Week 11: JI Trip to Chengdu!
I can’t believe we’re already at finals week! Earlier in the summer, we voted to visit Chengdu for our last JI tour, so this past weekend, we flew there for a three day trip from Friday to Sunday. It was a really eventful trip, with our activities beginning as early as 8 AM and ending as late as 11 PM! However, the first day was definitely the busiest: our flight was at 8 AM, which meant that we had a meeting time of 5:30 AM to depart for the airport. To be honest, I was so scared of oversleeping my alarms that I ended up just staying up the entire night with a friend, working on some homework so that we wouldn’t have to be as stressed during the trip.
Then, we began our flight to Chengdu, which also came with a small breakfast. 2.5 hours later, we finally arrived in Chengdu, piling into a shuttle bus to head towards the hotel. The hotel was very nice, with two separate twin beds and a couch!
Downtown - Kuanzhai Alley, People’s Park, and IFS mall
After checking into our hotel, I decided to spend the afternoon resting in the hotel after our very early departure from Shanghai, while also finishing up some homework that was due that evening.
After that, my friend and I decided to visit Kuanzhai Alley, which is a famous street in Chengdu known for its street food, panda themed shops, and well-preserved Qing Dynasty streets and courtyards! The streets were fragrant with the smell of sizzling chili side dishes and sweet floral teas, so of course I had to stop for some free samples and a meal or two. They even had peppercorn flavored ice cream! First, I got Tang You Guo Zi, which are these Sichuan sweet fried rice balls, and they were both crispy and chewy at the same time, coated with a sweet umami sauce. We also got two types of spicy noodles! I got Liang Fen, which is this cold jelly-like noodle side dish with lots of spice (of course), and my friend got spicy cold noodles! Because it’s Sichuan, everything here is spicy, except for maybe the desserts, which are very sweet!
After a bit of walking, we entered one of the many panda themed stores to go gift shopping for some friends back home, and then turned the corner into a sandalwood auction and exhibit. The exhibit was in one of the old Qing Dynasty courtyards and buildings, so it was also really nice to see the interior architecture of those times.
After walking down Kuanzhai Alley, we decided to walk around Chengdu People’s Park, and on our way we also discovered panda themed Hello Bikes! These are likely unique to the region, so of course we had to try them out. At People’s Park, there were more gift shops and groups of dance groups performing casually in the middle of the park. There were also sit-down restaurants, but we were honestly pretty full from all the samples and street food by this point.
During this day, it began to rain, so a lot of the streetside markets in the park began to close shop. We also took this as a sign to start heading towards our next stop, which luckily was indoors: IFS Shopping Mall in Chengdu. We originally planned to bike to the mall, but luckily there’s a subway station right next to the park, so we started heading there instead. On the way to the subway, we passed by a food truck that had a small crowd around it. It was selling moldy tofu, which I’ve never had in my life before, so we bought a portion to try it! Again, it was numbing spice, but it wasn’t that spicy at all. It had an interesting crispy texture and flavor from the fuzzy parts that were fried, but still pretty delicious!
While we didn’t end up purchasing any clothing, we did end the day pretty satisfied with how productive we were despite running on about 1 hour of uninterrupted sleep. Onto the next!
Day 2: Du Fu Thatched Cottage, Sanxingdui museum, hotpot, Chunxi pedestrian street
The next morning, our first stop was the Du Fu Thatched Cottage, which turned out to be a lot larger than I originally expected. The actual cottage and nearby pond are further into the park and we almost completely missed it! But there are also old ruins, a museum, and a few gardens.
Afterwards, we grabbed a quick meal of more spicy beef noodles, before heading towards the Sanxingdui Museum. This museum showcases a ton of different artifacts, sacrificial hole excavation sites, and has a whole room full of the famous Sanxingdui masks. I didn’t know there would be so many! There are a few exhibits in this museum, and we managed to spend 2-3 hours looking at all the exhibits.
This was the last JI organized activity of the day, so after being dropped off at our hotel, we were all ready to eat again. Tonight, we decided to get Sichuan style hot pot, and even though we only got “less spicy” for our soup base, the spice was still pretty strong, so much so that we didn’t even taste the numbing part of the peppercorns because the actual spice was just so much greater! Of course, after our meal, we had to freshen our palates with some good old Mixue ice cream, which is only 2 RMB!
With our ice cream in hand, we took a walk down Chunxi pedestrian street to digest our dinner and dessert. We passed the giant 3D screen, a dance show from a balcony window, and a lot of street vendors selling toys and electronics. Finally, we all got an egg tart from the pedestrian street to finish off the evening at 11 pm, and that was day 2!
Day 3: Chengdu Panda breeding research base and heading home!
Our third day began with everyone piling onto the bus with our luggages, because we had checked out by now. Today was solely reserved to visit the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, and we had the whole day to ourselves! There are 5 major sections of the park, and I didn’t even realize it until I finished the first section and checked the map, only to discover that we spent half the day exploring the first section! That’s okay though, because there were a lot of panda exhibits to look at, both baby pandas, giant pandas, and red pandas! There were also a generous amount of gift shops, so of course I had to pick up some more gifts for my friends back home, and I also got a cute red panda keychain that I hope to use soon!
Finally, we headed back to the front of the park via sightseeing cart, which shorted our hour long walk to only about 20 minutes! Right where we got off the cart, there was a free photobooth to take photos at, so we also collected some souvenirs there! Then, we were headed back to the shuttle bus to go to the airport. This time, the flight only served a snack and drinks, both of which were pretty good too! It also helped put off the hunger, because by the time we arrived back at NYBY, it was already 12 am!! Either way, it was a day well spent, and I’m so glad to have seen the pandas in person!
IPE: Engineering in Shanghai, China at U-M SJTU-JI
