A romp with the Giant Pandas of Chengdu

 A romp with the Giant Pandas of Chengdu 

My friend Nirad Pandya, a resident of Shanghai until last year, had prevailed upon me to visit him whilst he was there.  Both of us had finally decided to go on a Chongqing to Yichang cruise to see the famous Yangtze Three Gorges Dam, a trip finally coming to fruition after many years for me (see my blog on that trip). But before that, we definitely had to see the famous Giant Panda Breeding Centre in the northern suburbs of Chengdu, Sichuan Province.  The important thing was to be there at feeding time (8.30 to 10.30 am) as it’s always popular. Everyone has seen photos of Giant Pandas and when we saw them from near, we were just love struck! We did not want to leave!

The Centre is a vast area, over 100 hectares, with three main enclosures. Lots of tourists but luckily not as many as we found later in the day when leaving – hordes! Ideally get your ticket for the main entry from your hotel as it saves on queuing; the queues can be really long on certain days. On entry, you can get tickets for the electric carts or walk.

 Map above and itineraries suggested by the Centre below............
The Centre recommends one starts from the top and walk downwards, so we took the cart to the top and decided to walk downwards as I hate uphill climbs.  The top enclosure is for adult white pandas. Then lower, the main enclosure for red pandas. And finally, towards the exit but still far from the road, are the sub adult white pandas.

The whole place is high tech and extremely well designed so that the buildings are all well covered by the natural foliage of bamboos primarily until you come upon them. 

One of the many sayings placed around the Centre

They have a Panda Hospital, Panda kitchen and many nurseries. Various exhibit components, interactive touch screens, multimedia and most important, dual language (English and Chinese) signs everywhere make it a great experience for a visitor. The Giant Panda Science Discovery Centre shows research labs and the Panda Story Cinema reveals the natural history of the panda breeding, life in captivity and conservation. The whole gamut of the panda’s life is explained in detail at various locations and in surroundings which blend in with the greenery. Great care has been given to keep a natural habitat and to keep it clean, which despite the numerous visiting Chinese groups, they do keep clean.

At the base area, there are nearly 400 different types of trees, including ginkgo, magnolia, chinar, and willows. Multiple species of bamboo and acres of grass and floral areas cover the zone. Egrets, peacocks and black swans fly around the lake. Despite the hordes of people, except in the open areas where they are more visible, you don’t find them in your face due structured curving paths 

It was good that we took the cart as the steepish walk is mainly uphill westwards which takes one hour or more to climb. The cart dropped us off at Marker # 20. There are in fact three buildings here but we chose # 20 = Number 2 House for Giant Pandas.At each stop, one has to go off the road some distance and then depending upon the site, the walk can be up, down or straight. We were not aware that as you finish each unit, you come back to the main road.  The house was not visible for a few metres and then amidst some scrub, a large rather oddly shaped three storey grey concrete building rising from the ground. To get to it, you go down many steps and across a ropeway. The entrance is unimposing with murky dirty glass doors. A small corridor leads to a door and suddenly you are exposed to an enclosure where a panda is sitting chewing bamboo shoots, about 20 metres away. This first sight you never forget. You will recall many pandas later but this is unforgettable. 

Si Yuan, a 10 year old female, was to the left of us, back to wall, chewing her bamboo breakfast. Each panda enclosure has a board detailing serial #, name, age, sex and a few lines on that panda’s habits / idiosyncrasies.        

The Chinese have learnt from the Americans in detailing and highlighting trivia making the visit interesting. The pandas are all around in separate wedge shaped outer enclosures with their own personal area inside the central core. They sit out in the open during feeding time or otherwise just lie on the stomach on a wooden platform and lots of green cover. Each building is surrounded by a deep moat. 

Xiao Yatou, a six years old female is a crowd puller. As her board states, “she knows she is cute and her favourite pastime is making faces at visitors”. When we arrived, she began with a slow roll from her wooden vertical platform ledge to the ground. All pandas have very sharp long claws so climbing trees and descending is not a problem.

She knew all about PR; she would stop at frequent paces for photo ops! Eventually, she came right up to the edge of the moat, presented her stomach to us, posed cutely and went off! But just look at her claws! 

Next door, two sub adults sat on a tree branch at different heights totally unconcerned with each other. 

There are about 10 - 15 pandas in each enclosure. We did notice that they are really messy fussy eaters. They grab a bamboo shoot, peel off the top in a sideways motion, bite a chunk off and discard the rest. Close observation showed they eat only the soft fleshy part. What happens to the rest we don’t know but the Centre buys bamboos from Chengdu farmers as the internal bamboo resource are not sufficient. We saw a van carrying large blue tubs stacked with 2 to 3 ft long bamboo pieces. 

 The next enclosure was of the Red Pandas – a strange shy breed which tries to hide from visitors. They look like a mix between a raccoon and a fox. If I had not been told that these are red pandas, I would have thought they were a form of raccoon. They are arboreal creatures, spending a lot of time in trees. They come down to earth for water, food and breeding.

Generally they are active at dusk and dawn but the ones we saw were active moving around. According to our guide, they communicate by facial expressions and body postures, voice, by scent and sometimes physical contact. They are generally solitary or sometimes in small groups. Each animal has black legs and underbelly making it difficult for a predator to see them from below. The upper body is red and white thereby good cover in the natural environment. They have an extended wrist bone which allows them to grip bamboo.  Each ear has a tuft of white hair sticking out at an angle. Its diet consists of bamboo leaves, berries, blossoms, fruits, grasses and birds eggs. The animal is mercurial in temper and visitors are warned about not coming close. 

We were walking by the first red panda enclosure when I saw one come out from a hole in the fence. I was literally three feet away. We all thought it had escaped, but in fact, it walked, with me just ahead of it, down the 15 – 20 steps to another hole in its fence and disappeared. Obviously it knew that these openings were for its use. Photographing a red panda is difficult as once it knows it’s being observed, it turns away from you and tries to go into the brush. We saw them eat meat balls from a metal tray put for their meals. There were quite a few separate enclosures for them but these were more spread out as compared to the giant pandas. It looked a sad animal compared to the majesty of its white brethren. One of them took its time cleaning its whiskers and it reminded me exactly of a cat’s grooming itself.

In the third enclosure, we saw many sub adult pandas, with and without a parent. They loved frolicking around and one set of three cubs and a female were real crowd pullers as the kids gamboled and played over along a bench and rolled over, under and alongside. 

At the last sub adult enclosure, we saw six or seven pandas together. Suddenly in the distance, firecrackers went off and not used to such a noise, they ran squealing back towards their cages.

The keeper wanting to ensure no harm came to them went into the inner area and calling each animal by name, loudly 3 or 4 times, gave a meat ball to each. Then, he hosed down the whole area to ensure good hygiene. 
 

Meandering at our own pace, we passed the cinema where a film was showing on panda life. There are 2 or 3 shops, some shops selling Panda related shirts, curios, scattered around the whole area but these again are well located so that you come upon them suddenly. The toilets are clean and modern, there was one at the top which had a fancy Japanese made Western style toilet with all mod-cons – heater, automatic seat cover changer, a bidet, water jet spray and also a ‘bum dryer’!  
All this at a Panda centre! 

Towards the eastern end of the park is a big lake where black swans and hundreds of koi are fed by visitors. We finished seeing the pandas at 12.15 pm, just in time for an early lunch at Zhu Yun Can Ting Café.

Like all up market restaurants, it had a photo menu featuring its delicacies on offer – braised turtle rim and bamboo fungus; stewed fish lips and tomato; steamed meat in bamboo tube; cooked rabbit meat; stir fried egg and bamboo fungus or bamboo fungus eggs with pickled peppers. To our eyes, the items are innovative and as the Chinese eat anything that moves, all popular to them. We had an interesting selection for our own meal – absolutely superb food – stir fried goat cheese (tofu), bamboo fungus with spicy sauce and finally shrimps with fried rice nest and potted green vegetables.

 

The rice nest was strange in taste – tasteless. This area has Schezwan style cooking so they use an awful lot of cut red chillies in each dish – the chilly is not that spicy, it’s for the flavour. On average, I think one can consider a large tea mug  full of red chillies used per dish. 

It was a satisfying day as we had seen these gentle endangered beasts in their own habitat. 

The Centre has an annual programme – “Jan – Feb – raising cubs. March – May – courtship and mating. March – July - cubs grow in adolescence. Aug- Oct – cubs are born, hand rearing, maternal care. Nov – Dec – same as previous months except no births. Throughout the year there is panda training.” 

One can now understand how and why the Chinese are masters in Panda conservation and it’s a blessing that they have not appeared on Chinese menus as yet.

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