Doc Needles says "No Playing in the Panda Poop For You!"

by Steve Reiss (Dalmdad Landscape Photography - www.dalmdad.com and https://www.facebook.com/Dalmdad.)


Six months after my trip to China and Taiwan, today I received the last of my Asia vaccines.  I guess I survived the trip and can safely return soon without the fear of catching some awful disease.

Eventhough my doctor gave me 10 vaccines, inoculating me from all kinds of fun things, he still put the kibosh on my "running with the pandas" in China.

While doing my pre-trip research, I thought about going to see those black and white big-headed cuties we know as pandas.  Yeah, I had seen pandas at the National Zoo when we lived in Washington, DC.

Old: Scan for film circa late 80s, early 90s.

Also, we saw a panda at the Memphis Zoo, when we lived in Memphis, just before moving to California.

I got me a big head!

But, seeing pandas actually in the wild in China sounded pretty neat-oh.  And no, I do not mean the wild of the Ocean Park Hong Kong.

I looked into going to Chengdu, which is known as the home of the giant pandas..  I found a tour where you actually go in-cage with the pandas and get to interact with them.  To do these things, not only do you have to pay the admission fee, you also get the privilege of helping clean up after the rolly-polly bundles of fun.

While I am pretty used to the whole pooper scooper, bag-over-hand or rake, crap clean up techniques, the idea of playing in panda poop (aka recycled bamboo) at least raised a red flag worthy of a second opinion.  My initial opinion was if it was not safe they would not offer it, would probably been seen as remarkably naive to most, especially with the stereotypical views most Americans have or experience on all things safety and clean in China. At times, I can be one naive attorney!

"Doc Needles" did not even pause to think about my plan when he told me this was not a good idea.  And, if I trusted him to give me over a dozen shots, I had to follow his kibosh on this.  So, I went to Wuhan with Raymond, a doctor approved trip.

As for the pandas, I still got to see some, though under less than great conditions.  All alone, I made my way across Taipei on the Metro, from my hotel to the Taipei Zoo, where it was unpleasantly overcast and raining on and off.  I made it over to the Taipie pandas, but they were behind a thick, green-tinted glass.  Not exactly a National Geographic photo opportunity, but I had to make due.

At Taipei Zoo - behind glass

That is in Shenzhen? Uh...Yeah.

by Steve Reiss (Dalmdad Landscape Photography - www.dalmdad.com and https://www.facebook.com/Dalmdad.)

On my first trip to China (March 2008), after officially visiting Longhua and Shenzhen for my interviews, I took a few days vacation to explore nearby mainland China and Hong Kong.  After all, it was not like I was having to take time off from work; I was out of work.

One tour I took was from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, China (more of this in a later post).  The tour started with a 50 minute high-speed ferry ride from Kowloon in Hong Kong to Shenzhen Harbor (Shekou), where the tour unfortunately moved on to a short tea sampling.  In Shekou, a largely  expatriate area, there is a large French cruise liner cemented into the ground called "Sea World".

In a park at Shekou Harbor, is this huge statue. My pictures do not accurately reflect the statue's grand scale, so try looking at this one.

Remarkably, no one in Shenzhen or Longua, China that I showed these pictures to had ever seen the statue, no less know the statue was in Shenzhen.  Many commented that the women of the statue did not look "Asian".

Turns out the statue is of the creation godess Nüwa.  While many different legends are attached to Nüwa, this statue depicts her role in the upkeep and maintenance of the Wall of Heaven, which if collapsed, would obliterate everything. The statue shows her lifting the stone to fix a hole in the sky.

I especially like the three short lightning rods on the top of the stone Nuwa is lifting (see first picture).

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About a year ago, we were asked by, and granted permission to, a 14 year-old girl from Italy writing a book about legendary women of Ancient China to use the picture.  I am trying to find out whether that project actually went anywhere.