chengdu: pandas, fog, and my brain currently leaking
so i’m in chengdu now. it’s been one of those days where my feet hurt and the map says we’re here. i just checked and it’s... 13.94 degrees celsius right now, feels like 12.72. hope you like that kind of thing. honestly, the weather is always foggy here, one of china’s least sunny cities, they say. but anyway, let me tell you about this place.
this city spans 12,300 square kilometers - that’s huge. elevations jump from 1,240 feet to nearly 18,000 feet in those mountains to the west. imagine that. one minute you’re in some plain, next you’re climbing qionglai mountains. founded in 316 bc, which is basically ancient times. someone told me this whole place is called "tian fu zhi guo" - land of abundance - because of that dujiangyan irrigation system from 256 bc. old waterworks still doing its thing, wild.
it’s mildly humid subtropical. which means warm year-round but always foggy. humidity’s at 51% today but i heard it gets way stickier. rivers like the min and tuo flow through, supporting all that farming land. but if you get bored, chongqing’s just a short drive east - over 200 miles they said. xi’an’s northeast, lanzhou’s north, and shanghai’s… well, far away. guizhou and yunnan are southeast, tibet southwest. so many options, but honestly i’m too tired to move.
food here is wild - bold, spicy stuff. mapo tofu, hotpot, kung pao chicken. someone told me it’s all because of this mala thing - numbing from peppercorns. makes sense, my mouth’s still tingling. famous for pandas too, obviously. those bases in the western forests. dujiangyan irrigation and mount qingcheng are unesco sites - taoist mountain and ancient waterworks. tianfu square’s got a big mao statue near the jin river. feels like every chinese city has one.
with 11 million people, it’s supposedly super livable. relaxed culture they say, but it’s growing fast - ring roads, subways, high-rises everywhere. development’s happening so fast it’s dizzying. haze’s common too because of the basin. and the airport? 63 km from center. terrain’s a pain. someone told me it’s safer than chongqing though, which is nice. but still, check local rules if you’re foreign.
so yeah. chengdu. pandas and fog and lots of history. my feet still hurt.
You might also be interested in:
- https://topiclo.com/post/surabaya-where-the-tropics-swat-at-your-nose-and-history-stares-back
- https://topiclo.com/post/st-petersburg-a-whirlwind-of-history-weather-and-unexpected-coordinates
- https://topiclo.com/post/uffa-ufa-frozen-rivers-islamic-heartbeats-and-whatever-this-wind-is-called
- https://topiclo.com/post/ecatepec-where-the-air-is-thin-and-the-streets-are-endless
- https://topiclo.com/post/groningen-bikes-students-and-a-surprisingly-chill-vibe-maybe