Pandas

Panda means

"Big and fat"

Noted by French missionary 

1960 to 1980 pandas sold to west

Lack of bamboo

340 in panda base

1800 in wild

Farmer jailed for trapping P's

Ps don't know how to mate at first

Twins born usually

(Notes after introducion by our guide)

Chengdu

A very full day of sightseeing was planned. Firstly, a drive through horrendous traffic to the Panda Research Base, the top attraction here. There are about 340 now in captivity and about 1800 in the wild, as a result of the very successful breeding programme. Pandas live to about 30 years in captivity, 25 in the wild, where they are busy all day looking for food. The park itself is lovely, with bitumen paths winding their way through groves of bamboo. We were fortunate that it had stopped raining, but lots of fungi had sprung up in the wet conditions.

We saw several fully grown pandas, each one in its own enclosure, some lazing over branches, reclining on platforms apparently asleep or else engaged in their daily business of stripping and eating bamboo. They eat between 15 and 30 kilos per day, and in the Research Base they also get supplements of "panda cakes" made with egg, rice and corn. They usually have twins, but normally the mother picks the strongest and lets the other one die in the wild.  In the Research Base, the newborns are cared for by the staff. They are tiny at birth, only 100 gms in weight and live in their own baby panda nursery. We saw four in a large square cot, but couldn't linger for long watching them, as the guard hurried the queue along, reminiscent of the Crown Jewels or Tutenkhamen's tomb!

Entrance to the Panfa Research Base

The park grows lots of bamboos for the pandas to eat. The pic shows mist irrigation for the bamboos.

Panda eating

They strip off the outside of the bamboo, cast it aside and chew the softer inside.

This one looks to have had enough!

Baby pandas asleep in their cot. The pic is blurred because the guard was hurrying the queue along.

"5 star " toilet in the park. Most public toilets in China are pretty basic: squat style and smelly! You are not supposed to throw paper into the toilet as it blocks the drains.

The three intrepid travellers pose for a photo!