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.

The most popular pandas in Pan Pan Garden were definitely Ji Fu 吉福 and Chun Yu 春雨! These two are super cute cubs and were so entertaining, everyone was stopping to watch them and get pictures. These two must have been a new addition either to the base or to just this enclosure because there was no signage for them at all – luckily we passed by a keeper who my friend knew and we asked what the names were. So really not much information, but they have been featured in a few videos/social media posts recently. Ji Fu is the daughter of Cui Cui, and a quick search online tells me she was born in August 2022 (so almost 2 years old on my visit), and holds the record for the heaviest cub being born in captivity at 270.4 grams! Apparently Ji Fu likes to take her bamboo up into the trees to eat, which is exactly what I saw, it was adorable. I believe I saw her mum Cui Cui on this trip but at the Wolong Shenshuping Base (content coming soon^). Chun Yu is the daughter of Qiao Qiao, and it seems like Qiao Qiao was originally a wild panda and was brought into captivity, and was then sent out to breed with wild males, and brought back in. Chun Yu is a product of that and was also born in August 2022. These two also are the focus of one of the livecams on the iPanda website, if you are lucky you will be able to spot them!

To tell these two apart – Ji Fu is the one with a little tuft on her head, and Chun Yu has a more square-shaped head (so the internet says, I didn’t just make it up^).

The penultimate pandas to share about in the Pan Pan Garden 盼盼园 area of the Dujiangyan Panda Base are Zhang Ka 张卡 and her twins, male An Bao 安宝 and female Zhong Zhong 中中. Zhang Ka was born in 2000 so is now 24 years old, it’s likely that these cubs, born in 2022 so almost 2 years old at the time of my visit, will be her last cubs. Zhang Ka has quite a history – she is a wild-born panda who was brought into captivity and has had a huge success in the breeding programme having had many cubs. In 2011 she was involved in being successfully bred and raising a cub in a semi-wild enclosure. This resulted in that cub, a female named Zhang Xiang 张想, to be released into the wild in 2013 as part of the reintroduction programme (first female to ever be released). In 2016 it was reported that she was still doing well and had established her own territory (the pandas released have GPS/tracking collars to gather this information), so hopefully by now she is thriving in the wild and raising cubs of her own.

So, finally making it back to Dujiangyan Panda Base 都江堰中华大熊猫苑! I visited here in both my November 2016 and 2017 trips, so it’s been 6.5 years since I was last there or even in the city. On this trip, my friend who works for the base picked us up at our hotel and very kindly took us to breakfast at the base’s staff canteen and then brought us into the base between 8:30 and 9AM which was just after opening. It was pretty busy with many coaches lined up in the parking lot already. As my friend took us in, I’m not sure the price for this base, but I would expect it to be similar to both Chengdu base and Panda Valley of 55RMB. It was a Tuesday on our visit and it was super busy, the scenes were what I’d expect of a weekend more than a weekday, but most of it was down to the many groups of school students visiting. Unfortunately, two westerns are a big deal, so at some points we were more popular than the pandas with the school kids all wanting to take pictures with us – I don’t mind it for the most part (and could practice some of my Chinese as well), but we are also there to enjoy the pandas and it was getting a bit stressful after a while. The tour groups of adults didn’t stay long, they seemed to just do a quick lap of the base before leaving (we saw people leaving as we were coming in!), but there was then another wave of new tour buses arriving around lunchtime, so it was quite a constant flow but overall quieter in the afternoon as the school groups had also left at this point.