China: Chendu, Lang Zong, Pandas and Pollution

 

China Part TWO
May 2009
Chengdu and the Pandas
We flew from SW China to Chengdu and were shocked that it is SO smoggy it hurts to breathe. I read that more than 1/3 of the air pollution affecting CALIFORNIA originates in CHINA! China is more than 4000 miles from Ca. The World Bank estimates that 700,000 people die each year from the air in China (San Francisco has 700,000 people!!) from LOST ON PLANET CHINA by Troost.
We did love the PANDA Research and Breeding Area. We saw about 20 pandas of all ages and sizes. Some were playing, some were eating. We saw RED PANDAS! They were all AMAZING! We took so much video and photo!! I can’t wait to upload our photos to share.

Lang Zhong
Ancient City that is still a real place!

Our favorite place in China so far is Lang Zhong (about a 6 hour bus ride from Chengdu). It is a real ancient city. It is not like Lijiang and Dali with so many tour groups and no real homes only shops. There are real people. We went twice to the tailor and had a great gesturing conversation. We also ate twice at the noodle shop. We watched the chef MAKE the noodles. It was so great that we videotaped him. We took photos of him and he took photos of US eating at his shop. We stayed in a 1000 year old hotel and communicated with the marketing director thru Google Translator!! It is a GREAT place to visit! Put it on your list!!

Three Gorges and Yangshou
Cruise along the Gorges
We were briefly in Chongqing, a metropolis of THIRTY-EIGHT MILLION PEOPLE! Yep you never heard of it and there are 30million people! There are over 90 cities in China with over 1 million people. China is just BIG! We had a great 3 day cruise on the Yangtze River to see the Three Gorges. It must have been more awesome before the Dam raised the water 100m but it is still incredible. It is still so HUGE!

We also sailed from Guillin to Yangshou on a bamboo boat to see the gorgeous and towering Karst formations! There is so much beautiful scenery to see in China AND we even had BLUE SKY!

More of China May 4-20
Seeing more of China: the good, the bad and the cute! Traveling in China is great and full of surprises.
We have seen so much and can’t wait to see more of China. It is amazing to take a 12 hour night train and realize that on the map you have not moved too far! It is such a BIG country. There are 30 beds in ONE car in hard sleeper on the night train! I felt that we climbed 90 feet up to the TOP bunk–third from the ground.
We have been lucky to meet and travel with so many great new friends. We can now even speak a few words of Chinese that they actually understand.

More soon!Lisa and George

Lisa Ellen Niver

Lisa Ellen Niver is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 102 countries and six continents. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she worked on cruise ships for seven years and backpacked for three years in Asia. She is the founder of the website WeSaidGoTravel which is read in 235 countries and was named #3 on Rise Global’s top 1,000 Travel Blogs. Niver is a speaker at the Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Dallas Travel and Adventure Shows for 2023. Her podcast, “Make Your Own Map,” has been watched in more than 11 countries on 4 continents. Niver is represented by Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary, Inc. Look for her memoir in Fall 2023 from Post Hill Press/Simon and Schuster. You can find Lisa Niver talking travel on broadcast television at KTLA TV Los Angeles, Satellite Media Tours, The Jet Set TV and Orbitz travel webisodes as well as her YouTube channel, where her WeSaidGoTravel videos have nearly 2 million views. With more than 150,000 followers across social media, she has hosted Facebook Live for USA Today 10best, is verified on Twitter and listed on IMDb, and is the Social Media Manager for the Los Angeles Press Club. As a journalist, Niver has interviewed Deepak Chopra, Olympic medalists, and numerous bestselling authors and been invited to both the Oscars and the United Nations. She has been a judge for the Gracie Awards for the Alliance of Women in Media, and has run 15 travel competitions on her website, publishing over 2,500 writers and photographers from 75 countries. For her print and digital stories as well as her television segments, she has been awarded three Southern California Journalism Awards and two National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards and been a finalist twenty times.   Niver has published more than 2000 articles, in more than three dozen magazines and journals including National Geographic, Wired, Teen Vogue, HuffPost Personal, POPSUGAR, Ms. Magazine, Luxury Magazine, Smithsonian, Sierra Club, Saturday Evening Post, AARP, AAA Explorer Magazine, American Airways, Delta Sky, enRoute (Air Canada), Hemispheres, Jewish Journal, Myanmar Times, BuzzFeed, Robb Report, Scuba Diver Life, Ski Utah, Trivago, Undomesticated, USA Today, TODAY, Wharton Magazine, and Yahoo. https://bit.ly/m/lisaniver Awards National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards 2021 Winner: Book Critic: Ms. Magazine “Untamed: Brave Means Living From the Inside Out” 2019 Winner: Soft News Feature for Film/TV: KTLA TV “Oscars Countdown to Gold with Lisa Niver” 2019 Finalist for: Soft News, Business/Music/Tech/Art Southern California Journalism Awards 2022 Finalist: Book Criticism 2021 Winner: Technology Reporting 2021 Finalist: Book Criticism 2020 Winner: Print Magazine Feature: Hemispheres Magazine, “Painter by the Numbers, Rembrandt” 2020 Finalist: Online Journalist of the Year, Activism Journalism, Educational Reporting, Broadcast Lifestyle Feature 2019 Finalist: Broadcast Television Lifestyle Segment for “Ogden Ski Getaway” 2018 Finalist: Science/Technology Reporting, Travel Reporting, Personality Profile 2017 Winner: Print Column “A Journey to Freedom over Three Passovers” Social Media Presence YouTube Channel: We Said Go Travel (1.7 million views) Short form video:TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts Twitter: lisaniver (90,000 followers) Instagram: lisaniver (24,000 followers) Pinterest: We Said Go Travel (20,000 followers and over 70,000 monthly views) Facebook: lisa.niver (5,000 followers); We Said Go Travel (3,000 followers) LinkedIn: lisaellenniver (9000 contacts)

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