Chengdu Pandas!

Moving on to our next China adventure...Chengdu.

Chengdu is located in the Sichuan province - home of spicy food and where 80% of the world's pandas live. Sounds like a great place to visit, don't you think?!  And, since Lydia seems to have long weekends rather regularly, we were able to fit in a trip earlier this month.

About a week before we left, there was a picture in the HK newspaper about all the baby pandas at the Chengdu breeding center:

After seeing that, I'm not sure who was more excited about the trip - Lydia or me.  (I think it may have been me!)

We hired a guide named Haba.  He was as interesting as his name.  I don't know how we always get so lucky with our guides. Anyway, he was 30 years old and was a free spirit who talked openly about what he thinks is wrong with China (brainwashing, corruption, bad leadership being some of his favorite topics).  He informed us that he let his official guide certification expire, therefore, he's not really supposed to BE a guide.  But he said the trade union that he would be required to join trains guides how to swindle their customers (another guide once told us this, too).  He stood on principle over following the letter of the law.  Even his name is a bit of a sign of rebellion - it's Tibetan.  He's NOT Tibetan.  He took the name when he moved into the city from his home village. (You probably know that Tibet and the Chinese central government have lots of issues with each other.)  Haba marched to the beat of his own drummer. We liked him a lot.

Haba - Photo from TripAdvisor

On our first day, Haba took us to the Giant Panda Breeding Center.  It was opened in 1993 in an effort to preserve the panda population, which was dwindling fast.  Today there are only 1000-1500 pandas worldwide, including those in the wild.  It was really interesting to learn about the species - they spend nearly 18 hours a day eating bamboo. That's because only about 20% of the bamboo is actually digestable.  Pandas are actually carnivores, but over the course of time stopped hunting and opted for bamboo.  Now they're too slow to hunt if they wanted to.  (I'm sure a scientist would really take issue with the simplicity of my synopsis!)  Also, one of the big reasons baby pandas don't survive isn't because of poor health or poachers - rather, they are so tiny that they are often crushed by the mother or because the mom panda has very poor parenting skills.  The breeding center removes the babies from the mother's care to improve the odds of survival.

Okay, so on to the pictures.  Here they are - way cuter in person that I could have imagined!!

These babies were just a couple months old and hadn't even turned black yet.  When they're born, they are almost hairless and about half this size!

Lydia & her friend who was along on the trip thought this woman has the best job in the world.  I might agree!

They may be big, but they aren't lazy - they climb trees for fun and food!

Well, maybe they are a little lazy...they liked to lay on the ground and eat, too.

Lydia was mesmerized!

More babies!  A little older than those in the previous pic.  They were playing with each other.

 

After all the work of eating, some pandas slept up in the trees. It was a really funny sight!

There was more to Chengdu than pandas...and there were more pandas, too.  More later!