Up early to drive to the Lhasa airport for Chengdu. The airport security is not as rigorous as in Beijing. In fact, it seems downright casual in comparison. When we arrive, we are met by our local guide, Sammy Li.
Sammy was with a zoo group in Wolong when the earthquake hit in 2008. That must have been quite an experience.
We visited the Chendu Giant Panda Breeding Center after landing. The park itself is very nice, but the animals seem overcrowded and stressed.
Some of the Red Pandas were in seriously bad shape. They are either rescue animals or they are being fighting with one another. One poor little guy had no ears. They had been ripped off. His tail was denuded of hair, again either due to fights or stress.
All of the Red Pandas exhibited stress reactions and were pacing. One animal had a huge, fresh gash on its side. It was very sad to see, even though the cages were clean and the food/water was fresh.
The Giant Pandas looked in better shape, but I was surprised that they were in group enclosures. Giant Pandas are solitary animals and it is very unnatural for them to be housed together. Maybe the earthquake that closed down Wolong is to blame for the overcrowding, although I thought that someone had said that all of those pandas were moved to Bifengxia.
At least none of these animals looked as if they had been fighting and none looked particularly stressed. They had some babies in a cage. One little guy was obviously sick and while he was housed in a separate cage, his cage was in direct contact with the other small guys. It made me wonder why they didn’t isolate the sick one.
In the evening, at George’s suggestion, we went to the Sichuan Opera in the Chengdu Cultural Park. It was fabulous, like an old vaudeville show with a series of short acts. There was a puppet master, several musicians, a shadow master, an excerpt from a tradition opera and a long skit, all in Chinese, of a man coming home late at night having lost all of his money gambling. You really didn’t need to know the language to understand what was going on.
The pièce de résistance was a group of mask dancers. It seems like magic, but they change their faces before your eyes. I’m not sure how they did it, but I suspect that the masks are on some thin material that is stretched so much that it retracts quickly when moved slightly. Whatever the trick, it was very impressive to watch. I enjoyed the evening greatly and am so glad that George suggested it.
