As we were driving to the Chengdu Research Base for Giant Panda Breeding (sic) north of the city of Chengdu, I noticed that the traffic lights had four lights rather than the usual three red, yellow and green ones. The fourth light was a bicycle light. Not that we saw many bicycles; in Chengdu, they clearly have been replaced by electric mopeds and scooters.
I asked Ben, our guide, what he'd had for breakfast: baozi (large dumplings) and soybean milk, he replied. Whenever he speaks, he reminds me of Dustin Hoffman in the movie Rain Man. The movement of the head and the repetitive “yaah”.
When we arrived at the giant panda center, we were met by our coach for the day, Miss Lu. That is because we had paid for the honor of being panda bear keepers for the day. While there were large crowds of tourists invading the hilly and wooded complex, we were escorted separately to the topmost panda bear “enclosure”, which means a twenty-minute walk up the hill (carts were also available if we had so wished). I had had a lot of questions about our day here. How much mud would there be if it rained? Answer: all the paths are very well paved so there is no need to be concerned. What about the toilet facilities? Answer: would you believe luxurious toilet facilities with fish aquariums in the entrance area, and electronic toilet seats?
How to Breed Pandas
There are eight panda bear “enclosures” in the complex, in addition to all the other buildings spread throughout the hill and housing administrative, research, kitchen, restaurant and other facilities. The giant pandas are a species that is more than 8 million years old. There are something like 1,600 giant pandas left in the world today, of which 80% live in Sichuan province, with the remainder being mostly giant pandas on loan to zoos around the world. The panda bear center here houses about 50 giant pandas, and the main function of this center is artificial reproduction.
Apparently, it is very hard for a male panda bear to find the right female panda, which has contributed to concern about survival of the species. That is why the Chinese now resort to artificial insemination to get the female pandas pregnant, and that is the main purpose of this panda bear center. One big issue was sperm collection, but, after years of research, various experiments and countless hours of trial and error, they have finally found the answer: a hand job. At least, that is what I understood when they described it as “massage and stimulation”.
Thankfully, sperm collection is not the job of the panda bear keeper, which is our task today. There are eight panda bear enclosures in the center, of which two are nurseries for newly born pandas and one is an enclosure for the red panda bear, a smaller version of the better known black-and-white panda bear. Our assigned enclosure houses five pandas at the moment, five pandas that we came to know well over the course of the day. First, there was Da Da (big big) and Shao Shao (small small), two three-year-old females. Then there was six-year-old Wu Yi (five one), a male so named because he weighed only 51 grams at birth, significantly below the average 120 grams. Fu Fu (lucky lucky) was an 11-year-old male, and finally Bing Dian (ice point) was the name of a 12-year-old male we never actually met because he slept through the whole day. A panda normally lives 15 to 20 years in the wild, 20 to 30 years in captivity.
Time for Dessert
Two Japanese tourists join us for our day as panda bear keepers for enclosure no. 1. They are apparently panda fanatics and come here several times a year. The first job we are given is to feed dessert to the pandas, starting with the playful Da Da and Shao Shao. The main diet of a panda bear is bamboo shoots, of which they eat 15 to 18 kilos a day. They are also fed apples and panda bear cake for dessert, with Centrum multi-vitamins hidden into the food. Did you know pandas have six fingers? You would, if you watched them eat.
Anyway, our first task is to feed apples to the pandas. Guided by Miss Lu, we put apple pieces at the end of a long stick and give them to the pandas in turn. Because the females need to exercise more, Miss Lu asks us to keep the end of the stick above each panda bear’s head so that she is forced to stand up to get the apple (pinguao). When the pandas speak to us, they make a noise similar to the neigh of a horse.
Pandas eat for 16 hours a day, so we have our work cut out for us. After the apples comes panda bear cake, made of rice, soybean and corn. Lynn and I get the “chance” to taste it and frankly, it reminded me of the Scandinavian bread that Lynn eats every morning. Some of the pandas have come back inside, so we could get very close to them, feeding the cake with a very short stick. Fu Fu had to be cajoled, as he seemed to prefer the bamboo shoots to the cake.
Weighing Panda Poop
Then came the task of cleaning the panda’s enclosure. As part of watching over the health of each panda bear, the keepers weigh separately all the left-over bamboo pieces and all the Fanbian (poop) generated by the panda. And there is a lot of it all over the floor; the only clean part of the enclosure is the elevated platform on which the panda bear sleeps. This part of the job is optional, as Miss Lu points out, and Lynn quickly opts out, but I tackle the job of scooping up the poop in one enclosure and then placing it into a trash bag for later weighing. The real panda bear keeper is watching me with a disdainful look, and quickly decides to have me fired, to my relief.
I should say that we had been provided with shoe covers and plastic throw-away aprons so that our whole job could be done without worrying about our clothing. Our personal effects were stored quite securely at Miss Lu’s desk.
Throughout our morning with Miss Lu, she talked to us about the life of a panda bear, and I will spare you from all that information. Suffice it to say that each panda has his or her own personality, and the keepers have to adjust to that. I became particularly fond of Wu Yi, who had had a bad experience with a female when he was five years old; the female would not let him come back inside and he had to spend all of his time outside, poor boy.
Panda Escape
After our work shift was over, we bid goodbye to Miss Lu and visited the rest of the complex with our guide. This included visiting one of the nurseries, where we saw newborns and young pandas not much more than one hand long. We also visited the red panda bear enclosure as well as several of the other panda bear areas. As we were walking down an elevated and fenced-in walkway, a red panda bear slowly slid under the fence on one side, walked across the pathway a mere fifteen feet away from me, and down under the fence on the other side; clearly the fence is not intended to keep the animals in, it’s to keep the humans out! We then sat down for an eighteen-minute movie about the pandas before sitting down with our Shangri-La Hotel lunch box for our midday meal.
We then returned to Chengdu to visit the brocade museum and shop, since brocade has a history of more than two thousand years in Chengdu. The main river running through the city is called Jin Jiang (brocade river). This is particularly interesting since the main Chinese restaurant we go to back home in Rockville, Maryland is called Sichuan Jin River restaurant. I never knew what the significance of that name was until now. On the way over, we crossed an area full of electronics stores that reminded me a bit of the Akihabara district in Tokyo. I counted no less than four Apple stores within one and a half block.
Although we could not find anything in the brocade store to fit our needs for the townhouse, the brocade products on display and on offer at the museum were, much like the pandas, nothing short of magnificent.
Stay tuned to BonVoyageurs.com for more countries of the world as we share our joie de vivre from around the world. Luxury escapes and city breaks to Quebec City, New York, Washington, Buenos Aires. In Europe, places like Paris France, Nice France, Provence and the Cote d'Azur (French Riviera), Tuscany and Florence in Italy, Rome, Naples, and the Amalfi Coast. In Asia, countries like China, India, Nepal and so much more!
Comments