Aside from that, though, the morning involved a lot of oohing and aahing at giant pandas of all ages, from the babies to the adults. We watched a short video all about giant pandas and their habits and breeding patterns and such. I’ll spare you the gory details, but in sum, there are only about 1000 pandas around these days. They are really selective about their mates and when the babies are born, they’re about the size of a large rat. They look pretty rat-like too, all white and squealy and gross. They don’t even start growing fur for a long time. Also, it seems as though only about half the babies survive. They’re super helpless when they’re born, though, which might have something to do with it.
They don’t just have giant pandas there, however. They also have red pandas, which are super cute. A bunch of us paid 50 kuai ($7) and got to hold one! It was really exciting. We had to put on plastic gloves and this blue robe and the little red panda ate apples while we held it and got our pictures taken. My roommate Sol got a fabulous one of me and my buddy the red panda (see below).
I hope you enjoy the pictures (which may not be in order, sorry). In other news, tomorrow, I officially start guqin lessons, a traditional Chinese instrument! I can’t wait.
1. Me with the adorable red panda!
2. Munchy panda
3. Baby panda!
4. Panda baby sticking out his tongue!
5. Baby Panda with attendant
6. Panda party, complete with loner
7. Red panda
8. Chinese lanterns to celebrate the Chinese New Year (we get a week off of school for this holiday, Chun jie, so I’m heading south to Yunnan province on Tuesday)
5 comments:
Very nice! I hope you buy me a red panda!
And a giant panda.......
hahaahahahahahahahahahaha.
I posted a comment.
I really liked the part about the itchy butt.
I love your pictures. They're just so cool!
who posted under my name? that's not me! anyway, i just wanted to make sure you still had both your thumbs:).
happy chinese new year, my dear friend, waiting for your new year's pictures
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