seekingmygreaterperhaps

Today I embraced China’s “National Treasure”- the Giant Panda. And now I feel as though my Chinese experience is complete, and I am so overjoyed. They are SO DANG CUTE. 

I spent the morning at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, or as I refer to it in my dreams, the Panda Palace. They are working towards the conservaton of pandas by heightening environmental education, breeding giant pandas and helpng to rehabilitate them to be released into the wild, and most importantly, helping preserve the adorable species that is recently on the endangered species list.

Honestly, I don’t know how effective the whole “education” piece of their mission is. Being the nerd I am, I was actually interested in the education (on top of seeing the cuties themselves) and those parts of the park were unstaffed and the displays left much to be desired. They have a lot of potential, but it’s clear the main focus is the animals themselves. If that’s my only qualm, I think it was still a fantastic day. Which it was. It was so clean there too, an extra bonus.

Moving on to why I know you all are reading this; THE PANDAS!

DAWWWW.

If you’re a traveler reading this, I strongly suggest you check out the Panda Palace. It’s the reason I came to Chengdu, and it is already worth it. I used my student ID and got a 1/2 price ticket too for 29 yuan, as an added bonus. (From the North Train station, you go to the west bus station and take bus 9. 4 stops later, get off at the Chengdu Zoo Stop and switch to bus 198, that will take you to the Chengdu Panda Base stop- get off there. Total that’s 4 yuan one way. )

I read that it is suggested you arrive earlier in the day rather than later, because the morning is feeding time and the pandas are the most active. So that’s what I did. I dragged my lazybones out of bed at 5:45 so I could begin the hour journey that is public transportation to make it there right by 7:30 when the doors open. I am so proud of myself because I got my ticket before this old Chinese woman did behind me. So you don’t think I’m rude, part of the Asian culture is that no one queues for anything. There are no such things as lines- you push until you get to the front, and then you get the ticket. I’ve seen it and felt the shoving first hand. When I tell you I got my ticket before a local, it’s a big deal. I stood my ground and pushed back, and she went behind me. Victory is mine!

Right inside the gate is a large statue of Po from Kung Fu Panda doing a kung-fu move. I could get behind that. This is a large statue of their symbol for the Panda Base.

The beauty of getting there early… it felt like I had the park all to myself for the first hour. There were a few other early birds, but I got to stare at the pandas by myself for quite a long time. In fact, they hadn’t even released some of the pandas when I was walking around, so I made a few loops to ensure I saw all of them. Gotta spread the panda love. To burn some time, I went to the “Panda Cinema” and watched a film about the work the base is doing towards panda conservation. Not like a full length feature film, but a little movie. It was cute, there was footage of fresh baby pandas that I wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise.

These are the teenager Pandas. They are so cute, but they are messy eaters. To get to the good parts of the bamboo, they bite into the shell and then spit it to the side, getting bamboo all over the place. It’s funny because some of the pandas are selective, they will pick up one piece, look at it, toss it to the side and pick up a new piece.

The red panda enclosure was pretty amazing. They built it so that there are purposeful holes in the fences so that the red pandas can leisurely walk on the paths with me as they so please. It is awesome. There are signs warnng not to touch them, because they are still wild animals and will bite you, but I definitely saw some Chinese people reach out for them before the panda ran away. I can’t tell if they are eating sweet potatoes or cantaloupe. I could google it… but China.

There was one red panda that made me really sad. His fur was gone in patches on some parts of his body and his tail. It looked like he had lost a bad panda fight. I saw another red panda that looked similar but not as bad, except I couldn’t see that one’s ears. The first panda would go to the food pile, grab a piece, and then take it off to the side to eat it, like he was shunned from the family meal table. It looked like he was eating enough, so that’s good, but it still made me sad to see him. I hope the Panda Palace People are helping him.

I learned that red panda’s were actually discovered 44 years before the giant panda, and that’s why they have to use the qualified “giant.” Also red pandas have been known as “firefox” before, so that browser has some meaning.

Then I stumbled onto the BABY baby pandas. They were full of life and very playful, as well as drawing a big crowd. The keepers were plaing with them, so us visitors got to watch them while they were lively. A few kept rolling down the hill and jumping on each other. It was SOOO cute. They make these little noises that I can’t even describe, but make them even cuter.

(I also learned that 50% of panda’s give birth to twins, but if that happens then the mom picks the healthiest one to raise and keep alive, letting the other one die. So in the wild, the survival rate of the second twin is 0%. However, at this base, they bottle feed the second twin and then put it with a foster mom of sorts, and they have all survived thus far. I thought that was a pretty cool effort on their part.)

There was a worker in there scooping up the poop for a few minutes when I first arrived to the scene. It looked as though the baby pandas were playing a game with her, as she would scoop one’s poop and then the others would run around and poop more, making her almost chase their trail. I’m not sure if this was actually happening, but that’s what it looked like, and it was hilarious. Baby pandas- such jokesters.

At first I felt bad that all the adults were in solitary enclosures, but then I learned that giant pandas are actually solitary animals. Because they eat 25% of their body mass a day, and bamboo is scarce in the wild, they are typically solo animals.

It’s not a huge park, but I did manage to spend the entire morning there, gladly so. Baby giant pandas are totally worth it. And the other ages too, not to discriminate. I’m still on the lookout for a complete panda outfit in the days to come, and Szili already turned down a panda tie, so the souvenir hunt continues.

Me and my new besties.

Thanks for tuning in, as a bonus, here’s a pic of some Chinese tourists clearly ignoring the rules. (They were not quiet, nor were they not teasing or provoking the pandas, and it looks like one is about to jump the fence… 3 strikes people.)