Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [127]
So I would go back to Han China. And as I pushed myself down and began the fast, oh so fast, descent down the swirling sands, I had one last thought in western China, a region I’d really come to enjoy. Perhaps, I thought as I hurtled perilously toward a herd of lumbering camels, I should have gone with the sand surfing after all.
20
I had come to Chengdu to see the pandas. I’m not sure why, exactly, I felt the need to see the pandas. I do not feel warm and fuzzy inside when in the presence of pandas. There are far more charismatic mega-fauna out there. But still, I was drawn to see them, if only because I’d been wondering whether the Chinese may have regretted giving two Giant Pandas to Richard Nixon in 1972, when he became the first president to visit the People’s Republic of China. Since then, as any visit to a zoo that contains pandas will confirm, the public has responded with one long collective aaaawwww, assigning to them all sorts of anthropomorphic attributes. The pressure to ensure that Giant Pandas do not become extinct must be immense. And that’s the last thing the Chinese government needs. More pressure.
But, as always in China, a visit to the Panda Breeding and Research Center was nothing if not interesting. I had expected to find it outside Chengdu, another urban megalopolis, somewhere in rural Sichuan Province. And once, that is where it was. But today, the lush grounds of the Panda Breeding and Research Center have been swallowed by Chengdu itself, and its bamboo-lined paths and frolicking inhabitants are now found in a light industrial zone on the outskirts of town. Inside its walls, there are, of course, Giant Pandas, dozing and munching on bamboo, and generally behaving like extremely contented animals. More interesting were the plaques and statues strewn throughout the grounds with quotes and testimonies attesting to the importance and value of the animal kingdom and that it is our responsibility as guardians of the planet to ensure their well-being. So said Gandhi and others. It’s a lovely thought, of course, and as I recalled the peddlers of endangered animals in Guangzhou, I suspected that the sentiment wasn’t universally shared in China.
There were other interesting sights inside the Panda Breeding and Research Center, including a baby panda nursery. For the panda lovers, this would be their nirvana moment, a large crib filled with a half-dozen baby pandas tottering about, ready for their calendar shoot. There were five little pandas, including two sets of twins, overseen by a man in doctor garb, complete with mask and paper hat, looking bored senseless as he sat next to a bucket full of soiled baby wipes. I began to wonder at the statistical likelihood of there being two sets of twins, born just days apart, in the Panda Breeding and Research Center. And then, as I read through the signs that outlined the panda breeding process, I was informed that China practices the West Virginia model of panda breeding. This wasn’t merely a kissing cousin situation. No, conjugal relations here were conducted in true hillbilly fashion. It makes them happy, the sign informed me. And if brothers and sisters fall in love, who are we to stop it? We want happy pandas. It’s no wonder, then, that the first panda to be bred in the Panda Research and Breeding Center and released into the wild did not live long. It was a genetic mutant. This all made me think of the movie Deliverance, and I set off in search of a panda lounging in a tree, strumming his banjo.
Beyond mutant pandas, Chengdu pleased me in other ways. It has some scrumptious street food, which for someone like me, so easily flummoxed by Chinese restaurants, was a special treat indeed. The meat on a stick is lip-smacking good. I couldn’t say for certain which animal in particular I was eating, but whatever it was it