Chengdu (Sichuan)
Some animals are so closely tied to a place that you cannot imagine one without the other, and the giant panda belongs to Chengdu. The relaxed, tea-house capital of Sichuan sits on the edge of the misty mountains and bamboo forests that are the panda's last wild home, and it has become the heart of the effort to study and protect them. For most travelers, a morning among the pandas is the single most joyful stop of a whole China trip, and one that children and grandparents love in equal measure.
The place to see them is the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, a leafy park of bamboo groves and shaded enclosures on the northern edge of the city. Come early and you will catch the pandas at their liveliest, sitting back on their haunches to work their way through armfuls of bamboo, paw over paw, with that unhurried, contented air that is so much a part of their charm. In the nurseries you may see the cubs, all black-and-white fluff and wobbly limbs, tumbling over one another and clambering up the low wooden frames while the keepers look on.
What makes it more than a zoo is the work behind it. The base is a serious conservation and research center, and its breeding program has helped pull the giant panda back from the brink, lifting the species off the endangered list while the bamboo forests that sustain it are slowly restored. Tucked among the bamboo you will often find red pandas too, the smaller, russet cousins that share these mountains. Best of all, it is an easy and rewarding addition to any China itinerary, a half-day of pure delight that we love to fold in between Xi'an and the rivers of the south.
