After visiting the Wolong Shenshuping Giant Panda Base – which is the newest base, opening to the public in 2016 as the original base in the area (Hetaoping) was severely damaged in the 2008 earthquake, and was never re-opened to the public – my friend, who works at the panda base and very kindly took me to Shenshuping, asked if I wanted to visit the earthquake memorial, so this is something we did on the way back to Dujiangyan.
Here is the 3rd and final post from the Inner Ring House 3, and the final post to share from my trip to the Wolong Shenshuping Base. This is Xin Xin 鑫鑫 who was born in 2013 so is 11 years old and she is living with her little 2023-born cub (whose father is supposedly Hua Yang – this is his first cub. The name sounds familiar, so maybe I’ve seen him somewhere on my travels!). There’s not a lot online about Xin Xin, but she is a twin, and this is her third cub – her first two are named Yuan Xiao 元宵 and Hang Bao 航宝 – this third little one was not named when I went on this trip, but a search online seems to suggest that she has now been named Qing Ling 青灵. Qing Ling was the first born cub of the base of 2023, being born in May. Being very close to 1 year old on my trip, she did seem like one of the more confident little ones, and I saw much more of her than mum Xin Xin! She was up and down trees all afternoon and so keen to explore her yard. What a cutie^
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^
