Leaving Chengdu Again

The day after we arrived back at Chengdu we visited the Asiatic Black Bear life-time care facility run by an organization called AnimalsAsia started by Jill Robertson. Unfortunately she was unable to meet with us when we were there, but we had a wonderful guide and met some graduate students from Denver University working on a conservation social work project idea. It was great to talk with them because there is a great importance in one health dealing with both wildlife and people on the same level.

Yesterday was our day off and it was spent cleaning everything still filthy from the camping trip, walking around town and visiting an almost fully Daoist temple. It was great to visit the temple with our Chinese guide because he helped interpret a lot of the information presented and he told us about much of the beautiful structures we saw.

Today we had two guest lecturers. One was a gentleman from the Chengdu Bird Watching Society who told us a bit about local birds and showed us some of his amazing and unique bird photos. The second was a professor at the Sichuan University who is heavily involved in Giant Panda captive breading and reintroduction to the wild. He was a great resource to be able to meet and ask questions for our research papers!

The past three days here in Chengdu we have had some amazing food! There are two noodle places which I was involved in finding that have become extremely popular amongst the group. One of them is a little hole in the wall islamic restaurant and the gentleman makes the noodles right in front of you using a special technique which takes at least one year to train to be able to be competant. He stretches a piece of dough to create one noodle which you eat. It is fantastic to both watch and eat!

In the morning we head out to Rilong where our second trek will begin. This time we will take jeeps with 4WD for about 5 hours to get to the town closest to where we trek from. This time we will be camping up in the bamboo forest and will hopefully be able to see more wildlife.

*For clarification there is a post about the last trek which will hopefully be able to be posted soon enough so things should make more sense*

Panda fact of the post:

-GP's released back into the wild use a soft release technique to acclimate the individuals into a wild setting. This process takes about one to two years until the panda is fully released into the wild.