Cashing in on the panda’s cuteness
CHENGDU, CHINA— The first panda sighting happens soon after visitors step off the plane here, on the way to baggage claim.
Stuffed pandas pose on artificial grass turf at the airport, their beady plastic eyes circled in black. Later, visitors will spot pandas staring back from store marquees and taxicab decals all over this metropolitan region of 14 million in southwestern China. Chengdu is a booming high-tech hub: If you’re reading this on an electronic device, that device might well have started life here. But fiery cuisine — and pandas — came first.
The Smithsonian’s National Zoo has four of the animals. Toronto’s zoo has two 12-week-old panda cubs, the first giant pandas born in Canada, although not yet on public display. In China, pandas come by the dozen, available for easy viewing. Sort of. Seeing them means taking a road trip. And the highway west through Sichuan province goes from smooth to something else.
At the end of this rough road is Wolong, where the pandas roam. But China’s original panda research centre is mostly closed and returning to nature, save for a few remaining pandas, after being severely damaged by an earthquake in May 2008.
A new panda spread just down the road in Gengda, still within the Wolong Nature Reserve, has been built for the masses. Wide paths meander among panda yards, and interpretive centres stand ready to house exhibits. There are buildings for panda research and care.
The pandas have arrived at the new Gengda centre, too. Some seem restless, as if waiting for visitors to come and gawk.
The paradox is that for all of China’s success in nurturing a captive panda population, it remains just that: captive.
The government has tried reintroducing pandas to the wild for years with mixed success.
It’s a problem of adaptation and not-so-nice pandas that fight newcomers, says Wu Daifu, who oversees animal training at the original centre.
“We have encountered a lot of difficulties,” he says. “For example, how to train the pandas. What we can do is change the environment of the pandas, let them adapt to the wild step by step.” Then there are humans. “The challenge I think our wild giant pandas face . . . is a problem of development,” says Zhang Hemin, director of the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda, which established the Wolong and the Hetaoping facilities. He’s known as “Papa Panda” for his role in overseeing the nation’s black-and-white brood. “There are many highways, hydroelectric power stations being built. They separate the panda’s habitat.”
Estimates put the country’s wild panda population at more than 1,800; a new count has 422 living in captivity.
Down another, smoother road in Dujiangyan lies a third panda home, where a familiar and beloved figure, Tai Shan, can be found. The panda became a superstar in 2005 as the first born at the National Zoo to survive and grow up.
Then China, owner of all pandas, wanted to take possession of Tai Shan in 2010. Now he is a hefty 30-something, in panda years. In human years, he’s10. That birthday, on July 9, drew fans for a party. Cake was served.
In another part of the Dujiangyan base, two cubs are being fed by keeper Gao Qiang. They are more hungry than nervous — the innocence of youth.
It is hard to look away when pandas eat. Or do anything. Their presence elicits rapt stares and sometimes squeals from humans. By nature’s cruel standards, the animals should be extinct: Making panda babies is tough, and bamboo is what Donald Trump might call a low-energy food that’s terrible. The wilderness of Sichuan province is a dangerous place. But all of that seems irrelevant when you look like a stuffed animal.