Ni Hao all from Chengdu, Sichuan province!
I slept ok but kept waking through the night. I'm still feeling much more rested than I was yesterday though!!
This morning Lian made me a shot of coffee and we set out for the day. She bought me a sort of jelly drink and some Chinese dough bread with meat inside for breakfast. Both delicious! Then we hired bikes and rode to the metro station. You can leave the bikes anywhere in the city, all you have to do to use them is use an app to photograph the QR code. Very cool!!
We went down into the metro station and had our bags scanned and our water checked upon entering. Then we got the metro (very clean and punctual) to 'Panda Avenue' stop and caught the free shuttle bus. I came to Chengdu for two reasons - 1) it's the hometown of my friend Shine and 2) Chengdu has the largest breeding centre for pandas in the world.
It honestly felt like I was at Disneyland again. I walked around for the entire three hours in the Giant Panda Breeding and Research Centre with a huge smile plastered on my face. I can't recall ever seeing a panda in real life before, and today I saw 50+ I reckon! The centre opened about ten years ago with just six rescue pandas, and in that time its population has increased to 146. They've also sent 44 pandas overseas (including one at Adelaide Zoo - I thought you would like that Mum!!).
We wandered around to the exhibits of giant pandas of all different ages. From cubs to adolescents to adults. I had read online it was best to come in the morning, so we arrived about 8am and were both immediately glad we did. There were already crowds, and we were rewarded for our early wake up because the pandas were super active. They were eating bamboo, running around, jumping on each other, scratching their backs and even climbing trees. They have such personalities!! But apparently not later in the day. Because typically they live in cooler areas in higher altitude, once it hits about 25 they go indoors and aren't very active.
On Thursday night in Melbourne I saw on the news that two panda cubs had been born at the centre. Never did I dream that just three days later I would get to see one of them up close!! Lian asked around and the workers at the park directed us to the nursery. We queued up and got to see one of the cubs. It was absolutely tiny and could hardly hold its head up! Very cute. It was at this point that I had to get out my elbows for the first time as a man started to push me out of the way. But I stood my ground and took in how tiny it was. The babies are just 100 grams when born, 0.1% of the weight they will grow to be as an adult (100kg). We were extremely lucky - normally they give birth in August! Can't believe how good my timing was.
Apparently pandas give birth typically to two young, and usually they only care for one of these due to limited energy. This sadly means that the second baby often dies. The centre have combatted this by switching the cubs up to ten times a day so that the mother feeds and cares for both for the first six months of their lives, eventually teaching them to climb trees, eat bamboo etc.
We then went to the red panda exhibit. At home this is an enclosure where you stare at them from afar. I read signs on the way in about the "aggressivity" of the red pandas and soon realised this was because they could walk right in front of you on the path in the enclosure - which they did!!
Sadly both the red and giant pandas are endangered with just 5000 red and approx 1800 giant pandas left in the wild. I bought some overly priced souvenirs but didn't mind because I knew all the proceeds would go towards the care of the animals. The park is really well set up and it's easy to tell the animals are looked after.
Before taking a look at one last panda, Lian and I watched a short film about giant pandas and then went past Swan Lake in the park. Then we went into the museum, which had lots of great information in English. The two map images below are from the museum and show the demise of the spread of pandas throughout china over time. The red parts in the second image are mostly in this Provence.
The museum taught us that pandas have six fingers to make it easier to eat lots of bamboo. There are 500 different types of bamboo in China, but pandas are only able to digest 60 of them and prefer 20 of those. They can only absorb the protein and sugar from the bamboo, so depending on what part of it is available to eat, they need to eat different quantities. If just eating shoots they must eat 40kg a day to get enough energy, but if eating the leaves and branches they "only" need to eat 10-14kg a day.
We hopped on a shuttle bus (I'm so grateful Lian came with me, all the signs were in Chinese and no one spoke English!!) and headed into town where we went to a restaurant and shared grilled fish with delicious sauce and lots of veggies. Lian said initially she was going to take me to a place to eat duck but realised that westerners don't like to eat their organs so decided against it - phew!! Lunch was delicious. We chatted away and enjoyed our food. I'm so grateful I got to experience Sichuan food with Lian, if I was by myself I would have had no idea! Chengdu has the highest concentration of restaurants and tea houses in the world.
Next we went to Kuanxiangzi Alley - an alley filled with shops in traditional style architecture. We saw people having their ears cleaned (not for me - they looked nervous!!), an old style house, a tea house where we got to try some samples, some "interesting" foods (such as pig brain, pig snout, rabbit) and some cute shops where I bought a pair of earrings.
We caught the metro to IFS shopping mall. The metro was packed!! We went to the sky garden on the roof of level 7 to see the famous panda sculpture, apparently designed by Australian architect Lawrence Argent. The sculpture hangs off the edge of the building. I found it interesting that due to the position of the garden and some music, it was quite peaceful even though it's in the middle of the 'concrete jungle'.
Now it's 4pm and we are back at Lian's. We are both exhausted after a great day! Later we are going to her Mum's house for dinner and then to a film at a local bar. I fly to Beijing tomorrow afternoon so next time I write I'll be there!
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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