China Day 11, Pandas

Thursday July 7^th

We got off to a 7:30 start this morning for an hour drive to the Panda Centre. This is a very successful breeding centre located in the suburbs of Chongdu. It covers a large area and houses several large out door pens/exhibits and all the accompanying infrastructure for breeding and raising pandas. They grow lots of bamboo on the site, but have to buy most of their needs from local farmers, as pandas eat up to 40 kilos of the stuff daily! They only digest about ten percent of it and pass the rest.

We wandered from exhibit to exhibit to see some of the seventy odd residents here. We saw some juveniles and adults, as well as a couple of red pandas. Three of our group paid a donation of over a hundred dollars to hold a panda and get their photo taken. I opted not to do it, as I'm not sure it is so good for the pandas (especially after seeing the line of people), and am glad I did, as they only got to hold the panda for less than a minute.

Then we set off from there to the airport to catch our flight to Hangzhou. We arrived with about a half hour to spare, but we needn't to have worried as it was delayed. It had just arrived and needed to be cleaned before we could board. When we did we sat on the plane for an hour before we left the terminal. They even fed us our meal before we took off! We arrived in Hangzhou about 5:00 and caught our minibus to our hotel by 6:00. We checked in and then headed out for dinner. It is much hotter here again, (after Chongdu where it was a refreshing 26 degrees), and we sat upstairs in a sweaty room eating our dinner. After that we went for a forty minute walk to West Lake. It was hot and humid but it felt good to stretch our legs. The lake is in the middle of the city and is huge. It is a major tourist draw for Chinese people. We had an ice cream there and then walked back and went to bed.