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Chengdu

Kirsten

Chengdu Panda Base – 2017

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!

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Kirsten

Chengdu City Guide

Welcome to Chengdu! Chengdu was the first city I visited in China back in 2016, and I’ve been back every year since – however I did most of these things in the first two years, and only added a couple of things in my last two years of trips. If I am able to travel this year I’m planning to tick some sights off my ‘to see’ list in the city. I really love the city, I don’t find it too hard to navigate, and it really doesn’t seem too big – however the population is 16 million, fairly close to Beijing 21.5 million (for reference, Scotlands apparently tiny population is 5.5 million). But it has such a different vibe to Beijing. In the past 4 years there has been a lot of development in the city, whole skyscrapers have been put up all over the place and I’ve really felt the expansion of the city when travelling around the area of the Panda Base which is just outside the city centre. This isn’t an extensive guide by any means, but just provides a few really interesting and cool things you can do to add to your trip to see the pandas (which is probably the reason for most trips to the area)!

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Kirsten

Chengdu Panda Base – November 2019

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.

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Kirsten

Giant Pandas in China – An Introduction

Finally, a post about pandas in China! The Sichuan region is the place to be if it’s pandas you want to see, more specifically the city of Chengdu is very much regarded as the ‘home town’ for pandas. There are two centres for pandas, the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, simply known as Chengdu Panda Base, and the China Conservation and Research Centre for Giant Pandas, or CCRCGP which is a little easier to roll off the tongue!

Each of the centres has several bases with pandas that you can choose to go and visit, with the most popular and easiest to get to being the main Chengdu Panda Base in the city of Chengdu, and both the CCRCGP and Chengdu bases in Dujiangyan which is a city just outside of Chengdu. Other CCRCGP bases are located in more mountainous regions (more of the natural habitat for pandas) such as Wolong or Ya’an which are also well-talked about when people are considering planning a trip to see pandas. There are also zoos where you can see pandas, like Chengdu Zoo where you can also see other animals. Outside of the Sichuan region you can of course see pandas in many other zoos, particularly in the main cities.

I’ve visited China every year since 2016, and hopefully will be able to continue visiting. I have been to Chengdu on every trip, so have been to the Chengdu Panda Base at least once on every trip. I’ve been to Dujiangyan twice, and on both occasions have been to the CCRCGP Dujiangyan Base but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve been there. I’ve not made it to Panda Valley (the Chengdu Dujiangyan Base) yet. There’s advantages to visiting both, which I’ll highlight in this post and then share another post about my most recent trip in November 2019.

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