The 3rd and final yard in the Shuangnan Garden, and the last to share from my visit to the Dujiangyan Panda Base – this yard is home to Chao Tian Jiao 巢天骄 (m) and Dun Dun 顿顿 (f)! These two aren’t twins, but were born just a few days apart in 2020 at the Wolong Shenshuping Base making them almost 4 years old.

Chao Tian Jiao is sponsored by Nestle, China and his mother is Xi Dou 喜豆. There isn’t very much information about him online, however there are many sweet videos of him from throughout his life from cub to now – this pair, and also when they were with Xi Dou, are one of the features on the iPanda livecams so always an opportunity to see them. Dun Dun is also known as Dou Ban 豆伴 and she is Bao Bao‘s daughter. Bao Bao was born at the Smithsonian National Zoo, Washington DC back in 2013 and I saw her here in the Dujiangyan Panda Base in 2017, and now I’m seeing her daughter here – very special. She was raised with Chao Tian Jiao with his mother as a surrogate, so they are a pair very familiar with each other. Again, she is the feature of many online videos. I think these two both have quite distinctive looks to be able to tell them apart – in the picture below Chao Tian Jiao is the one facing the camera/front of the yard, he has particularly fluffy cheeks and fluffy ears^

The final area at the Dujiangyan Panda Base to visit Shuangnan Garden 双楠园 which is on the right of the main path and around half-way through the base between the Pan Pan 盼盼园 and Diequan Gardens 蝶泉园. Here there are 5 enclosures for pandas, however really only 3 of these are visible – the fenced off area in the above picture has all the viewing of the 4th enclosure, however if the panda is out in the yard and in the right spot you would be able to see across another yard to see it. The 5th one you can’t see at all. On my last visit in 2017, the fenced off area wasn’t at this spot as I remember getting up to the front viewing windows of at least the 3rd yard into the area, whereas now you can’t. You can also see the fence on the right of the picture blocking the window into the indoor area for the associated enclosure, again I’m sure I was able to look into this on my last visit. I completely don’t mind this, it gives the keepers space to work without being watched all the time and also some quiet off-show space for the pandas – I only couldn’t see the name plaque for the panda in the 3rd enclosure because it was in the staff-only space.

This was one of the most popular spots at the whole base – everyone wanted a glimpse of Le Le 叻叻, the cub who was born in Singapore and who only recently travelled to China! Le Le was born in 2021 at the River Wonders, Mandai Wildlife Reserve and in January 2024 made the trip to China to start his independent life. Although not too independent because he has roommates in his new home in the Diequan Garden 蝶泉园 of Dujiangyan Panda Base. I’m not sure I’ve seen them pair an overseas-born returned cub with other cubs before, but he is still quite young at only 2.5 years old on his return, and most cubs this age in China are living with other young ones. His roommates are twins, male Qing Zai 青仔 and female Qing Bao 青宝 who were also born in 2021.

The Diequan Garden 蝶泉园 is the furthest away area at the Dujiangyan Panda Base and has 5 different panda enclosures, at the time of my visit a total of 8 pandas were living here. The most popular inhabitant of this area was Le Le – he was born in Singapore in 2021 and moved to China in January 2024, but more on him in the next post! This area ended up being quite busy, lots of the school groups were here (so another round of photos and telling them where we were from) and there was also a small snack stand selling drinks and ice creams, so many people were crowded there. In the end I didn’t end up seeing two of the pandas who were in this area, Nong Nong 檂檂 and Su Yang 苏阳 were preferring their indoor spaces this time. These two are relatively young males of almost 4 and 5 years old respectively. There are a lot of cute videos online of both pandas that you can check out, so I’m a little sad I didn’t see them.