2006.12.17: December 17, 2006: Headlines: COS - China: Parks: Wildlife: Pandas: Contra Costa Times: China RPCV Craig Simons writes: Wolong today is home to the largest cluster of the world's remaining wild pandas

Peace Corps Online: Directory: China: Peace Corps China : The Peace Corps in China: 2006.12.17: December 17, 2006: Headlines: COS - China: Parks: Wildlife: Pandas: Contra Costa Times: China RPCV Craig Simons writes: Wolong today is home to the largest cluster of the world's remaining wild pandas

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China RPCV Craig Simons writes: Wolong today is home to the largest cluster of the world's remaining wild pandas

China RPCV Craig Simons writes: Wolong today is home to the largest cluster of the world's remaining wild pandas

Beautiful and Pure were tussling: Pure had just scampered up a 6-foot post when Beautiful charged over and locked her teeth around a clump of his hair. After some determined pulling, both fell in a pile on the grass below.Then the real melee began: Four other year-old giant pandas padded over and joined in the raucous play, tumbling over each other in a black-and-white ball that left me and a handful of overjoyed tourists guessing where one animal ended and the next began. A plethora of pandas is why most visitors journey to the Wolong Nature Reserve, an 800-square-mile park in China's southwestern Sichuan province. Set up in 1963 to protect giant pandas, Wolong today is home to 153 wild pandas (the largest cluster of the world's estimated remaining 1,590 wild pandas) and 69 captive pandas (of 212 worldwide).

Wolong had some 80,000 visitors last year, about 20 percent of them foreigners, but fall is off-season and we shared the 64-acre center with only a few dozen other tourists. With aid from the World Wildlife Fund and American zoos -- including Zoo Atlanta, which works with researchers in Chengdu -- birthrates have soared as scientists have mastered using artificial insemination and raising young pandas abandoned by their mothers, which often give birth to twins but generally will raise only one cub.


China RPCV Craig Simons writes: Wolong today is home to the largest cluster of the world's remaining wild pandas

Panda, baby: China reserve home to rare bear

By Craig Simons
COX NEWS SERVICE

Photos: tangtang Courtesy Flicr: Creative Commons

WOLONG, China - Beautiful and Pure were tussling: Pure had just scampered up a 6-foot post when Beautiful charged over and locked her teeth around a clump of his hair. After some determined pulling, both fell in a pile on the grass below.

Then the real melee began: Four other year-old giant pandas padded over and joined in the raucous play, tumbling over each other in a black-and-white ball that left me and a handful of overjoyed tourists guessing where one animal ended and the next began.

A plethora of pandas is why most visitors journey to the Wolong Nature Reserve, an 800-square-mile park in China's southwestern Sichuan province. Set up in 1963 to protect giant pandas, Wolong today is home to 153 wild pandas (the largest cluster of the world's estimated remaining 1,590 wild pandas) and 69 captive pandas (of 212 worldwide).

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Passion for pandas

The nature reserve offers visitors a chance to get close to more pandas than they probably ever thought possible. That, at least, has been my experience. I first traveled to Wolong as a China-based Peace Corps volunteer in 1996 and since then have returned a half-dozen times with guests or simply to escape China's heavily polluted cities.

During the trips I've gotten very close to the beasts: Several times friends paid to have their pictures taken with pandas and pulled me in as cameraman (photographs with pandas are offered for between $30 and $60). Once a panda researcher invited me to watch as he performed an operation to artificially inseminate a panda.

More often, however, I simply picked a bench outside one of a dozen large outdoor enclosures and watched happily as the pandas played and ate, using their paws to grip bamboo stalks, strip the leaves off and stuff them into their mouths by the pawful.

On my latest trip, I convinced Leo Chen, a close friend from Chengdu, to join me. Partly I wanted him along because getting to Wolong isn't easy: After flying to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, visitors travel 100 miles west by car or bus along roads that range from a wide, safe highway to absurdly frightening -- packed with careening trucks, motorcycles loaded with entire families and farm animals that seem nothing less than suicidal as they wander among the traffic.

I had expected Leo to drive while I admired Sichuan's autumn scenery, russet browns of dried rice fields speckled with red and yellow foliage. But shortly after we set out he noticed that he'd forgotten his driver's license and I took the wheel for a couple of hours, weaving and dodging as I tried to keep his Ford Explorer in one piece.

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Mountain setting

As we pushed deeper into the vast Hengduan Mountain range, traffic thinned and I was able to relax and enjoy the view. The Hengduans -- which include the Wolong Reserve -- protect the world's greatest diversity of alpine and sub-alpine flora and dozens of rare animal species including pandas, snow leopards, blue sheep and black-necked cranes.

As we drove west up a valley, the land rose into towering cliffs and we marveled at clouds drifting amid distant peaks, reminding me of classical Chinese ink-wash paintings with their wide empty spaces. Scholars comment on how Chinese artists left the spaces intentionally blank so viewers could add their own visions, but perhaps, I thought, they were simply recording what they saw.

Welcome to Wolong

By the time we arrived at Wolong town, a village of several hundred year-round residents at the center of the reserve, we were ready for lunch and found the tiny Lin Hui restaurant, a simple place with a few white-plastic tables and excellent food. Our favorite was local mushrooms stir-fried with strips of pork and costing $1.75.

After lunch we checked into the four-star Wolong Hotel. Set at the bottom of pine-covered hills, the hotel (the best in the reserve) has clean and comfortable rooms with spectacular views of the valley and runs an adequate, if bland, restaurant.

Like most visitors, we were eager to see the pandas. After dropping our bags at the hotel, we drove 15 minutes to the Hetaoping Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda -- ground zero for panda watching.

Opened in 1979 with a central government mandate to save the giant panda -- which is still highly endangered, if recovering -- the center is primarily a hub for research and breeding, and has achieved remarkable success at boosting the number of captive pandas.

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Bring on the pandas

With aid from the World Wildlife Fund and American zoos -- including Zoo Atlanta, which works with researchers in Chengdu -- birthrates have soared as scientists have mastered using artificial insemination and raising young pandas abandoned by their mothers, which often give birth to twins but generally will raise only one cub.

This year 19 pandas were born at the center and Leo and I started our tour by peering through windows at the local nursery. There, three 2-month-old pandas were sleeping in bread-box-size incubators and three slightly older pandas nursing from a bottle held by a researcher.

Wolong had some 80,000 visitors last year, about 20 percent of them foreigners, but fall is off-season and we shared the 64-acre center with only a few dozen other tourists.

I chatted with Tina and Diana, two vacationing Californians in their 20s. They had signed onto a tour with Baja Jones Adventure Trips, a California-based company that runs excursions to wildlife sanctuaries around the world, and were ecstatic to have held pandas the day before. They had volunteered to work at the research base over the next two days and had already received training on how to clean out the panda enclosures and about what kinds of bamboo pandas eat.

"It's just incredible to get so close to the pandas," Tina said. "I never thought I'd be able to do this."

After gawking at the newborns for a few minutes, we watched six 1-year-olds -- including Beautiful (in Chinese, Xiu Xiu) and Pure (Qing Qing) -- frolic in the afternoon sun. After they grew tired and fell asleep, we walked behind the research center and climbed a trail providing views of older pandas as they munched bamboo.

The next day Leo and I drove 20 minutes west to Panda Valley, a hiking area opened this year where visitors can get a first-hand view of the panda's habitat. After paying a $12-per-person entrance fee, we pushed up the gorge and admired the scenery: Steep cliffs soared above us and a stream crashed and tumbled down the mountain below.

The four-mile round-trip trail is steep but well-marked, and we took our time to appreciate the foliage and scan distant forests for wild pandas. While seeing a panda in the wild is highly unlikely, Wolong administrators have set up a 74-acre enclosure at the top of the trail where visitors can "track" a panda in its natural environment. For $45 per person, trained guides help visitors find the panda by following recent trails and markings.

For us, the price was too high and we opted instead for a leisurely decent and another stop at the Hetaoping center before braving the roads back to Chengdu.

In their enclosure, Pure and Beautiful were resting. For 20 minutes we gazed at the creatures that have somehow taken on roles -- as symbols of conservation and friendship -- much bigger than themselves.

IF YOU GO

• Getting to Wolong:

Most visitors to Wolong stop for at least a day in Chengdu. The China Travel Service, phone and fax: 011-86-28-8626-2949, e-mail lutoolutoo.com, can arrange trips and transportation to Wolong. Buses to Wolong leave daily from the Ximen Bus Station and take three hours to Wolong. Ask a hotel concierge to confirm times and prices.

Where to stay:

• A good hotel in Chengdu is the five-star Sofitel, phone 011-86-28-6666-9999, e-mail sofitelwandasofitelchengdu.com. It has 262 comfortable rooms starting at about $120 a night for a double (ask for the discounted price).

In Wolong town, there are many small hostels but the only Western-standard hotel is the four-star Wolong Hotel, phone 011-86-837-624-6888, fax 011-86-837-624-6111. Rooms start between $40 and $75 a night, depending on the season. Discounts are sometime available. The hotel can arrange transportation to the Hetaoping research center and nearby hiking areas, including Panda Valley.

What to see:

• The Hetaoping center is open daily from 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., with a break from noon-1 p.m. Summer is the best time to visit to see baby pandas and hike. In the winter, snow can make getting to the reserve difficult. Entrance tickets to the center cost $4 but may rise to $10 next year. Visitors can also visit the giant panda museum in Wolong Town, where exhibits about pandas and the local environment have simple English explanations. English-speaking guides can be hired.

• In Chengdu, visitors can also see pandas at the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base (Xiongmao Jidi), open daily 8 a.m.-6 p.m. It's best to get there by taxi, for about $5; entrance is $4.




Links to Related Topics (Tags):

Headlines: December, 2006; Peace Corps China; Directory of China RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for China RPCVs; Parks; Wildlife





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