Travels through China – 8

The big day had dawned…. the day we were so eagerly looking forward to and perhaps the main reason for our visit to China — to see the giant pandas.

Here we were in Chengdu on a cold, rainy morning, up and ready to visit the giant pandas with fingers freezing and we pulling our gloves on and off, on and off as we made our way to the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research base, forty minutes drive from our hotel. We soon reached the Panda Research Center on the rightly named Xiong Mao Avenue. Xiong Mao in Mandarin means ” Bear Cat”. We will learn later inside the Panda Base that there was a lot of confusion as to whether pandas were to be classified as bears or dogs, but then why ‘Bear Cat’, beats me. Then a consensus was arrived at that pandas belong to the bear family. The entrance to the Panda Breeding Base is itself shaped like a panda’s face.

Our tickets had been booked online and so we breezed into the campus. Winding, steep but well laid-out roads amidst dark canopies of bamboo trees. Truly amazing. One can walk and they do have the battery-operated carts too. We labored up the slopes buoyed by the thought our seeing this rare animal. Lush greenery all round and as we saw the first enclosure, we had to crane our necks and strain our eyes to catch a glimpse of the Red pandas here. Not too impressed, as we had seen them earlier too. It was the giant pandas, we were after and soon enough, we saw one…….. truly big and trundling along in its enclosure. Body not exactly black and white but rather black and a pale cream ( maybe the dirt). A  fully-grown giant Panda! Yet….. not really cute, was the first impression.

As we moved along  a little, we could see a couple more pandas in the same area………. wait a minute one more, no two more on the tree. I was wondering if Old MacDonald had a farm in Chengdu, the song would have gone ‘ and on the farm he had some pandas, ei a eia ho’. Some of the pandas were striking cute poses.

Contrary to popular belief, giant pandas are carnivores and their digestive system is designed to digest meat. However, over a period of time, pandas in the wild had embraced vegetarianism and thrived on bamboo shoots. In rare circumstances, we were told, they do eat small mammals and rodents. I was reminded of that old story where a giant panda enters a restaurant, eats food, pulls out a pistol, shoots the waiter and leaves the restaurant. The owner corners him and shouts” What have you done?”. The response — ” I am a Giant Panda, check me out on the encyclopedia. Sure enough the encyclopedia says ” Giant Panda eats shoots and leaves”.

An adult panda has to eat up to 40 kilograms of bamboo in a day and it spends 14 hours eating. No dieting, lucky pandas! They appear to be jolly creatures eating, sleeping or playing. No worries at all.

Pandas are bred here through artificial insemination and through natural breeding too. Pandas are good mothers and dote so much on their little one that if they have twins, the mother does not know how to manage and usually abandons the weaker one. A reason for the dwindling giant panda numbers. Understand there are only around 1800 giant pandas in the wild, all in the Sichuan & Shaanxi provinces of China. In the breeding centre when twins are delivered, the panda-keepers make sure that both the babies are duly cared for. Panda babes are pink in color at birth and can fit into our palm.We were told that had we come in August or September, we could have seen the new -born pandas. We were however shown a replica of a panda baby.

Pandas saved from the wild also live here. We were told that there are over 100 pandas here some which can be seen while some will be in the research laboratories inside. The inmates bear fancy names like Qiao Qiao, Ji Lan,Ji Li, Qi Qi , Da Jiao, & Dian Dian among others. Each one has some distinct features and behavioral traits which to our untrained eyes were not discernible. Time to move on and now we were in the two nurseries — Sunshine nursery and the Moonlight nursery where the baby pandas ( not new-born) are housed. Ever so mischievous as they roll over one another or pull and push each other or wait for the Panda-keeper to come and pick them up, they are so cute and we see maximum crowds around them. They had small swings and ladders in their enclosure and surprisingly a small rocking-horse too, like the ones human babies use. They so closely resemble human babies– cuddly, happy beings.

While pandas enjoy bamboo ( special varieties of the same), we were told the pandas here are fed apples, honey and a specially baked Panda bun/bread as well. We visited the Panda Kitchen — wow, it is a 5-star kitchen in terms of space, cleanliness and the manner in which the bun-baking is done.

We could sight at least 40 pandas mostly chomping away, involved in some antics or sleeping like babies. After walking for nearly 3 hours in the cold weather and viewing pandas of different sizes and ages, one gradually starts feeling the ‘Diminishing marginal Utility of Pandas’. Moving along further there is the Panda Cafe( which we did not try) and a beautifully set-out Panda Museum, where we can learn all about pandas on our own using the large self-operated LED screens all round with English and Mandarin as the languages. Very well done place. The ubiquitous Souvenir shop is there too, oh so expensive!. We had bought our panda toys earlier at Xi’an itself at one-third of the price quoted here and gave ourselves a pat on the back. There is a Panda Post Office too from where you send special post cards to your friends and relatives back home. Will they reach safely, well only the pandas can tell.

One surprising thought as we walked out towards the gate. Not once did we hear a panda make a noise, so does a panda growl, bark, bleat, roar… we would never know. When there are pandas galore, can the famous Kung Fu Panda be far behind? Sure enough he was there near the exit gate and I could not resist striking a pose before him.