Into the final area – the Panda Creek Valley, where there are 7 houses to see giant pandas in, and first up it’s the Embracing Moon Pavilion. Here there are 2 indoor and 6 outdoor yards – the indoor space is only open in the Summer due to the higher temperatures meaning you are unlikely to see pandas outside. On my visit there were only pandas inside in all of the houses in the Panda Creek Valley. The app shows the Embracing Moon Pavilion to house 9 giant pandas currently, 4 of these are 2 years old so will be living together while the other 5 will be living solo. On my visit I saw the same 2 pandas on both days:
He Mei
The first panda in this house is He Mei 和美, a 13-year old female. I didn’t see a lot of her, on the first day she slept both times I stopped by this house, but on the second day she was sitting up eating with her back to the crowd (very happy to ignore everyone watching her!). Would have loved to have seen her in the pool cooling off, overall this is a nice indoor space with a pool and different climbing options along with some rocky areas. He Mei has a twin sister called He Qi, and they were loaned to the Guizhou Forest Wild Animal Park for 7 years, between 2015 and 2022, before returning to the Chengdu Base. There is very little information online about her, so I’m not sure if she’s been involved in the breeding programme yet.
Jin Bao
The other panda I saw was Jin Bao 金宝, a well known panda for those cute fluffy ears! Now I didn’t really get a good look at his cute ears, but I did get to see him on both days of my visit. On the first day he was climbing on one of the frames then settled down for a sleep, and on the second day I saw him playing in the pool then on another wooden enrichment structure – and I was almost the only person there to see it, it was super quiet in this area. He’s still a young panda, almost 5 years old on my visit. His mother is Zhao Mei 昭美, who was wild born, and Jin Bao is her first cub. Like Jin Bao, she has quite distinctive looks so it’s worth checking out some pictures of her. Being born in 2019 I perhaps saw him as a cub as I saw lots of little ones that year!
