Pandas are cute and I am famous

Chengdu is world renowned for its Giant Panda Breeding Research Base so naturally this was our first stop during my recent weekend in Chengdu. Aside from catching up with my friends, the pandas are the main reason that I wanted to visit Chengdu.

Before I write anything else I think it is important to mention just how CUTE pandas are. They are really, really, really cute. Really. They are so ungainly and clumsy looking, yet obviously very strong and nimble. One of my AYAD mates - who is in China working on a Panda Ecotourism project in Shaanxi Province - told us that pandas are virtually double jointed all over which explains why they look so clumsy yet never seem to tumble much.

The centre in Chengdu is very well set up and the pandas are treated like kings. They have large enclosures with play equipment in them and a seemingly never-ending supply of bamboo to chew on.

The centre is home to dozens of adult and sub-adult Giant Pandas and smaller Red Pandas. I wouldn't be surprised if the red pandas suffer a bit of an inferiority complex as they are sometimes referred to as 'lesser pandas' and their enclosure is set back a bit and would be easy to miss. We made a point of visiting them first before heading to the Giant Pandas, just so they'd know they're important too.

The Giant Pandas are amazing, they just make your heart melt. We were fortunate to see one young adult panda in a playful mood, climbing around and jumping on his sleeping mother. Another climbed to the highest point of the play equipment where he had a scratch and then promptly fell asleep in the most precarious of positions. We also saw a baby panda which was sleeping next to its mother in a glassed-in enclosure. It was about the size of a Sherrin and just so cute. We considered creating a diversion and breaking in to steal it but as it turns out we didn’t need to create a diversion. The Chinese managed pretty well on their own.

Every now and then one stumbles into a chaotic situation and wonders what on earth just happened, and how. This was to be our feeling about what happened next at the panda centre. Upon leaving the panda nursery we stumbled into the midst of a large press conference. Being a group of young foreigners we were asked to take part and were duly pushed through the crowd to the front. I can’t say exactly what the press conference was about but it was the launch of a website and it had something to do with the Beijing Olympics and the Giant Panda being announced as one of five Olympic mascots. I found out later that was the day marking 1000 days to the beginning of the Olympics and also the day the Olympic mascots were launched.

There were a bank of laptops set up and after a series of VIPS (World Ping Pong Champions (male & female, both Chinese); head of the Atlanta Olympics; famous panda researcher) and children in panda suits signed into the new website we were ushered over to sign in. There was A LOT of media and they all recorded for posterity the young Aussies playing around on the new website. When I say A LOT I mean about 10-15 camera crews, plus photographers, radio and print journalists. A dream job for a publicist really – pandas, Olympics and foreigners… does it get any better?! There was also a webcam set up which linked to a shot of a couple of pandas playing around with a giant (panda) sized keyboard. I saw this shot on the front page of one of the Chengdu papers the next day. In fact all the papers had a picture of the pandas on the front and I’ve got to say I’m not disappointed that they chose to run with them rather than pictures of US!

After the official presentations were finished we were accosted by the media pack and interviewed for both tv and radio. We were asked what we thought of the pandas and Chengdu and whether we had planned to be there for such a special occasion (just pure luck!). It was crazy, we were treated like rock stars. At one stage, when we thought things had died down and our day had returned to normalcy a press photographer walked up to us with his zoom lens and took a photo right in our face. We were just standing chatting and we all burst into laughter as he wandered off. Now I know how Madonna feels.

That evening one of my friends received a call from one of her Chinese colleagues half-way across the country. He was ringing to say he’d just seen us on tv. Turns out we are media stars... may explain all the stares we received in Chengdu?!