Discount pandas and much turbulence...

As you may or may not know, last week was a major holiday; International Labor Day. In China it's one of the three week long holidays of the year so the people of the country. Nearly everyone in the country travels and shops. I joined in as I had Monday through Wednesday off. My intention was to go somewhere in SE Asia, but that didn't happen so I consulted one of my colleagues and we met up in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan (Szechuan to some but that's not the correct spelling) province.

Sichuan is know for a few things: HOT food, pandas, hot weather. I was able to hit all off it.

**HOT Food**
Now many of you may think that I can't eat hot food. You used to be right, but I've made an effort to eat more hot food since moving to China. This unfortunately was way too much. The smell just about knocked me over and caused a few coughing fits. I did manage to suck it up and eat some spicy meat on a stick. For some reason it made the beer taste really really good.

**Pandas**
We visited the Panda Research/Breeding Center. I really think that the Chinese don't understand how popular pandas are all over the world. I've also heard that China tried to give Taiwan a panda called "Unification." For some reason Taiwan refused.

**Sun***
It was great to see the sun as Shanghai has been pretty gloomy. At the same time it was sunny in SH so not that I missed out on anything, but it's been rainy pretty much since I got back.

I really enjoyed Chengdu and it was great to escape the bubble of Shanghai. This city is so different from the rest of China that it does a person good to get away once in a while.