhat poorly depicts an entire family eating Big Macs bun and top patty first. The poor little baby girl didn’t even get a Happy Meal.

My adventures in adventurous eating was the morning of our free day to work on our curriculum projects. I opted to ruminate on the gestation of my teaching with a stroll through Chengdu in hopes of finding something awesome. I spent my morning wandering the furniture district and I learned a valuable lesson about my knowledge of foreign desinations compared to that of travel guides.

Of course it worked out in my favor that everyone else on the trip is smarter than me and so I joined them in visiting a Buddhist monastery that afternoon.

It was very cool to see the monks working and praying. They take pretty good are of a temple from the Tang dynasty. I actually submitted a prayer for my family back home. When in Rome....

Our evening dinner was a Chengdu special, the hot pot. Honestly, they built it up so much that I really didn’t enjoy it. But I did get to conclude my day of feet consumption with duck foot a la hot pot.

The worst part of the night was getting to the restaurant. This was techincally not part of the tour but something we all agreed to do together. Thus we had to catch a cab rather than getting escorted by the tour guide and bus. Turns out that hailing a cab in Chengdu is nigh impossible.

Pictured above is the old woman who had to drive myself and Darwin to dinner on a bicycle. We successfully hailed two cabs – I actually ran one down myself, across traffic and everything – but several of us were stuck for quite some time. Then this little old lady came by and for three American dollars she hauled our fat behinds across town to dinner. I spent the trip asking if we were going to hell and Darwin spent the trip asking if he could pedal while I interpreted directions.

Collin got to ride a scooter. Jerk.

The following day, I asked for forgiveness at the Leshan Giant Buddha. This big guy is 71 meters tall and took 90 years to build out of the side of a mountain. The river it oversees had a reputation for being wild so the Buddha was built with the intent of calming it down. Ironically, the construction of the giant statue dumped so much rock into the river that it did calm down.

We walked for quite some time to get to the top. I forget how many steps we were told it was supposed to be but I stopped counting steps after twenty because no one seemed to appreciate my intent to say each one aloud. I was just checking facts.

I asked about the impact of the Cultural Revolution on landmarks just as we walked by some statues that had been beheaded by the Red Guard. That era was marked by Mao trying to clamp down on anything that made people or regions unique like religion or art. The Red Guard were teenagers allowed to run wild destroying cultural objects and humiliate the Chinese to keep them under control with the blessing of Mao and no interference from the military.

We also got to visit a monastery near the Giant Buddha and then hike down many more steps to the bottom of the mountain. I got bored with walking and decided to reenact my favorite scene from “The Office” with some parkour.

We stayed in the local town of Ya’an for the night. I slept on box springs and the next morning I went downstairs, handed over my “breakfunt tirket”, and enjoyed milk so hot that it cracked a glass.

Ya’an sucked.

But none of that mattered because afterwards we were going to the Bifengxia Panda Center. Pandas! I could have been stabbed in Ya’an and it wouldn’t have mattered because…

My goal was to fight a panda. They move slow and literally eat bamboo all day long but I think they would put up a good fight. Somehow that conversation with my peers turned into betting on how likely it was that I would get sexually assaulted by a panda. Also, the tour guide said it was likely that I would be the first person to die by panda attack this year.

Did you know that the first panda taken from China was snuck out by an American woman? She bribed a customs official to say that it was a puppy.

So the American government coughed up five hundred yuan so that I could chill with a panda cub. He ate an apple while I worried about the possibility that my fellow Fulbrighters were right and a new species, the panman, would be convceived in front of a crowd of screaming Chinese tourists.

[Insert panda video after uploading to YouTube]

We went to the old town of Shangli next and it was mostly just shopping and scenery. I wandered around for a bit by myself but ended up grabbing a beer in some dive to wait out the shopping enthusiasts in the group.

So what did I learn at Shangli? Well, I learned a valuable lesson in the bathroom.

Alright, party people. I’m writing this on an overnight train to Beijing after two nights in Xi’an. I’ll update soon on my experiences in Xi’an and shortly after I’ll post about Beijing. In the meantime, be good and watch out for pandas with shifty eyes.