We rolled out of the hotel at 6:13am, just 13 minutes after our scheduled departure - a new group record! The ride to the Panda reserve and breeding grounds brought us well out of the city, on smaller and smaller winding roads to the top of a gorge plush with bamboo forests for a unique experience with these endangered animals. You earn your keep at the reserve: upon arrival, we spent some time cleaning up bamboo scraps, bamboo leaves, and bamboo poop; we shattered the thickest shoots, transported vats of water, and brought pandas some of their favorite snacks. We all knew these specialists eat bamboo leaves, shoots, and branches, but we were surprised to find they also enjoyed carrots and some "cakes" made of some combination of bamboo, honey, and soybean paste. The grounds have an enclosed pen that opens up to a simulated natural habitat for each panda. The chores allowed us to donate time to the preservation efforts while getting up close and personal with the Pandas. We saw young pandas & old pandas, baby pandas & toddler pandas, male pandas & female pandas, climbing pandas & rolling pandas, hungry pandas & sleepy pandas, laughing pandas & whining pandas, black & white pandas! Pandas!! Later, visitors had the opportunity to become donors, for which they would receive a panda photo-op or a few minutes of free play with one of the younger animals depending on the donation. Unforgettable.
Hot pot for dinner was an experience! We/they put everything but the kitchen sink into our boiling broth for our Chinese fondue dinner: Chinese hot dogs, Chinese meatballs, lotus root, rice noodles, wheat noodles, beef sukiyaki, chicken feet, chicken head, and a few UFO's (unidentified floating objects). A couple of 9th graders accidentally (or so they said) tasted their first rice wine. We cut them off as soon as everyone realized what they had been served.
A Chinese opera and fine arts display that we likened to a Chinese variety show capped off our second to last day. Some acts didn't translate too well (literally and figuratively), but others were awe inspiring. A couple of highlights were a Shadow Puppeteer who left you wondering if he only had two hands and the famous (in this neck of the woods) mask morphing men of whom we demanded an explanation for their slight of hand. Mary and Helen would only offer that it was magic, but reminded us that we could Google it (even in China).
One more day!!
Love,
All of us in China
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