Chengdu is truly a city built around one thing: pandas. Images of these cute and cuddly creatures are ubiquitous, adorning bars, buses and even banks.
For the real deal, you have a choice of sanctuaries. The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, located in the city proper, is the most convenient to visit but was pretty underwhelming. If you want true panda awesomeness, I’d recommend the Wolong Panda Reserve. The two-hour drive is not to be made light of, especially given the 8:30 a.m. start for the volunteering programme I did. Yet the crisp air and beautiful backdrop of the Qionglai Mountains made it absolutely worthwhile. In terms of what I saw, there isn’t much to say because pandas frankly do sod all. The keeper explained they split their time pretty 50:50 between eating and sleeping which, although very cute, didn’t exactly make for scintillating viewing. The best action I got was two cubs wrestling that could’ve easily been mistaken for younger versions of me and my brother – in his case the smell too. I was surprised to learn just how violent these seemingly docile creatures are, which is unfortunately why I wasn’t allowed to cuddle them. As for the volunteering, most it was purposefully away from the pandas for the above reason and therefore didn’t offer the exclusive access I’d hoped it might. It has however provided the ultimate rebuttal to my critics who claim I don’t do my bit for Mother Nature; I’ve now spent a morning scooping up panda shit, which they can all eat! The most ludicrous, though thoroughly enjoyable, part was smashing bamboo to make it easier for the pandas to eat, lest they damage their paws trying to prise it open. Truly, they are the most feckless, cosseted creatures who, in another stunning parallel with my brother, would surely go extinct but for the benevolence of others. I’ll ashamedly admit that it was the source of considerable mirth to discover that one they’d recently released back into the wild lasted only a handful of weeks before being ostracised by the other pandas – which anyone with a basic understanding of anthropology should’ve surely foreseen – and slipping off the side of a mountain to his death. A fabulous example of good intentions leading to disastrous outcomes, and a lesson liberals would do well to heed.
Speaking of big and cuddly, there’s also a great Mao statue in Tianfu Square that was built during the Cultural Revolution. A more serious bridge is the Chairman’s gifting of a pair of pandas to the US following President Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972 and the ensuing rapprochement between the two nations. They were housed in the National Zoo, which had leased pandas from China ever since. In a sign of cooling bilateral relations, the Chinese government announced this year that it would not be renewing the contract without giving a reason. Hopefully Biden’s upcoming summit with Xi will get panda diplomacy back on track.
