Today we saw China’s most famous animal: the giant panda. We went to the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base in the north of Chengdu, an easy trip using two public buses.
They have separate areas for adult pandas, young pandas, and a nursery. We saw pandas eating bamboo, two pandas playing, and a panda lounging in a tree. One of the highlights was definitely the nursery where we saw six baby pandas sleeping in a crib. Adorable!
We also went to two different red panda enclosures. The best moment with the red pandas came when we entered one area and a red panda was walking down the boardwalk with the tourists.
While the breeding center plays an important scientific role in propagating these endangered species, as a visitor it is basically a high quality zoo with two adorable animals to see.
After the pandas, we went to visit G-MEO, the exchange program hosted at Sichuan University that sponsored our Chinese visas. I got a tour of their facilities,
the original building of the first dental school in China, and then the director, Jingyu Wang, and the Student Affairs director, Julius Gylys, took us out to lunch. They ordered way too much food, but it was all delicious.
After lunch, we left Jingyu and Julius, and went to the center of Chengdu to pay our respects to the Chairman,
and to visit the People’s Park, where we saw old Chinese ballroom dancing, young Chinese taking paramours boating on the small pond, some cool bonsai trees, and many tea houses. The best was the Koi Pond where the kids fed the fish out of baby bottles.
All in all, a great day in the city. (I also got in another nice run along the river.) Tomorrow we go on a day trip to see pandas in a more natural environment.
robsherry 