30th September - Panda Sanctuary, Lou guan tai, 34°N 108°E

After a couple of nights in bunk beds at the volunteer’s apartment in Xi’an we came the 50 miles to the sanctuary. It isn’t quite as we had expected. We thought there would only be pandas and they would live semi-wild in a fenced off area of forest. In fact it is more like an old-fashioned zoo with Takin (pre-historic looking giant goaty things), moon bears, red pandas, golden monkeys, and a dozen other types of rare animals.

After some paperwork we went to meet our pandas: Yangyang (8 years old, active but with a bit of a temper, mother of twins Longlong and Fengfeng) and Zhuzhu (12, very clever, two babies Qinchuan and Yaya).

There is a very informative book here called 100 Facts About Pandas which is highly recommended but I’ve got a nagging doubt about the accuracy of some of the facts. Here are a few facts about pandas that the book missed:

1. They live till about 35
2. Where their fur is brown it's not because it's dirty  - the brown colour is from an oil produced by the skin of young pandas in good condition. Old and sick pandas don't have any brown fur
3. When they stand on their back legs they are virtually indistinguishable from a person in a panda costume
4. They enjoy their sleep - lots of it
5. It's easy to forget they are large powerful bears and then you see their teeth, or their claws, or you hear them breathing out with the classic 'large bear exhaling' noise
6. They can run as fast as a human if the mood takes them (it usually doesn't)
7. (Luckily) their poo doesn't smell (it is, after all, barely digested bamboo)
8. Pandas will do anything for apples. They are the panda equivalent of crack-cocaine
9. When they drink it looks like they have fallen asleep with their heads in their bowl as they vacuum up the water
10. Unbelievably cute red pandas would make perfect pets if they were it not for their giant paws and claws
11. They don’t make much noise but when they do it sounds like a cross between a sheep and a small horse

Each day we have the same routine:

08:00 muck out pandas - remove bamboo stalks and poo and mop out, take waste to dump area

10:00 feed pandas - 3 apples, half of their panda bread and a milky drink then give them fresh bamboo

11:30 lunch at Mr. Deng's

14:00 muck out pandas - as at 8am but much less poo

16:00 feed pandas - as at 10am but no milk this time

17:30 dinner at Mr. Deng’s

We eat at Mr. Deng's twice a day. There is a huge range of delicious food available (half of it vegetarian). It’s the best Chinese food we have had here and it's difficult to stop eating once you're full.

We are staying in a bunk house / hostel with 8 others, 4 English (one from Stoke and one from Leicester - a mysterious midlands pull...), 3 Australians, one Egyptian and, of course, Tiger our Chinese man in the camp. We eat all our meals together and as we all work in different places, its good to catch up with everyone. Tiger has infinite patience with us all and boundless energy - we only worry about his habit of looking at knife websites for long periods of time in the evening - he assures us he only uses knives for the good: cutting bamboo, rope, making things etc. and to be fair this does seem to be the case.

Clever Zhuzhu can hold 3 apples at once: one in each forepaw and one in a rear paw. Yangyang can only hold one at a time and is happy to leave additional apples on the floor while she finishes the one she's eating. They eat apples quite delicately, holding them in one paw while eating around the core just as we do (they have a bump on their paw that they use like a thumb). Once it's finished they eat the core as well.

One evening we climbed the 2000 steps to a local hilltop temple. We set off after our evening meal and were at the temple for about 5 minutes before it got completely dark. It was still a big view from the top. The plain below looks flat as a pancake until the mountains suddenly rear up with no rolling countryside or foothills in between.

On the Saturday morning Tiger took us to a local waterfall up a very steep sided valley. There is a concrete path up the valley but sections of it had been washed away or buried after heavy rains last year. There hadn’t been any recent heavy rain so the waterfall was less impressive than it might have been but at least there was no danger of being swept away. Parts of the path that remain have been undercut so much by the water that it's difficult to see how they are held up. Phil, aware that he was the heaviest member of the group (by some margin), kept to the strong side of the path and didn't dawdle. We brushed past lots of plants that looked like nettles but weren't and one more benign looking plant that didn't look like a nettle but had a nasty sting.

Phil spent most of his spare time in the first week finishing off a bear-proof hammock for one of the moon bears that live here (moon bears are so called because they have a crescent moon shaped white patch under their chin on their otherwise black fur). It is made of seatbelt material that is woven together and riveted. The finished hammock was installed on Thursday and has been used at least once by the bear (hurrah).

2nd October - Panda Sanctuary

The rain started again today after a beautiful sunny week (not too hot). This seems to have made the pandas particularly happy and playful and we now have some great videos of pandas running about, climbing trees and doing acrobatics at the top.

It was Mid-autumn Day here on Sunday and National Day yesterday with the whole week as a national holiday. There are a lot more tourists here as a result and the volunteers are as much of a spectacle as the animals with lots of pointing, giggling and photos taken. On one day it felt like there were about 2000 children here and you could hear their happy screaming from miles away.

We walked up the steep road to the new panda sanctuary being built on the hillside above the existing one. There is a lot more space for the pandas and a great view which the pandas may or may not appreciate. It should be very nice when it is finished next year and will ambitiously be home to up to 60 panda’s. There are a lot of other animals here and we understand from Mr King (the Deputy Director) that the space below the panda’s new home will be developed for the other animals in time. The moon bears really do need more space too. Talking of which, Phil has been busy building new toys for the moon bears to provide enrichment in their restricted environment. One of the bamboo chain ‘mobiles’ was attached above Huanhuan’s new swing today and rewardingly she came straight out of her indoor cage and immediately started sniffing and bashing it and picking the dates out with her claw.

As Li Ping, who works at the sanctuary, goes away today to see her family for the holiday, she visited us last night to hand out our certificates and lo and behold Phil received a letter of appreciation for all his extra bits of work - what a lovely gesture. This felt much more personal than the standardised certificate.

The only other thing to report is the preoccupation of all volunteers as to whether the water is on or not. We have had long periods with no water including one where the ‘emergency’ water supply failed and Tiger had to collect large buckets of water so we could flush the loos. We have all become much more opportunist with showers, although even when the water is on the water pressure is usually set to ‘dribble’.

Next: Back to Xi’an