Now onto the last section of houses, first up it’s the Inner Ring House 1 – here there are 4 different yards to see. Three of these are quite sloped, and the viewing is at the top of the slope so you’re mostly looking down into the pandas, but there are definitely some blind spots, so even though I didn’t see a couple of the pandas, they could well have just been sat in the perfect hidden-from-view spot! Here there are 2 individual pandas, and 2 pairs of pandas living, so a good balance for viewing. Sadly the one panda I didn’t see at all and would have loved to have seen was Bao Bao, she was living in this house when I visited, but didn’t see her out at all – oh well, or the more reason for more trips to try and see her again and at least I was lucky enough to see her way back in 2017 (she was Tai Shan‘s neighbour at the Dujiangyan Base!). But I still had some great viewing in this house and there were fabulous scenic views from around the viewing platforms here!

A firm favourite next – it’s Tai Shan 泰山! I didn’t actually know he was now living here, so this was a nice surprise, in fact I knew it was him as soon as I saw him, I didn’t need to see his name sign^ This is now the 3rd time I’ve seen Tai Shan after seeing him at the Dujiangyan Base in both 2016 and 2017, so it’s been a while. He’s still such a handsome boy and has such a distinctive and recognisable look to him. He’s now 19 years old, having been born in 2005, the first cub of Smithsonian National Zoo pair Mei Xiang and Tian Tian so it’s lovely to be able to still follow him through his life. His yard was very sunny in the Kindergarten House 2 area, and he was enjoying his breakfast and lunch when I was there with plenty of bamboo. He even took some of his bamboo up onto his rocky platform to enjoy it there.

Next moving to the central portion of the base and the Kindergarten houses – there are two, named 1 and 2. House 1 has 3 yards and all were very large, with lots of rock and wood climbing options along with trees. House 2 has 4 yards, these were a little smaller than in House 1 and actually I only saw adult pandas living in this house! I didn’t end up spending much time in these two areas as there just always seemed to be more activity elsewhere, but there were cubs living here to see (just sleeping when I saw them^).

The final pandas to share about from the Outer Ring houses are Su Lin 苏琳 and her cubs! I didn’t realise at the time, but Su Lin was born at the San Diego Zoo in 2005, the third cub to be born there – so special to see another San Diego-born panda! She moved to China in 2010 and is now 19 years old and an experienced mother. I didn’t really see too much of her – she was sticking to the shadows and enjoying some bamboo while the cubs weren’t looking for her attention^ These two were super sweet and very much were tree-babies – I went past several times during the day and there was always at least one up a tree and the second was either also in a tree, or climbing up/down the tree too!