Ed: Quick Chengdu report follows:

• Hotel

  Nice, in a sort of designed like a 19th centruy salt merchants home in Chengdu style, and has a backpacker section tacked onto the back of the 3 star (v. good in PRC) bit. This means we are paying about 13% of the price of what other people pay to be in `Sam's Backpackers Guesthouse' which is actually inside the Rong Cheng Hotel. Rather swish for 5 quid a night.

• Food

  Sichuan is very hot food, but not just in a red and chillied up to buggery type way, food here is fried in chilli oil. Joanna dared to have the local hotpot dish last night, which is a fondue with chilli oil. I commented that the food made you feel like you had just vommited bleach out of all orifices, Joanna kicked me.

• Entertainment

  Nine ball, queue fighting and hippy tales of Tibet (again -ed) are all in season at the moment, as well as the occasional game of `down the Big Mac in ten seconds' i.e. it is rather nice to have some salty cheesy food after Tibetan poo pie. Also on that note, there is a Carrefour in town, that is to say there is a French Supermarche which no doubt has cheese and pate and bread in it. Hence the sortened e-mail...

• Tickets

  The party are throwing their weight around at the moment and taking all the sleeper tickets to Beijing from Chengdu for some CCP conference. Therefore, at 0831 this morning, after having opened 16 minutes late, the ticket office which should have had a whole trainsworth of sleeper tickets to Beijing for Thursday (4 days in advance is the maximum booking distance for commmoners) had seven tickets, two of which Jo and I got. Celebrations aside, it costs us 36UKP to get back to Beijing.

Jo: Aha, now I have the website in my thrall and shall write what has really been going on in Chengdu... (cue Evil overlord style laughter to fade)

Which isn't too much as both of us have had really grotty type cold things, although we did manage a snuffly trip to Carrefour, to find that it was not quite the pate haven that Edward had previously dreamt up, and did rather a nice line in alienesque turtles and little snakes (very handy for filling a fresh and crusty Carrefour © baguette) and, it's saving grace, tinned brie.

After we had fortified ourselves with cheese we went for a wander (yesss yesss - ref. Tibet entry) around the proper Chinesey markets. There is an interesting division within these markets between animals to eat, and animals to play with for a year and then eat. The physical boundary between these two areas in the market is blurred, and one minute you are surrounded by boxes full of exotically coloured crabs tied up with twisted hemp ropes and the next minute it's all exotically coloured fish and miniature terrapins (probably v. tasty but obviously not big enough for a decent mouthful.)

'Exciting activity #1' for Chengdu was yesterday morning when we went with a group from our hotel to the Giant Panda Research Base on the outskirts of Beijing. They have about ten adult pandas, a few toddler types and a 20 day old baby who hasn't earned his black eyes yet, and was born prematurely so is kept in an incubator and convulses from time to time (whole body twitch stylee) whilst reducing all the visitors to maternal `ahhhing' (including Ed.) Asides from this the pandas were extremely pandaish with each doubling its bodyweight by its thick coat and acting like the monks of the animal world and spending each day in meaningful contemplation cunningly disguised by falling off their climbing frames every five minutes.

Chengdu is a very relaxing place to be overall and there aren't very many things to see in the city itself so one can spend the whole day doing little but <bunged up> `comblaining aboud how ill I amb' </bunged up> (Ed) and trying to avoid playing nine ball (Jo) and sitting on our hotel veranda reading. Very pleasant though, until it rains.

Which it did. Yesterday, whilst trying to convince an elderly and intellectual looking teashop owner that we were Finnish (most effectively done by ignoring him we found, when we did this he copped on immediately and wandered off muttering `Bloody Finnair Staff' in Chinese,) the heavenly heavens opened and subjected us to an hour long shower (bath shurely -ed) in which so much of our (only remaining clean,) clothing got wet that we took the dramatic measure of getting some washing done (gasp -audience.) We both should be slightly sweeter smelling when we arrive home though...

Ed: New chinese culture shock: it is a great insult to guest and hotel for one to see the workings of the place, specifically the hot water boiler, as this offends the guest and embarreses the hotel staff. I only wanted to dry my shoes though.

Nine ball score 9-6 to Ed.

Jo: Having spent all that time, money and energy going to see the Pandas we spent that afternoon talking to the only really decent foreigner that we've met, a Geologist/Rig worker called Mark, playing backgammon, antiques shopping and going to Renmin Park (People's Park). In the park we discovered the place where old Chinese men go to get away from garrulous old Chinese women - `Bird Club'. We stumbled across a group of about ten old blokes who spend their afternoons sitting in the shade and stroking their minors (mynahs shurely? -jo) (miners shurely? -ed) and spent a while chatting to them until all their birds decided it was time for the mid-afternoon dawn chorus and deafened us all.