So I will admit, that spending a lot of time waiting and watching Bao Di and Bao Mei, it didn’t leave a lot of time for seeing all the other pandas at the base, so the rest of the pandas living in the White Bear Ground were a little neglected with my time – however these guys are in a prime position by being on the main path in and out of the base, so everyone has to go past at least twice! This is a prime viewing spot for the Summer months because there is a long covered viewing walkway with seats as well, perfect for keeping in the shade. There are 4 yards here, I saw pandas in them all, but only very briefly saw De Rui so only had one photo, but I did get a few of the other pandas living here – across the 4 yards there were 7 pandas in total here.
Continue Reading “Ya’an Bifengxia Panda Base pt.2 – White Bear Ground ~ Si Xue + cub, Jia Bai + Jia Yang, Fu Tao + Fu Lin”Ya’an Bifengxia Panda Base pt.2 – White Bear Ground ~ Si Xue + cub, Jia Bai + Jia Yang, Fu Tao + Fu Lin
Ya’an Bifengxia Panda Base pt.1 – Belgian-born Bao Di + Bao Mei
With the knowledge that the Belgian-born cubs were living at Bifengxia after moving back to China in December 2024, I was pretty set on adding the Bifengxia Base into my plan. Now this could have ended like my trip last year (to see Yang Guang and Tian Tian, who were taken off show shortly before I got there), but I really wanted to give it a try – and that paid off! The trio were living in the White Bear Ground area in the yards typically used for quarantining, each in their own yards – the twins were separated as they have reached an age where this would typically happen anyway. Sadly I didn’t see oldest ‘cub’ (for he’s now 8 years old!) Tian Bao 天宝, the door in his house was always closed and I didn’t see him in the yard at all, and there was no bamboo out, hinting that he wasn’t going to be out that day. Luckily after a lot of waiting and patience, Bao Di 宝弟 and Bao Mei 宝妹 both came outside and really made my day.
I’ve seen these two twice before, once when they were tiny babies in January 2020 and again in October 2022 when they were quite big cubbies^
Dujiangyan Panda Base pt.10 – Diequan Garden pt.5 ~ Rui Rui + cubs
The final pandas to share about from the Dujiangyan Base – Rui Rui 蕊蕊 and her 2023-born cub Zi Rui 紫蕊 and her surrogate 2023-born cub Ao Ke 傲客. Ao Ke‘s mum is Xian Xian 贤贤, she is currently raising his twin Ao Ran 傲然 in one of the wild-training habitats, so Rui Rui seamlessly took over the care of her second twin and this adorable trio are now enjoying life in the Diequan Garden area of the Dujiangyan Base. I saw these three last year at Wolong Shenshuping and honestly loved watching them, and loved watching them again on this trip – and clearly most other visitors agreed as they were by far the most popular pandas.
The three of them were out pretty much all day, and there was just about always something going on to see – walking around, eating, playing separately, playing together, playing with bamboo, climbing the frames, climbing a tree, and even attempting to climb a tree with a plastic collar not intended for climbing! So much to see and so many cute photos^ When I got there, the cubs were hanging around the house while Rui Rui was walking in and out, and every so often she would pick a cub and give them some attention, then move on. She did make an attempt to stop the cubs trying to climb the plastic-covered trees, but they were very adamant that they wanted to try! Lots and lots of cute pictures. Loved getting to see one of the cubs, I’m assuming adventurous Zi Rui, taking a stick of bamboo and scaling a tree carefully with it and proudly getting to the ‘seat’ at the top. She looked delighted with herself^
They were very popular and I hope I get to see the trio again, or at least perhaps the cubs still living together.
Dujiangyan Panda Base pt.9 – Diequan Garden pt.4 ~ Xin Xin + cub
The penultimate pandas of Dujiangyan Base for this trip, it’s Xin Xin 鑫鑫 and her 2023-born female cub Qing Ling 青灵 (who was the only cub from that year who I already saw on my trip to have been given a name)! I saw this duo on my trip last year – they were living at Wolong Shenshuping at the time in the Inner Ring 3 area. Qing Ling is an older cub from that year, with a May birthday, and she definitely comes across as a confident young panda, and I saw that both on my last trip and this trip. She definitely enjoys living in this yard, there’s plenty of terrain to explore and climbing to be done – like my photos last time, I got some super cute ones of her up trees this time!
This time I got to see more of Xin Xin herself too which was nice, she seemed like a pretty chilled mum and gave Qing Ling a good level of freedom – but definitely let her baby know who was boss when she wanted to. There was no willing to share stems of bamboo in this yard! One very sweet moment to see was Xin Xin feeding Qing Ling up on one of the high platforms in the yard, there were so many people around as well and it was a very special thing to see for an older cub and I am so pleased I got some lovely photos of the moment.
