Fuzhou Panda Research Centre

Last Thursday, there was a china-africa union conference in Beijing which my lecturer, Prof. Lin was invited to. Therefore, we have Thursday and Friday off instead of the weekends. So the university organised for us to visit the Fuzhou Panda Research Centre, which is very near to the hotel I am staying now, West Lake Hotel. That day, as there was no translator around, I had to be one. Man, it wasn't easy as I have no idea how to say biology terms in mandarin language among many other things. Anyway, according to our guide, there are 5 pandas in the centre; 3 females and 2 males. This centre has the most pandas among the centres in China. The female pandas are all age above 15 human years old while the male pandas are about 6 or 7 human years old. One human year is equivalent to 4 panda years. The panda in the top left corner is the oldest panda at 27 human years or 108 panda years old. During her earlier days, she was a performer panda. She had traveled to places such as San Diego to perform in public. Since she is considered quite old now, she does not perform anymore.

Other than pandas, there are animals that were called as lesser pandas, which are the same pandas but they share a common ancestor line with the pandas. Like us humans sharing a common ancestor line with the chimpanzees. They are smaller in size and brown in color with a long striped tail of brown and black. I couldn't get a clear picture of them so I did not put the picture up here. These lesser pandas performed a few tricks for us. I didn't get pictures of the performances as my camera was with my friend at that time. The performances was quite cute really.

The pictures which I indicated an arrow is a sequence of pictures that I took as the panda caretaker wanted to lure the female panda from one place to another with a piece of apple. If you can see the large picture, you might see her with her tongue out at the final picture. Maybe she don't enjoy being photographed at ... Hahaha...