Pandas in the Mist in Chengdu

" target="_blank" target="_blank">Fainting Goats, I have a new favourite animal and thy name is Giant Panda (or as I now prefer to call them, ‘Black and White Cuddle Teddies’). I don’t know what the record is for the use of the word ‘adorable’ in a blog is, but I think I might be about to break it…

For a start, Pandas are ADORABLE and I ADORE them (you get the picture)! The Base is home to around 90 Giant Pandas, including nine cubs that were born in August last year. The residents live pretty happily in enclosures that mimic their typical living environments and are provided with a constant supply of the rare type of bamboo that they crave.

The Base also provides the black and white beasts with plenty of space to roam, even though they are not really the roaming type. In fact, the life of the Giant Panda seems pretty sweet; a typical day is filled with eating up to 38kgs of bamboo, sleeping and pooping. Once every blue moon, your typical giant panda at the breeding centre might work up enough energy to actually do some breeding, but they don’t really have much of a sex drive (apparently its all just too much effort). This has meant researchers at Base have had to take the Cuddle Teddies by the horns and force them into an IVF programme.

Apparently giant panda IVF programmes don’t come cheap and so the Base has had to invent innovative ways of raising funds. For around A$150, visitors to the centre can nurse a giant panda cub. For around A$100, visitors can pose with a full grown giant panda. Or for the more frugal visitors, A$10 will buy you around 10 minutes with a baby red panda, around 50 of which also call the Base home. No prizes for guessing which one Ed and I chose!

After leaving the Base and checking into our awesome hotel, we went to one of Chengdu’s 2,000 teahouses so that we could sip tea and talk pandas with the locals. Unfortunately, the chosen teahouse had run out of tea (I’m serious) and so we were forced to find another place to drink with the locals. After doing a couple of laps of a city block in search of another without success, we ended up settling on lattes at Starbucks.

That night we headed to a local variety show which included performances by local puppeteers, jugglers and singers. I watched. Ed slept.

After the show, Carrie took us to a local restaurant to enjoy Chengdu’s local specialty: hotpot, something that is definitely not for the faint hearted or weak stomached. The huge fired pot at the centre of the table was filled with a bubbling broth of chillies, Sichuan peppers and as many other hot spices the chef could muster. We then emptied the typical contents of a high school biology class into the molten mixture: beef, eel, ox intestine, tripe, sheep brains, and one fully grown green frog (complete with head, eyes and skin) - no animal was safe! The resulting steaming mess was like a gastronomic wheel of fortune. Thankfully after a couple of Sichuan peppers, our tastebuds gave up completely, which allowed us to munch away in blissful ignorance.

We had fun during our short break in Chengdu. Although still touristy with the pandas, the boiled frogs and sheep's brains made the city feel more ‘Chinese’ than most of the places we have been so far.

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