Panda Breeding Center and Sanxingdui (三星堆)

---

Chengdu has a very famous Panda Breeding and Research Center. We went there in the morning, because we heard they are most active then because it is feeding time. The center has been more successful in breeding captive pandas than anywhere else, and has even given panda gifts to many other countries! Must do wonders for international relations - "Stop devaluing your curren----awww it's soooo cuuuute!" We saw many happy pandas. It looked like they were very well taken care of and had a lot of room to play and a lot of bamboo to eat. Pandas are an extremely old species. Given how poorly suited they are for survival, it is amazing that they are not extinct yet. We kept giggling and marveling at this fact. Pandas are so fat and have a hard time moving around. Bamboo is not very nutritious, so they have to eat it constantly. I think they have to be so fat because they have to survive not hibernating in the winter. They can't hibernate because they have to eat all of the time. In Chinese, panda is 熊猫 (xiongmao) which means bear cat. They also had red pandas, which are like super cute raccoons. Also very cute was a place where they were feeding the younger pandas some fruit and they were climbing over each other, competing for the prize! There were a lot of other foreigners there, from Australia and Europe. Also there were many Chinese tour groups with matching hats. We also watched a video about panda mating and giggled like middle schoolers at the funny language and translation. We also went to the panda museum. I should say again that the pandas were sooooo cute, and more active than I have ever seen pandas in a zoo (usually they just sleep!). The park was nice too.

After panda time, we went to 三星堆, Sanxingdui which means three star mount. It is some ancient sacrificial pits that were recently uncovered. The artifacts included statues and pottery and were placed in a museum which looked like some Scientology spaceship that was about to take off. I'm not a huge museum fan, but the style of this art was quite distinctive, different than anything I had seen in China, so I enjoyed it.

We finished our day by going to PETER'S TEX-MEX GRILL in the city! Kayleigh knew the chain from her time studying in Shanghai. WE GOT BURRITOS! Soooo good. Also their frozen margarita was very strong and I needed Kayleigh's help to finish it. We finished our meal by splitting an apple pie. (God bless A-mur-ica!) It had been nearly 3 months since I had been to Anna's Taqueria... oh i was missing burritos.

---

Photos

Adult Pandas
Playing

Climbing on Top
To access fooood.

In the Museum
"Sleeping in the tree, it is safe and comfortable, hey"

Fake Sacrifice Scene
They had random images of the world, galaxies, etc playing on the screen behind.