We liked Chengdu.  We ate pasta, got high from the caffeine in cappuccinos and stayed in a Danish owned place with amazing showers and a bar that played good music. It was the most cosmopolitan place we’d been since Baku. Nice and green too with lots of trees around - even palm trees lining the streets a bit like Barcelona; people sold pomelos and sugar cane from baskets hanging off their bicycles; a market sold loads of different types of crabs.  But forget the crabs there was something round here everyone was talking about. Something more cuddly than a claw wrapped in an elastic band trying to escape from a polystyrene box. Yep. blooming pandas!