Pandas in the house!

Of course, this was the day that many of the children (and adults!) had been waiting for...visiting the Bifengxia Panda Research Centre and seeing up close those most beloved of furry animals.

The Bifengxia centre was built in 2003 but after the 2008 earthquake in Chengdu, the pandas at the more well-known Wolong centre were moved away from their destroyed habitat - and many of them came to Bifengxia. This centre is dedicated to the preservation of the rarest and most loved members of the bear family (there are less than 2500 left wild in the world according to the World Wildlife Federation).

It was a cool, damp day but no rain and we headed out excitedly. No one was sleeping on the bus today! We reached Bifengxia just after 11:00 (the last bit on a long twisting road up into the mountains...I had no idea that we would be up that high - it is beautiful there!). We headed into gardens being prepped for spring and started our visit with lunch in a beautiful pagoda style building.

...and the latest group shot under a perfect sign:
Family In Mountains

And then we were off...

We began by visiting the gardens (hillsides) where some of the adults live...it was lunchtime and most were either waking from their morning naps or starting in on their bamboo lunches. The simultaneous squeals when the kids spotted the first one on the hillside was hilarious.

We actually spent almost two hours visiting various panda habitats,

...and then finished at the visitor centre where we would be buying tickets for those who wanted to get up close and personal with the pandas. We had hoped that the children would have an opportunity to interact with the youngest pandas - a few months old and still small enough to pick up - we could see them inside the panda kindergarten. However, the donation fee for that experience is 5000 RMB - or about $750 CDN. Uh, no.

But boy, are those baby pandas cute!

Instead, nearly all the kids suited up for a 5 minute visit with young pandas (most of which were larger than any of our kids) while the pandas were given their afternoon snack. And I mean suited up - look at these get-ups...

And then parental photographing ensued of the resulting meetings. So wonderful.

It was a long day, and rain began to fall as we left the centre in late afternoon...there was some waiting around between activities and a number of the adults are fighting the typical "bus colds" - including me, blecch. I was so cold at one point that I was wearing 2 of the dads' coats AND I bought a panda hat to keep warm (friends at CMA, I don't want to hear one word about this get-up).

But despite this, the kids were all delighted with their day. Even certain mature, responsible teenagers in our group.

We just love those pandas.

(Tonight we head to Hefei in the late afternoon, and depending on exhaustion levels and how this blogger is feeling, there might not be a post for a couple of days...we'll see. Thanks for following along!)