On Hugging Pandas...

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

I came to an odd realization yesterday. My shoes will have stepped on four continents by the end of this year. I am pleased to say they have carried me along for these adventures.

In September I'll be crossing the big pond (Pacific Ocean) to visit the amazing People's Republic of China. It is a mysterious country for me, one that I've hoped to visit for most of my life and is on my increasingly shrinking Bucket List.

This is my first visit to China, but not my first time going to Asia. I spent two years in South Korea as a child, and six months in Southwest Asia as a soldier. I look forward to the culture, sights, history and the experience of being a deaf man on another international solo trip.

However, my real excitement centers around a formerly endangered species (as of last year it was removed from the list), giant pandas, and a species still on the list, red pandas. The two animals are not actually closely related taxonomy-wise.

For part of my trip I'll be volunteering at Dujiangyan Field Research Center for Giant Pandas, where I feed, clean up after and otherwise care for rescued pandas (insert SQUEEEEEE here).

Following my time the field research center I will also visit the breeding center in Chengdu (pronounced, essentially, chung doo). There I will get a chance to see a veritable shitload of baby pandas (insert another SQUEEEEE here), while being careful not to step on free roaming red pandas on the walkways (double SQUEEEE).

Having self-funded 99.99 percent of this trip, I am allowing myself to actually enjoy the trip as one would enjoy a vacation. Weird, right?

So, Chengdu is in the Sichuan Province and renowned for it's spicy foods, which will be fun in that flaming-mouth-of-unholy-death sort of way. What's interesting is that the use of extremely spicy peppers stems form the regions damp, cooler climate – a climate currently evolving. The historical belief was that the spicy foods would help promote respiratory health and stave off colds. If true, this will help me overcome the smog issues and the fact that smoking in public places is not only permitted but also seems to be the absolute norm.

Another part of my travel that look forward to is taking the overnight train from Beijing to Chengdu. The 1,000 mile, 22 hour rail trip will offer me a glimpse of rural China, as the train follows tributaries of the Yangtze River into Sichuan. Sharing a sleeper car with a random stranger should also prove to be interesting.

Well, there's still much to be done in preparation for the journey. At least my flights, lodging and time at the panda center are fully booked. Today's mission: To not be overwhelmed by the tourist visa requirements!