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.

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^).