On Thursday, at the crack of dawn, we awoke to grab some free breakfast from the hostel (yes this place had it all) and get ready for our trip to the magnificent Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. We were joined by a family who I guessed to be from the Canton area due to the Cantonese they were speaking. They had two very affectionate daughters, or possibly one daughter who brought along her girlfriend. Giant panda sex was not the only topic of discussion my friend and I had that day.

The ride along the smoky highway was quick, the traffic wasn’t too fierce, and our loaf-of-bread-mobile made it from the hostel to the research centre in about 30 minutes. Once there, we followed our awesome driver/tour guide as he cut straight to the chase. This guy didn’t mess around, he barely spoke a word the whole time he was with us and once we were past the entrance we followed him on some sketchy trails through the bamboo right to the red panda enclosure.

These red pandas were awesome and IMO better than those big black and white cousins. They troop around like soldiers, foraging about for whatever it is they forage, and then they go hang around in trees like little ginger acrobats. I wanted to spend more time with my new found friends, but our tour guide insisted we get a move on to the main event before the stars passed out. I came to the realization that the giant pandas and I had much in common, we’re both active for only a short period of the day, consume a lot of a certain substance (for them bamboo, for me booze) after which we crash hard, wake, and repeat.

After more trekking through the bush we came to a large clearing where the actual breeding center was. It looked like something from the USSR or maybe even the Temple of Doom. Shit, it even had a rope bridge to get in! Despite the large warning signs saying not to rock it, our tour guide made sure everyone of us damn near fell into the gravel pit below to be eaten by what I can only imagine were mutant gravel dwellers.

Once inside the compound, we came across this poor bastard. After seeing him, I was worried that we were too late. All we’d get to see would be a bunch of pathetic black and white bags of fur, passed out in their own manure.

To my relief, we soon happened upon some delightful characters, who were quite entertaining. No I’m not talking about the mother and her baby cub in the following pictures. I’m actually talking about the group of Japanese girls who were all wearing matching panda hats and making the KAAAWAAIIIII!! and kekekeke noises that their species is well known for. If I ever get the chance, I’d also like to visit their breeding centre.

Obviously, at this point there were pandas everywhere. But most of them were just eating and pooping. Kind of like big hairy babies. You see their metabolism doesn’t get much energy out of Bamboo, so they have to spend their waking hours eating as much of it as possible, instead of, well, switching diets to something that could keep them from winning the Darwin award. Furthermore, I can’t help but wonder if these animals would be so special if they didn’t have that unique coat of fur. Like if they were hairless, blobs of bear meat would they still be revered like this? I’d bet they’d already be extinct, or at the very least emasculated, having their dicks all chopped off to be ground up into some erectile dysfunction super tonic used by the locals.

Our Journey ended with a 15 minute video on Panda breeding, that was actually quite informative, despite comparing Panda breeding to putting a satellites into space and having a 1 minute looping soundtrack by Enya. I, like the 3 other people in the theatre watching, was definitely ready to watch some hardcore panda porn. To our disappointment, the big buggers aren’t really into knockin boots. Most of the captive Pandas are bred via artificial insemination. It looks to me as if this animal’s raison d’être is to be extinct. I wonder how they even evolved this far to begin with.

Actually I lied, our journey really ended with another walk through a museumish place full of funny pictures of pandas from the past, and the evil western imperialist invaders hunting them. And then finally another series of really awesome dioramas. I’m going to start searching out Chinese museums just so I can see these, I mean just look at this. A horse being attacked by a saber-tooth tiger? Looks more like the tiger’s trying to get it on! And what’s with all those white things on the horse? Are those fleas? The damn thing isn’t even real! And what exactly does any of this have to do with pandas? These dioramas and the whole day at the centre left me with more questions than answers. I was puzzled and my feelings could be summed up exactly like my friend here:

Filed under: tourist shit