Chengdu - Panda City

We arrived in Chengdu late at night and checked into what we both agreed was the nicest Holiday Inn we had ever stayed in.  Our room had a beautiful view of the city lights.  Chinese cities love neon at nighttime!

Hotel view

Panda mosaic mural

Our main purpose for coming to Chengdu was to visit the Panda Research Centre and Sanctuary.  Pandas are one of the most endangered animals in the world and the sanctuary also acts as a breeding ground in order to increase the population.  Pandas are most active in the morning, before it gets too hot, so with that in mind, we set off at 8am hoping to see more than a few pandas.  We weren’t disappointed!  When we arrived, feeding time had just begun so there was lots of activity at the various different enclosures.  Each enclosure housed pandas in a different lifecycle, so we saw infant and mother pandas, male pandas and teenage pandas.  It was something really special to see such an endangered animal being cared for so well and the antics they got up to.  One of the pandas fancied himself as an acrobat and treated us to a little show which stopped abruptly when breakfast arrived!

 

We also saw newborn pandas that were only 3 weeks old.  They were being cared for in incubators and were no larger than the palm of your hand.  Newborn pandas look like skinned rabbits and their mothers often reject them at birth because they are frightened by how they look.  We were shown a video of one mother who was hitting and sliding her newborn around the place because she didn’t like the way it looked.  Eventually most mothers come around and are eager to care for their children.  However, some of them do not get over the initial fright and will have nothing to do with their child.  In those cases the newborn is either raised by humans or by another panda bear.

The whole experience at the sanctuary was great.  The setup was excellent, which huge enclosures, both indoors and outdoors for the animals.  The information on the pandas was really comprehensive and in English!

Red pandas

It was also worth the early start as by 10.30am the pandas started to go inside to the cooler climes.  I wouldn’t blame them as Chengdu was incredibly hot.  In fact it was like an oven.  I don’t think we had encountered such heat since India.  Every day the temperature was in the high 40s.  We later found out that the region was in the middle of a heat wave.  We also stayed indoors a lot and didn’t do much else in Chengdu other than chilling out and looking for nice places to eat!  We enjoyed the break after the hectic previous two weeks.