The Star Giant Panda Nursery House is the second house open in the Panda Forest Area – there are 4 indoor enclosures and 8 outdoor yards, so plenty of pandas to potentially see here! There are also nursery facilities, so this is an area birth and cub-rearing. When I was there I didn’t see any mums with cubs, but I did see some 2023-born cubs which I was very happy about, and of course also some adult pandas, all in the indoor enclosures. In this house the inside is set up with shops and a small cafe, with a very large and spacious area to view the indoor enclosures which are set out very separately – this gives plenty of viewing space which will be great on crowded days. When I was there it was pretty quiet, there were lots of other people viewing the pandas, but I had no problems getting a good spot to see the pandas. The indoor enclosures here are all build into the ground, so you are looking down on the pandas into their indoor spaces to see them through glass – this is quite different to all the other houses at the base, but comparable to the indoor enclosure at Ouwehands Dierenpark for example.
Also in the Starry Sky Pavilion is a large central yard/indoor enclosure which housed 5 cubs when I visited – for me it’s one of the best things seeing groups of young ones together, and seeing these 5 was a highlight of my trip. There weren’t name signs up for all of the pandas here – inside there was just one name, Zhi Yu 徵羽, then outside I saw another two names, Bei Chen 北辰 and Wen Jing 文静, through the app I see the final pandas here are Jia Xin 家欣 and Jiao Yi 娇毅. All of them were born in 2022, making them almost 2 years old in these photos. I’m a bit sad I missed them outside, but it was definitely too hot by the time I got to this area. The yards look really nice and also huge in this area so hopefully I can see pandas in them next time! These 5 live in the middle indoor enclosure in this pavilion, and it’s a huge space for them – really perfect for young playful and adventurous pandas^ They have plenty of climbing frame options and lots of different enrichment items to choose from – of course, they mostly wanted the same one as each other XD
The highlight of these cubs has to be the most recognisable of the 5, Bei Chen! He just has such a fluffy round face with such an endearing look, so so adorable^ His mum is of course Bei Chuan 北川, but he also has a twin, Bei Xia who I already posted about and also got lots of cute pictures of. His looks very much come from his mum. She was wild-born, so genetically these are very valuable cubs for the captive population.
In many pictures online that I’ve seen of Jiao Yi he has a very cute little tuft of fur on top of his head – I didn’t get a clear photo of any panda like that, so I think I didn’t see him/he spent the time sleeping. I also can’t see much information online about Wen Jing to be able to identify her – only that she is a female cub – or about Zhi Yu other than he is a male cub.
Jia Xin is also a female and is described to have a horizontal black mark across her nose, and a mole on her forehead. Now I can’t see a mole on any of these pandas (but have on others, so I know what to look for), but I think she is one of the 3 in the below photos where they are eating at the rocky section at the front of the enclosure. She is said to have good climbing skills – perhaps she is the panda who took a long stick of bamboo and climbed up high to eat it!
The Starry Sky Pavilion is one of the open houses in the Panda Forest Area, and has a few returned pandas who were born in Zoo Atlanta, so it was very appropriate that I wore my Zoo Atlanta panda t-shirt to visit^ The Starry Sky Pavilion has 3 indoor enclosures and 6 outdoor yards for pandas – I saw pandas in all of the inside spaces on my visit. The largest of the 3 is in the middle, with the outer ones being slightly smaller but equal in size and these were where individual pandas were housed. On the first day of my visit I saw Xi Lan 喜兰 in the first enclosure, but on the second day this was Da Mao 大毛, a different panda, and on both days I saw Mei Lan 美兰 in the third enclosure. So there were some pandas living in this pavilion that I didn’t see (there are 10 pandas listed as living in this pavilion). I found taking pictures quite tricky in this pavilion because of the light, it’s a very bright house with windows in the walls and also the roof is mostly glass (don’t remember if it was clear or frosted, but lots of light coming through), paired with the reflections on the glass of the enclosures – it was a tricky one, so some of the lighting might differ from picture to picture.
The second area of the expansion is the Panda Forest Area. I didn’t get to this area back on my September 2023 visit because it was marked as closed – now 8 months later the area has started to open up with 2 of the 5 pavilions now open to the public (as I write this at the start of 2025, the app still only lists these 2 houses as open). Both the Starry Sky Pavilion and the Star Giant Panda Nursery House are open, while the Starlight, Star Cloud and Star Rain Pavilions are still closed (they do look complete from the outside, but maybe work inside still ongoing or there aren’t pandas living there yet). I really liked visiting the open pavilions in this area, I think they’re an absolute highlight of the expansion so highly recommend visiting them. They have a bit of everything, covering all ages of giant pandas and a really nice mix of enclosure styles. I only saw pandas inside on my visit, but the outside yards really look very nice here and I’m looking forward to seeing pandas in them one day!
The Starry Sky Giant Panda Pavilion has a very nice entrance to it with a big education section covering lots of information on their phylogeny, history, biology, geography, comparing wild and captive knowledge, and also on international panda loans. This section was really nicely done. The Star Giant Panda Nursery House has shops and a coffee counter – the shops here are much more spacious than the ones in the original section of the base, and have more stock than the one in the Panoramic Restaurant section of the Panda Reception Hall, so I’d recommend stopping here if you can and want a more relaxed look at the panda merch. There is also a panda bookstore here, it was closed when I was there but it did look pretty good with a range of books I would have loved to have seen!
