pandas and papier mâché

Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, Sichuan Province (26/10/2013)
Location: An hour and a half bus ride from Chengdu city centre
Famed For: Being a 100 hectare conservation base dedicated to breeding giant and red pandas

'I think your queen is like giant panda.'

                                                                                                - Student quote of the week

*-*-*

I've been to many strange and quirky museums over the past twenty five years. There was the time my sister and I got taken to Gnome World, Cornwall (now sadly just a garden and shop) and that inexplicable trip to the Cumberland Pencil Museum, Keswick. The visit to the Cat Museum, Amsterdam (it was that or the Torture Museum) and the less said about the time I almost got dragged into Barometer World by a member of my family who shall remain nameless, the better.

 

Chengdu has a wide range of museums, some of them good and some of them...peculiar. Sichuan Provincial Museum falls firmly into the former category, with it's marble floors, interesting cultural exhibits and highly detailed information panels presented in clear English. It has an entire floor dedicated to minority cultures in China, displaying beautiful traditional costumes, intricate jewellery, bowls and jugs and bird claw cups, religious artefacts including two ancient leather bound books of thin yellowing paper- one on healing leprosy and the other on the application of curses. It has a room with special lighting to display the beautiful, delicate paper puppets used in traditional shadow play, and an entire exhibit dedicated to Buddhism, hundreds of different models in gold and silver shown in front of intricate tapestries depicting hundred armed women with eleven different faces.

 

Chengdu is also home to Du Fu's cottage. Du Fu was an ancient Chinese poet, the Eastern equivalent of Shakespeare I'm reliably told (though he's not Shakespeare because no-one can match the Bard and I'll stop myself now before I get up on my English literature soapbox). His cottage, set in a tranquil garden, is ringed with walkways lined with paper lanterns and several of his poems, carved into large smooth rocks, lie scattered in the grounds. There's a lot of incomprehensible signage and a lack of quaint old costumed interpreters but it's worth visiting from both a literary and a historical perspective, and gives you a little insight into the mind of a man who lived in abject poverty for most of his life, and who, (like most poets) went from one tragedy to the next.

 

Then there's the Panda Museum, part of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, which is a strange mix of science, dust and bad modelling. There are amusing tableaux of pandas peacefully coexisting with a range of animals fresh from the taxidermist, as well as birds, fish and several small dinosaurs (though these are clearly a combination of plastic and paint.) We pass one scene of a butter yellow, papier mâché sabre-toothed tiger attacking a horse that was clearly at one point a pantomime costume.

 

There's also a wonderful oil painting depicting trained tigers, lions and pandas in body armour attacking warriors from an enemy tribe. There's a panda chewing on what looks like a spleen. Imagine Kung Fu Panda directed by Tarantino and you have some idea of the carnage. The information panel beside it cheerily informs us that in ancient China, pandas were trained by the emperor for use in the army. Apparently, much like Hannibal used elephants to battle the Romans, the Chinese were taking over the world with black and white balls of fluff.

 

The exhibits then inexplicably take a turn for the macabre. Here are the intestines of a panda preserved for eternity and strung out behind the glass in rubbery coils. Here is the first ever panda raised in captivity and now stuffed for your pleasure, glass eyes staring blankly out at the visitors. Here is a two day old panda cub floating in a jar of formaldehyde. Fortunately, before you exit there's the obligatory picture of Jackie Chan holding a baby panda to comfort you as you leave and look for the live exhibits.

 

At the base there are a dozen or so large enclosures with a handful of pandas in each one, each panda impossibly cute and cuddly and completely focussed on sleeping, chewing as much bamboo as possible and sleeping some more, whether in the trees or sprawled out lazily on the raised wooden platforms that dot the enclosures. There's a nursery for the infants, and they too are fast asleep, tangled together in a group and unaware of the lines of tourists staring at them through the glass, cameras snapping away to get the perfect shot as the security guards hurry everyone along. One of the cubs snuffles in it's sleep and snuggles further against it's sibling.

 

It's very difficult to imagine their ancestors being trained killers.

At the research centre there's also an area dedicated to preserving the endangered red panda, cat sized fluffy creatures, with distinctive thick red fur, striped tails and sharp white teeth. The nursery is set up so that visitors can stroll through the middle of the enclosure on a set fenced pathway and get close access to the creatures who are just as lovely as the giant pandas but much more active.

One of the red pandas suddenly appears on the pathway. There is a moment of blind panic as K and I look at each other and the escaped panda casually strolling across the path. Then it goes through a deliberately designed hole in the fence and we are relieved to realise that this is part of the base design, enabling the animals access to all parts of their enclosure and giving the visitors an even more intimate experience.

Then K hisses my name. 'Rachel!'

I look up from watching the pandas to see a huddle of Chinese tourists staring at me. Whilst this is normal in China, their complete silence and the look of utter horror on their faces is not. I glance around but can't see what has everyone so worried. I don't appear to be in danger.

K points at my feet.

It's only then that I notice the chubby red panda sat sniffing my ankle boots with interest. Keeping one eye on the tourists and the other on my footwear it sits on it's haunches before licking it's belly fur. There is a final sniff, a chirrup of farewell and the stripy tail flicks over my boots in goodbye before the panda casually pads back to it's pen.

The Chinese tourists break into hurried babbling, shaking their heads in wonder and pointing at my feet. I pay them little attention, ecstatic at getting so close to such an endangered species. It's only as we're leaving that we pass a small sign, the size of an adult's palm and half obscured by foliage.

'Red panda are dangerous. They are attack you. Please no chase.'

I am left to wonder how close I came to losing my ankles.