9-27-19 - Chengdu - Ashley gets to see the giant pandas!
/Day 103. Kyle & Leanne joint blog.
Today is Ashley’s day as we sojourn to meet the 80+ pandas living at the world famous Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Over 100 days of travelling straight is wearing on us all a bit but it seems a bit tougher for our youngest traveler. Yet Ashley is super excited for today. At home, her room was filled with panda photos and she’s learned all about them. Ashley finds pandas absolutely adorable and she’s joined by a high percentage of Chinese people in this regard.
We leave the hotel at 8:15 a.m., just in time to beat the British retirees tour bus that crowded us at the hotel breakfast. Score! It’s an hour from the city and we have heard the crowds are massive. We are thinking busy....busy like Disneyland on last day of Annual Pass busy. Online, one tourist wrote “I only saw people no pandas.” So we kept our expectations low. Way low. A few years ago, when there were two giant pandas on loan to the San Diego Zoo from China that we had to wait 3 hours for a 60 second walk by of the pandas. We are talking that low.
As it turns out the stories of immense crowds at the Chengdu Panda Base were greatly exaggerated. As we get to the place, we realize we have hit a relatively uncrowded day. We immediately come across pandas sleeping in trees, pandas eating bamboo and even a panda taking a shower. A wide smile erupts on Ashley’s face. The big difference vs San Diego that we notice is that a panda’s enclosure is actually a large amount of land with an actual mountain forest in it.
We’ve learned much from our tour guide about panda conservation efforts, their solitary nature, their ferocious appetites for all things bamboo — they spend 14 - 16 hours a day eating 30 – 40 pounds of bamboo.
One thing that shocked us is we were told by our guide Sami that pandas have been around for 8 million years. Of course, Mr. Skeptical (that would be Kyle) googles and finds out that it was a derivative, ancestral animal of the pandas that date back 8 million years and that pandas have been around for 2-3 million years.
The clan-favorite were the babies who were just 2 to 3 months old. We even saw twin pandas who were named UN Animal Ambassadors for Sustainability.
After seeing the cutest panda ever chow down on his morning bamboo, an older lady with a Scottish accent approaches us as the teens skirt ahead.
She says to Kyle “I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t help but notice YOUR son .....”
At this point, I’m gathering the appropriate words to apologize for what he apparently has done. The typical parental humility moment kids are masterful at creating for us. What did he do? Bump, trip, or similar accidental tap. I start looking her up and down to see if she’s perhaps hurt and wonder if our insurance is paid up.
She continues “.....collects country pins and I wanted to give him this friendship pin with the Scottish and Chinese flag together.” She erupts a grin. We erupt with a sign of relief. Whew! Bullet dodged. And then “Ahhh!" So sweet.”
We learn her name is Karen and she’s a Scottish retiree whose been collecting country pins since she was a child. From one collector to the next generation. Yet another random act of kindness we have received on our yearlong trek. Thank goodness for all the good people that have touched our hearts on this trip. We later buy and give her a panda ears headband (like Mickey ears) as a thank you and her retiree friends then followed suit purchasing them as well. How trends start?
At lunch at the Bamboo Restaurant at the research center we eat several dishes with bamboo while watching a documentary on how farmers collect the bamboo daily for the pandas from a trekking 3,000 feet up into the mountains. It’s a whole team of people who ensure their Chinese gems are well fed with the exact type of bamboo they prefer.
After lunch we head to the Saxingdui Museum to see the ancient artifacts of the people from more than 3,000 years ago. The site was originally found in 1929 but later excavated, studied and curated in the mid 1980s-1990s. The collection included pottery, gold masks, bronze holy trees and jade spears. The museum was set in a beautifully manicured Chinese garden. This is another time when we are thinking about the development of culture and society 3,000 years ago and feel it’s sometimes hard to get our minds around everything we’ve learned so far.
The crew decides to head back a bit earlier than planned. Even the hardiest of travelers need to call in an early day once in a while. For dinner, we have Korean BBQ, a new cuisine we have learned to love on this trek!
