Thoughts and stories, by Pal

The evening after we saw the Terracotta Warriors, we went to a lovely dinner and show at the Tang Dynasty Song & Dance show, with a dumpling banquet. Some scenes from the dance and show numbers are here:  Each number was different, and very colorful.   This number the lady was swirling long scarves, beautifully to the music.                             The last number had this beautiful backdrop with the lotus flower.   The lotus flower has a lot of significance to the Chinese.Everywhere we drank bottled water.  We received 2 bottles each day in our hotel, and also on the bus, and in restaurants.  Even brushed our teeth in it!  We then flew to the city Yichang.  It was a "small city" with only 4 million people!  The streets were very clean, and people obeyed the traffic lights much better!  Below are a few scenes from Yi...

After breakfast we left the cruise ship at Chongqing, the largest city in China with 32 million people.  We first went to the zoo, where they had live panda bears!  Our guide said there are around 300 panda bears in the wild in the nearby mountains.    On the way to the zoo, we saw many skyline high rises! This was a cute statue, a baby monkey whispering to the mom!  These large statues were at the entrance to the zoo. We first saw what is called a "Red panda".  It quite resembles a raccoon, but it otherwise isn't very much like them .    It was about the size of a raccoon, however.             Then we saw the big panda bears!  This one was around 4 to 5 feet from tip of it's nose to the tail.            He was actually trying to climb into that window.  We figured, as it was morning, that he was looking for breakfast!  This...