I never shared here, but did over on Instagram, but I was lucky enough to be able to go to China back in September 2023. The trip was for a conference in Beijing, but of course going all that way I added in several days of holiday to the trip and made my way to Chengdu for two days seeing pandas! I had two priorities for these visits to the Chengdu Panda Base and one of those was to see Yuan Meng. Yuan Meng was born at ZooParc de Beauval in 2017, I visited and saw him there in March 2022, and then in July 2023 he moved back to China to the Chengdu Panda Base. There wasn’t a huge amount of info online about him once he was there, but I was able to see that he was in Panda House 1 and was on show – that was enough for me and I endeavoured to head straight there on my visit. I got distracted by the nursery on the way there, but was able to get to Panda House 1 early enough that he was still outside. At the time of my visit there was no signage to identify what panda was in the enclosure, but there was a small group of photographers hanging around at one viewing spot in particular and I heard one of them say ‘Yuan Meng’ so I waited with them. At the base once the temperature gets to 26 degrees celcius (or above), the pandas are brought inside, it was getting pretty close to that when I got there, so I really was lucky to be able to see him at all (there was no indoor viewing for him). He was quite shy and very much stayed at the back of the outdoor space, so it could be a little tricky to get photos through the trees and bushes, but I quite like this as it gave him good options to be outside but without always being under the eyes of the public. Since my visit I’ve seen quite a few photos of him appearing on Chinese social media, so it looks like he’s gotten more confident and has been showing off for his fans!

Back in November 2017 I made my second visit to the Chengdu Panda Base and spent a whole day here, which is definitely what you need to see everything more than once! On my first visit I took public transport to get to the base, this time round I took a taxi, so got there much earlier – from the centre of Chengdu it took under 30 minutes and cost around 50RMB. Getting here earlier made the difference with both beating some traffic and seeing the pandas more active in the morning. When the pandas slowed down for an afternoon snooze, I stopped off in a cafe for a break too, then did my second lap of the Base later in the day. Hopefully you enjoy this selection of photos from my trip!

I made my fourth visit to Chengdu in November last year – and managed to squeeze in 3 trips to see the pandas at Chengdu Panda Base! They were all a little short for my liking, but still there was plenty of time to see all of the pandas. I stayed in the nearby Crowne Plaza Chengdu Panda Garden which made multiple visits very easy as it’s barely 5 minutes drive down the road. Compared with my visit in November 2018, there were quite a few changes – mostly outside of the base. The main road along the front is now closed off to traffic, and across the road is now a huge pedestrianised plaza with offices, shops, restaurants and convenience stores, and it’s all decorated with pandas in mind, there are pictures everywhere, there were some paw prints all over and on the ground, even the rubbish bins had pandas all over them! Here there were machines where I *think* you could buy tickets to go into the base, there were no instructions or signs in English at them, so I bought my ticket at the main desk by the entrance, which was no problem. Inside the base there were also a few changes, with ‘Panda House 1’, the oldest house built, being renovated – I’ve since seen online the large renovation and expansion plans that the base has for the coming years, it really looks like it will be amazing.

*My trip to Chengdu was part of travel for a work conference, my employer paid for my flight to China and my hotel in Chengdu, where the conference took place. On two visits to the Chengdu Panda Base, I paid for entry myself, on the third the visit to the base was included in the conference schedule.