Lost in Sichuan Panda Paradise

Visitors will have beautiful pictures anywhere in the park.

Even if you have never seen the blockbuster movie “Kung Fu Panda” (many episodes, each time it is released it brings in “huge” revenue), even if you have never heard of the pandas that have captivated the world’s youth, I think any normal person on earth will feel excited when mentioning the two words “panda”. This is a national animal (national treasure) of China and is widely known throughout the world.

During my two trips to Tibet in 2011 and my trip to Jiuzhaigou - Leshan Giant Buddha - Dujiangyan - Songpan Ancient City in 2024, I was fortunate to see and take pictures of many giant pandas and red pandas (also known as small pandas). I noticed, as an interesting effect, the image of a chubby panda with a cheerful, innocent face in black and white was peeling off the hard bamboo stalks to eat deliciously... Just a few minutes later, the "encounter" with China's national treasure animal became the phone wallpaper of most members of the Vietravel tour group.

Lazy and adorable "big babies"

Visitors call the pandas at this park "cute big babies."

Last time, I visited the Panda Park in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province. This time it is the Panda “kingdom” in Dujiangyan.

I have met dozens to hundreds of pandas in China (the only place on earth where this species is naturally distributed). The first impression is that they are huge, worthy of the name "Giant Panda". Some are up to 1.5 m tall. Their bellies are famous and proudly bulging. In the famous movie Kung Fu Panda, pandas always have the martial art of bulging their bellies, making their opponents fly into a corner.

If you look closely, the black and white colors help the giant panda effectively camouflage itself into the bamboo forests of Sichuan. The black color spreads across the eyes, ears, and limbs of the giant panda, in a very artistic way, making it extremely easy to “recognize the brand”, and cannot be confused with any other animal on earth.

Giant pandas are lazy beyond our imagination. Despite their size, strength and fierceness, male and female pandas live alone and have little need for “heart-to-heart” bonding. They only meet once or twice a year during mating season, from March to May.

The giant panda is gentle and super lazy. The panda usually lies down, facing up to the sky, holding a bunch of bamboo leaves in its left hand, while its right hand holds each leaf towards its huge mouth and white teeth to eat. Chewing noisily. It doesn’t look at anyone and doesn’t care who looks at it. The giant panda has 5 fingers, but the thumb is a fake finger. Because it is a protrusion of the wrist bone that is longer than necessary, with a little callus, and a few hairy ligaments to make a super strong “thumb”.

Some people explain that giant pandas eat only bamboo leaves and bamboo stems. Even if they eat all the green bamboo sky in the movie "House of Flying Daggers", they will still be left with only fiber, while their bodies are so huge that they have to eat a lot to get enough nutrients to nourish their bodies. Few people expect that they classify pandas as carnivores. They also eat birds, small animals, eggs, and fruits of all kinds. Therefore, it can only be said that the main (but not the only) food of pandas is bamboo.

Watching the “Kung Fu Panda” movies, many people sometimes get used to calling the big, muscular boy “Kong Fu Panda” as an adjective. He is silly, gentle, and acts silly and funny, but his strength in battle is invincible. In real life, with a lifespan of 20 years, giant pandas can grow up to 1.5 m tall.

It seems that pandas are a species that is born with many surprises. Female pandas rarely meet their boyfriends, and their pregnancy is very short (135 days), so their cubs are only 80 - 120 grams. That is, they are only as big as a pencil. Newborn cubs, when exposed to sunlight, weigh only 1/1,900 as much as their mother. According to researchers, giant pandas are the mammals with the smallest cubs in the world, when compared to the size of their parents.

To see how much the world loves pandas, look at the “public reaction” to China’s famous “panda diplomacy” campaign. In the US, China’s giant panda family has been “loaned” to the US National Zoo (Smithsonian in Washington, DC) for the past 20 years. Recently, as promised and after several extensions, the panda couple Thiem Thiem and My Huong boarded a plane to return to their homeland. Responding to the press, people felt “infinitely sad”, while zoo staff felt truly “heartbroken”.

In 2020, a baby panda named Xiao Qi Xi was born through in vitro fertilization. As many as 23 countries have been “loaned” pandas by the Chinese, in the aforementioned “panda diplomacy” plan. In the US alone, since 1972, that is, more than half a century ago, under President Richard Nixon, the first pair of giant pandas (named Ling Ling and Xing Xing) arrived at a zoo in Washington, DC. Of course, zoos also have to contribute up to $500,000 per year to serve the so-called “conservation of giant pandas in China”.

In Korea, the giant panda Fu Bao is so famous that she appears so frequently in Korea and China that it is considered a classic. Just one video about her on YouTube of the zoo in this country attracted 500 million views. According to statistics from the famous news agency Yonhap, up to 6,000 people gathered from 4 am on the day Fu Bao said goodbye to her so she could begin her "return home" journey after a long time "on loan to Korea"...

Red pandas still "fascinate" me

Red panda fur is mainly reddish brown, belly fur is dark brown

Here’s another story, aside from our friend “Kung Fu Panda.” It’s the red panda. Of course, the giant panda is endemic to China, while the red panda is found in a few other places on the globe, including the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China.

Both of the pandas we are talking about identify their special home as the Sichuan region. Sichuan is vast, has lyrical scenery, complex terrain is a place where many strange natural elements intersect, year-round cloud cover, abundant rainfall, perfect subtropical vegetation. The Emei mountain system alone (located in the Sichuan region), more than 3,000 m above sea level, has up to 2,300 animal species, of which 29 are "nationally protected" by China.

The red panda, also known as the cute little panda, is listed as “endangered” on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List, as its wild population is estimated to number just over 10,000 mature individuals and continues to decline due to habitat loss, poaching and inbreeding.

Watching or photographing a red panda is more difficult than doing these things with a giant panda. Firstly, it is too small (slightly larger than a cat). One is to lie still with its head tucked into its two front legs and a reddish-brown tail. Secondly, it likes to move around and be active. Not to mention it is much lazier to eat than the giant panda, whose big namesake spends 12 hours a day eating. In return, the red panda's face is extremely lively, its "whiskers" are funny and mischievous, and its waddling gait is adorable. The reddish-brown fur has quite strong shades of nature, and its tail is long and lively. The red panda's fur is mainly reddish-brown, its belly fur is dark brown, and its face has mischievous white spots.

One of the reasons why it is difficult to observe and take good pictures of red pandas is because they are very lazy during the day. They are especially active from dusk to dawn. They eat bamboo, small mammals, birds, eggs and fruits. Scientists divide red pandas into two species, the Chinese red panda and the Himalayan red panda. They have been “separated” since 0.25 million years ago to be genetically different.

We wandered around the panda paradise, trying to understand why humans are so fascinated by the beauty and cuteness of pandas. In front of us, the red panda “sleeps during the day and works at night”, it curls its head into its limbs, its two front legs hug its head and uses its long, puffy tail to cover its face. It must be afraid of being blinded. The red panda’s face is beautiful, cute, humorous, mischievous, its long whiskers… like it is drawing a clown. Looking at them, people see life as joyful and easy to make us smile.

After eating its fill, the red panda meticulously wipes its face and mouth with its hands, and uses its tongue to lick and clean its lips and mouth very elaborately. Because it weighs as much as a fat cat, when it feels threatened (which it often does), the red panda always puffs out its chest, curls its tail, claps its hands, and takes a defensive stance, raising its forelimbs up to its head as if showing off a secret martial art, and staring at its opponent as if threatening them in a very humorous way.

The giant panda is a species unique to China. Except for a few zoos in more than two dozen countries that have been and are being sent pandas on “limited and conditional loan” by China’s “panda diplomacy” program, there is absolutely no place on earth, outside of China, that has them. The giant panda is a symbol of cuteness, friendliness and beauty, a national treasure of China, which has been on the brink of extinction for many years.

The “panda paradises” have dedicated and scientific care regimes, and have very stable semi-wild areas. In the future, people are planning to restore their habits and ensure the best conditions for them to return to the wild.

DO DOAN HOANG

Source: https://baohaiduong.vn/lac-vao-thien-duong-gau-truc-tu-xuyen-411084.html