Next up in the Inner Ring House 3 is another mother+cub pairing – the mother is Jin Shan 金山 and she is living with her little 2023-born cub. Now I didn’t see much at all of Jin Shan, mostly through the round door into the indoor space – she was keeping cool and enjoying the bamboo inside. Her cub on the other hand was very content to be outside and showing off it’s climbing skills to everyone! I stopped by here 2 or 3 times and the cub was outside playing and loving life up the trees – as soon as they climbed down from one tree, they’d moved over to the next and scaled that too^ So so adorable and such a photogenic baby. It was so quiet in this area in the afternoon, so there were only a couple of other people viewing at the time I was, which seems so unreal and such a special moment, almost a private panda cub viewing!

Mother Jin Shan was born in 2017, making her almost 7 years old, so it’s likely this is her first experience of motherhood. There’s almost no information on her online, just that her mother is Su Shan 苏珊 who has had many cubs so Jin Shan has a number of siblings. I also found a cute YouTube playlist of videos of Jin Shan and her cub which was very sweet, but otherwise, there’s not much out there – hopefully I’m adding to the collection with these photos!

The Inner Ring House 3 also has 4 yards in it and I saw the pandas in 3 of them – first up it’s Qiao Lin 乔林! Qiao Lin is also known as Qiao Dou Dou 乔兜兜, and is a relatively young male at 5 years old. And he’s a twin, his brother is Qiao Sen 乔森 who is also living here but in the Outer Ring House 1 – their mother Qiao Qiao 乔乔 is famous in the panda breeding world for bringing important wild panda genes into the captive population and thus increasing the genetic diversity. So important for conservation of the species! When I saw him Qiao Lin was busy with both eating and sleeping, very important panda activities – I was just surprised he slept on his wooden platform in the afternoon right in the sun, but it must have been a good spot^

The second yard I saw pandas in was a mum and her cubs – Pan Yue 盼月 and her less-than-1-yr-old twins! So cute^ This was one of the best experiences at Wolong Shenshuping because Pan Yue was so interactive with her cubs, maybe I just got there at the perfect time, but I didn’t see lots of interactions between the other mums and cubs, so this was really just perfect. She was so energetic with both of them, rolling around with them, play fighting, completely keeping them engaged and active – it must have been lunch time or nap time immediately after because they must have been exhausted! It’s a bit of a family affair at this base, Pan Yue‘s mother still lives here – Yang Hua, who I already posted about, and now here she is as a mother herself, and her younger sibling Jiao Yang also lives here. She’s quite a young mother still at 8 years old, but clearly is a good one already, and it’s her first time as a mother, so she’s really taken to the task so well^ Lots of cute pictures of this little family on social media to check out as well.

The Inner Ring House 2 has 4 yards in it but I only saw pandas in 2 of them – first up it’s Shui Xiu 水秀! Everyone that I saw in this area (which wasn’t many people actually, it was very quiet) seemed to be missing Shui Xiu which I think was due to the mum + cubs next door, but I loved seeing her. I think she wins the awards for roundest and fluffiest panda of the day, she just looked adorable sitting against the wall and tucking into her large pile of bamboo. I completely didn’t realise at the time, nor when I first looked through the photos, but Shui Xiu is missing her front left paw – once I knew I looked more closely at the photos, and you can tell as she’s not holding bamboo on that side, but it’s really not obvious at all. She is a wild-born panda and was found injured at around 2 years old, so was brought to the base for treatment. It doesn’t look like that injury has stopped her at all, she clearly still does well getting that bamboo in, and she has been a prolific breeder – I found a site online which suggests she has had 12 cubs! At 21, her breeding years are probably numbered, but she is now also a grandmother. I found one of her cubs, Xiu Qiu 绣球 who was born in 2015 has had a cub of her own in 2021 – You You 优悠 who I posed about in the previous post. And some of her other cubs have had their own cubs too – another important example of success at increasing the gene pool with wild-born panda genetics.