Panda Bears China 4 Videos and Pictures

I went to the Panda Bear Breeding Center today in Chengdu China. The pandas are just as cute in real life as the stuffed animals are. The center houses "giant pandas and red pandas." It is estimated that there are only 1000 giant pandas left in the world. The breeding center helps with mating and new borns.

When female pandas deliver their first cub they do not know what to do with it and will harm and kill their young. At the center they watch the interactions so that the cubs do not die. If a panda has twins, which happens 45% of the time they will only care for one in the wild.

It is recommended that you visit the center early in the morning to see the panda bears when they are most active, eating. This was a good suggestion because when I doubled back and checked them out again they were doing what they do best, sleeping.

Tomorrow I am taking the bus to Wolong to a Panda Research Center in the wild. It will take 6 hours to get there, hopefully. I say hopefully as the road is suppose to be bad and a bridge is washed out. Why the bother? I will volunteer at the Research Center for a couple of days, working with panda bears. Who knows, I could be shoveling sh*t. We shall see.

This evening I went to the Sichuan Opera. It was very cool and just across the street. It had tons of musical instruments, dancing, acrobatics, stick puppets, shadow puppets, changing faces (where their masks continually change with out the flick of a hand) and spitting fire.

The shadow puppets were my favorite. The guy could do amazing things with his hands and body. The best shadow puppets I have ever seen. Bets the overhead at school. Check out the couple of pictures I took of it.

Oh god, I almost forgot. At the opera they offer the service of having your ears cleaned. There was a guy just over from me having it done. I sat in the front row so he had the whole audience checking the cleaning out. The views of the show were excellent from the front row and during the performance they serve tea and have shelled peanuts on a small table in front of you. The tea pots have spouts that are four feet long. So all of a sudden coming from behind over your shoulder your tea cup gets filled up.

Check out the following links for pictures and videos.

http://picasaweb.google.com/sarahemoloney/PandaBearsChengdu

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8000592313441558265

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1209220284511815168

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1775414732159463967

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-897658998735200234