Panda City, Pan- Panda City

Well for those of you who don’t know Toronto was given two Pandas last year, and here is a video of one of them enjoying the snow from this year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBJ2KCoKGSM
Now, I did not have the chance to see the Pandas while at the Toronto Zoo, however, I have been to one of China’s Panda Cities: Chengdu.

Now Chengdu is not that far from Chongqing, which is nice, its two hours on the speed train. Chengdu does not offer much more than Pandas, but for me that was more than okay!

Chengdu has what they call a Panda base, its were they help keep reproductive levels at a stable level and their goal is to reintroduce more Pandas to the wild. They estimate that only 100 Pandas live in the wild.
Rike, a German student, and I went to Chengdu for the day, basically to see Pandas. We set off early in the morning with a small tour group to see the Pandas. Now when you are at the base you would think that Pandas cannot be that rare, they have so many in different enclosures.

The first enclosure included a group of 4 or 6 Pandas, young ones, eating bamboo. Most of them would grab the branch and pull it down by lying on their backs and eating. As we moved through out the enclosures, you see different size pandas, but most of them are eating or sleeping. They are lazy little bearcats. (Fun fact xiongmao, which is the chinese name for Panda means bear cat). We got lucky and they were fairly active in the morning. We saw them climb trees and give each other kisses. We saw one baby try to wake up a bigger panda to play. In Panda DayCare we watched a mom and baby play fight.

The base even had some red pandas, even though on average they are typically active and michevious little criters, we saw two. One guy from our group paid to get his photo taken with a Panda. So that meant he got to touch one!!! This activity is very expensive though, but it would have been a cool experience. I suggest that those with money do it! I would also suggest visiting in the morning and on the off season so its less busy and the bears are more active.

For the rest of the day Rike and I explored the city. We went into an old alley way, which had local shops and cuisine. Across from it was one of the original Buddhist Monastaries. It was so cool. Afterwards we headed to People’s Park and Tianfu Square (time square). The cool part about Tianfu Square is the massive statute of Mao.