I woke up before the alarm, although I was still exhausted from our late night the night before. I was too anxious to sleep...it was panda day! Matt and I decided to splurge on a full day volunteer experience at the Chengdu Panda Reserve.
We went to the reception desk early and met two other couples who just wanted a ride to the reserve (they weren't going to be volunteering with us). The ride was another near death experience involving copius amounts of honking, opposite lane driving, swerving to avoid mo-peds and bicycles, etc. China is reminscient of Vietnam and I watch Matt's reaction closely whenever we take public transportation. The look on his face reminds me of my first experience in Asia. And we both thought Korea was crazy!
We arrived at the reserve at 8:15 and met our guide and the two others who were volunteering: Matteo from Italy and Liz from Australia. Matteo had just finished a year at a Chinese university in Shanghai as part of an exchange program. He is studying engineering. Liza is in her late 50's and was granted her long leave from work (in Australia, if you work for the government you receiev 3 months paid vacation after you work for 10 years in the same job.) She took a total of 6 weeks off and is heading to Tibet for a 23 day tour after Chengdu!
After a 10 minute walk through a bamboo forest, we arrived at Panda House #1. In this building are 6 pandas, three are teenagers (1-2 years of age), and three are adult pandas ranging from 3-5 years of age. Adult pandas are kept in seperate pens because in the wild adult pandas are solitary animals and stake out their own large territories. They seldom interact with other pandas unless they find a mate (which is very rare in the wild now).
The first thing we did was don light blue gowns, blue booties to put on over our shoes and gloves. After meeting the pandas, we cleaned out half of one of the adult's pens. First,we cleaned out all of the bamboo, which was covering the floor! Pandas waste a ridiculous amount of bamboo. Adult pandas only process about 20% of the bamboo they eay, and they only eat a small fraction of the bamboo itself. most of it is relased as waste and not digested. This is one of the reasons pandas are endangered. They only eat 30 of the 100 bamboo species, and of that 30, they really only prefer 11 types. Picky animals! Pandas of course were once carnivores, and it's a mystery why they only eat plants now. Pandas are an ancient and resilient animal: they are more than 8 million years old. older than most species found on earth today (the span of most species is usually 4-5 million years long). They shared their environment once with sabor-toothed tigers! The Chinese obviously think that pandas are an extremly special and sacred animal.
After cleaning out the bamboo, we swept up the panda droppings, hosed down the pen, and swept out the water. That didn't take too long with four of us working and the zoo keeper helping along the way. After, we had plenty of time to hang out with the pandas. We got to ped them apples! We put them on sticks and held them out for them to grasp. It is amazing how human-like pandas are. Because they have small thumbs, they can do anything! After we fed them our guide took us on a tour of the reserve. There are 88 pandas housed in Chengdu, which I thought was a lot considering there are a little more than 2000 living on earth today. We visited numerous other panda houses on the tour. Some were eevn allowed outside despite the heat, but were all very lethargic. We then went to the nursery and were lucky enough to see a two week old baby panda! It was the size of a rat and had peach fuzz and just got it's black patches. We were very lucky because the breeding time is only for a few months and the babies are only put in their little incubation boxes whenever the mother panda is eating. There was one other baby, only a week old, but it wasn't on display.
From there we got to see the red pandas, another endangered animal, although not related to the panda bear at all! There were 50 red pandas at the reserve. They are super cute with long, racoon-like tails and adorable faces. They were all pinned together and loved to run around chasing each other.
After the tour we had a 2 hour lunch break, which we enjoyed at the Panda Cafe sitting out on the porch with our friends. It was interesting having a conversation about the similarities and differences betwen North and South Italy, and about the solitiude one might find on the island of Tasmania, Liz's homeland. We mostly answered questions about the economy and teaching in Korea, which of course we were both well versed in talking about both. We lazied the 2 hours away, anxious to get back to feed our 6 furry friends their afternoon treat of "panda cake".
Panda cake was invented as a dessert for pandas, a small supplment to their large bamboo diet. It's made of 8 ingredients: corn, oil, oatmeal, sugar, wheat and vitamins. Along with apples, the panda cake will get any lazy bear off it's butt! We were able to try some once we made our way back to panda house #1. It tasted a lot like a strong rye bread. We broke it into peices and fed each panda four peices. It was a little difficult feeding the three teenagers because they were penned together and all thre heads pushed and shoved for the cake!!
The highlight of the afternoon was being able to touch one of the male pandas on the back as he sat chewing on his bamboo!! We were told we wouldn't be able to touch the pandas, but after I mimicked petting on with my hand, the chinese zoo keeper ushered me closer and let me stratch the pandas back!! This got the attention of the others who all wanted a turn! We really lucked out!!
Over all, an AMAZING day, definitely the highlight of our trip so far! We have hundreds of pictures we can't wait to show you in a few weeks!!
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