Panda Factory

When I chose to fly to Chengdu, I did so based on the fact that it was roughly in a straight line between Nepal and Xi'an and it was not too far into China. I did not chose it because I was familiar with the city and what it had to offer. I had heard of Chengdu. I knew it was in the Sichuan province of China and I knew it had about 10,000,000 inhabitants.

I had actually planned to travel overland from Nepal into Tibet and then get the train from Lhasa onwards, but the Chinese authorities make doing just that very difficult. To go into Tibet, you need a special group visa, which the Nepalese tour guides can sort for a fee. These group visas are valid for one month. With a three month Chinese visa already in my passport (something which had taken me several weeks to arrange with help from Ronald and Nicole in Shanghai and £100 to sort through the Chinese Embassy in London) I was not happy about getting a different visa, particularly one that only lasted for a month and invalidated the one that I had gone to such trouble to acquire.

So, begrudgingly, I was left with no option but to fly into China (not a cheap affair either at £250.) Ironically, my flight stopped at Lhasa and I had to go through customs at the airport in Tibet and then return to my original plane (and seat) for the remaining part of the journey into China. Atleast the views of the mountains below me during the flight were something I shall not forget.

When I arrived in China, I booked into a cheap hostel and slept well, wondering what the city of Chengdu had to offer...

...Pandas       ...lots of them.

                    

I did not know that the mountains and countryside around Chengdu were the former hot spot for pandas. Sadly, their habitat has been eroded massively, many were hunted and then exported to countries around the world with a love of these magical animals and even given away to foreign dignitaries - (Edward Heath was given a pair for London Zoo back in the seventies.)

This shy creature, for so long the face of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, is now critically endangered. To make matters worse, they are incrediably poor at reproducing. The females have only one shot at it a year (and are only 'in season' for 48 hours), panda numbers in the wild are critically low, successful conception rates are poor, the female usually has twins, but will abandon one of the cubs early on to concentrate her milk on the stronger one and to cap it all, the male has an exceptionally small penis! A carnivorous animal, which has chosen to live in the cold Chinese mountains on a diet of bamboo (an almost indigestible food source for a carnivore with only one stomach) is desperately in need of man's help.

 

   

And so at Chengdu, they have built a Panda Reproduction Sanctuary, a panda ark which is harvesting sperm, assessing the DNA and artificially inseminating the female pandas when natural methods fail. Their nurseries (named Sunshine and Moonlight) are state of the art hospitals and every year a dozen or more baby pandas are born. The eventual goal is to produce large numbers of pandas in captivity, before releasing them back into the wild. They have begun building three release zones, all at increasing altitudes in the Sichuan hills were they hope a phased reintegration programme will gradually wean the pandas away from their human 'parents'.

   

David Attenborough and the BBC made a wonderful documentary about the work of the Chengdu panda sanctuary, which I recommend you all make time to find and watch. Some people believe this is a phenomenal waste of money and is doomed to failure, others say that the tourists who visit the sanctuary, and the zoos around the world who make money from having the attraction of pandas, are paying for it all. All I know is that this most iconic of endangered animals is simply a victim of man - and unless the Chinese try their hardest right now - pandas will become extinct in the wild.

I can also testify that they are a pleasure to study. I was at the sanctuary for 5 hours and was fascinated by them all - from the sleeping cubs, to the playful adolescents. I wanted to visit the centre again the next day.

   

               I was not alone with. You cannot look at a baby panda without smiling!

   

                     Cute - aren't they?                                

More soon everyone.

Paul x