I love pandas so much that I woke up at 7am to take a bus to the panda research center! Apparently pandas are most active in the morning and that is the best chance to catch them up movin around and being cute! We booked the trip through the hostel so the driver come with us and took us on all the short cuts around the zoo. Kaye loves us so much he come on his day off from the hostel to hang out with us… or maybe it was because he loves the pandas so much, either way it was great! We walk in and a group of foreigners is all crowded around the red pandas but our guy sprints right past through them saying we don’t want to miss the giant pandas! The baby pandas and red pandas are more active but the full grown pandas are only active when they first wake up and we didn’t want to miss it.
I was expecting it to be like the Washington DC zoo where it is one huge cage for one panda and it’s so big that all you can see is a black and white blur off in the distance. China knows how to do it! Maybe they put the good food at the front near the people or something because the pandas came straight out of the building and plopped down right in front of where we are standing. And I am talking like 3 to 5 pandas in each section. Stealing each other’s food and layin on each other! The life of a panda is a dream they have to eat 18 hours a day to get enough calories to move around because they are so big. So panda waddles up to a bamboo tree thing and grabs it while falling onto its back! Then he just lays there with the food all over his body and chows down! I told Roz that one day that would be me. The next time I have a bad day I am going to McDonalds and buying a million fries and then laying in bed with the fries spread all over me! I think that would be my panda equivalent! To disgust you further, I learned that pandas only have 17% digestion so when you look at their poop the leaves and stuff are still whole. That’s why they can’t eat meat because their bodies wouldn’t be able to digest it. Connor asked Kaye if he could eat panda meat and we learned that you get the death penalty for that even if you say Kaye told you it was ok. I never wanted to leave the first panda exhibit but the driver urged us to keep moving. We look down and there are about 7 more exhibits circling around the zoo house in the middle, all with 3 to 5 pandas in each!!! SO many Pandas!!!
We went to one and the panda was curled up in a little ball where you couldn’t tell the head from the tail or what you were lookin at. This is the view I am used to in American zoos. However, we where close enough you could hear her snoring! Every few seconds there was a moan almost a woof sound, and loud too! I couldn’t help but laugh at loud. To which the driver jokingly scolded me, pointing to a sign translated into Chinese, Japanese and English saying “love me, don’t bother me!” I want to get that shirt made! We decided that was our motto for 2011.
Next was the 3 to 5 year old pandas! They were all in a huge exhibit with a side walk circling the cage. We were like children screaming at each other, “there are 3 no 4, I see another one!” the four panda cubs all ate together going for each other’s bamboo moving actively. Then we saw one panda pacing down in the ditch that separated them from the observers. He was the badass loner panda. She didn’t give a crap about fighting over one bamboo tree with 4 other pandas! I loved her! The cage had all these “natural toys” like a swing made out of logs and a little platform. She climbed up on the wobbly swing which flew up and threw her on the ground. Being a badass, she just rolled out of it and kept walking. We read on the sign that one of the pandas was born in Georgia to which we replied in unison, “America, F yeah!” you know from the Team America movie, no? yea tough crowd, everything is funnier in China. Anyway, we decided that she must be the American! Cast out by the Chinese pandas in their little click speaking Chinese all fast and calling each other fat. She is a southern bell, you got to slow it down panda friends! Me and Georgia are one! China may kick us out of their swings or buses and we just let it roll off our shoulder and keep on rockin’! Lol
The baby babies where amazing! I cried a little. They were like little fluffy basketballs rolling all over the place. I think their back legs aren’t as strong so they would get to running and the back legs would just quit and they’d slide around. The zoo keeper had to come out and keep them from killing themselves. They all wanted to climb up on the wooden platforms but then they don’t pay attention and walk right off the sides! Then they hang there holding on for dear life until the lady runs over and rescues them. Most of the pandas ignored the lady, I don’t know what they think happened and how they escaped death like that. One of the pandas must have been a teacher’s pet type. He would follow the zoo lady around every step! When she realized it, she shined in her 10 minutes of fame and had the baby panda follow her around the edge of the cage to the “oh” and “awes” of the entire crowd! I wanted to see him ride a motorcycle on a tight rope like the black bears!
Now it was time for the reason for my whole vacation, hold a baby panda! Only me and T decided that it was worth the ridiculous amount of money that I am too embarrassed to admit that I spent to hold a panda. I always wondered what went on inside the little grey cement building in the middle of the zoo cages, well I will now reveal the secretes! The hallway leading into the panda holding room had a huge poster of Jackie Chan holding TWO pandas! Apparently he donated a ridiculous amount of money to the research center and adopted 2 baby pandas. He named them Chan-Chan and Long-Long a version of his Chinese name Chan Long. He was so happy with the pandas and I was so excited to be like Jackie Chan! We walk in and they give you that blue hospital gown thing and step into this machine that puts little booties on you. I was like how gross are the pandas that we have to wear all this gear and T said, “no they are protecting the Panda from you!” T has a super nice camera so we gave it to the assistant lady and told her to take both of our pictures.
I made T go first because I wanted to know what to expect. We see the panda in the distance and I decide he must be Jackie Chan’s panda Long-long. He looks just like the one in the picture! The man holds an apple in front of the panda, Long-long, and leads him to the bench where T was sitting. Then he picks him up and plops Long-long in T’s lap! The Panda is chowing down on the apple just as happy as can be and the lady goes to town snapping pictures of T with a genuine smile permanently on his face! The Panda was 2 years old and about as tall as T seated so maybe 2 feet . He weights nothing T assures me as I sit beside him eager for my turn! Like a lady I sit on the edge of the bench and pose for a picture together with T and Long-long. However, being a lady kicks me in the butt. The man moves Long-long into my lap and gives him a new apple. But since I am sitting on the edge of the chair all the panda’s weight is on my knees and he is sliding down my slick hospital gown! So I angle my knees in trying to create more of a lap for him to rest on. So I really have to hold him up with my arms but I don’t want to squeeze too hard because I have seen national geographic and they can eat you alive! I find him much heavier than T let on but still fall madly in love with long-long. I just kept staring at how beautiful he was and I was holding a FREAKIN PANDA! The camera lady kept yelling at me to look at her to get a good picture but I didn’t want to look away from Long-long. Sitting on my lap he covered my entire body so I had to lean over to peak around him. I decided to give him little kisses on the side of his head and he quickly turned from his apple to stare me in the face! I quickly lean back snapped out of my love trance and realized that he was not a teddy bear! The zoo people swarmed and fed him honey on the end of a stick to which he quickly turned his attention. I realize now that he was just looking at me lovingly because he was in love with me too. But at the time I thought I was about to die. When he finished his snack it was time for him to go and they plopped him on the floor but he didn’t want to leave! The man grabbed Long long and turned him by the nap of his fur just like a dog. But Long-long turned to look at me and T still gazing at him lovingly like proud parents sending our baby off to the first day of school!
Kaye was teasing me later about how he couldn’t understand why people would pay so much to hold a panda replied sharply, “have you ever held a baby panda, I have. How many people can say that? Do you know what panda fur fells like? Super soft, you know how I know, I held a panda! Jealous?” we laughed together I am pretty sure I won him over with my slick argument. The rest of the group quickly tired of our panda story over and over again as me and T literally skipped through the zoo, still on cloud nine. T flipped threw his camera, the woman had taken a million pictures, there was literally only room on his memory card for one more picture! We decided to go to the electronic store right after to get a new card and upload the pics to Facebook immediately.
So we leave the boys at the hostel to play with the cats while Roz, T and I head out to find the electronic district. It was near this huge building with little stands set up for each of the big names, Sony, Kodak, Samsung. We are attacked by everyone’s sales pitch as we make our way to one of the larger stands in the back with a wider selection. I fall in love with a pink camera and decide it is time to upgrade. T decides to upgrade to a new memory card and get an external hard drive to store all his china pictures. The guys working there say they can transfer everything from the camera to the new hard drive while we wait. So we relax for awhile and then start to get impatient. We can see the thumbnails of all the pictures on the screen but they seem to be having some trouble agreeing with themselves. Finally T stands up and asks what’s the problem. The guy holds up the memory card and says “Haui le” meaning broken and follows that up only with nervous laughter. I respond under my breath that I am about to haui le him! T and Roz both studied Chinese in college and speak well enough to understand that when they put the disk in it didn’t copy correctly and now the card was empty. They blamed this on the card being broken, rather than the reality of the situation; they have one job in life and suck at it. I don’t know much about computers but I transfer my pictures all the time and if only erases the pictures if you select erase after copying. The odd part is that one random picture survived, but no it was not of the pandas it was some stupid picture of Jeff and the dang cats. I was livid! But Roz and T were shockingly calm. T explained very calmly, “this camera picture of me holding panda 1000 kaui, she paid 1000 kaui to hold panda 1000 kuai. You lose pictures we lose 2000 kuai, understand? Now you say pictures gone? Where?” The men responded in nervous laughter “hai le?” Roz and T start to leave with a “oh well.” Oh well nothing! Those boys better get in a panda costume and curl up in my lap to recreate the photo or get to photo shopping. “I should have just done it myself,” T says. Yea because you should have known that the technology experts who do this every day wouldn’t know to make sure it copies before you er
ase the photos! They are just lucky that I am not the one with language skills to translate for them. I would have taken a little liberty translating T’s “oh well.”
I was expecting it to be like the Washington DC zoo where it is one huge cage for one panda and it’s so big that all you can see is a black and white blur off in the distance. China knows how to do it! Maybe they put the good food at the front near the people or something because the pandas came straight out of the building and plopped down right in front of where we are standing. And I am talking like 3 to 5 pandas in each section. Stealing each other’s food and layin on each other! The life of a panda is a dream they have to eat 18 hours a day to get enough calories to move around because they are so big. So panda waddles up to a bamboo tree thing and grabs it while falling onto its back! Then he just lays there with the food all over his body and chows down! I told Roz that one day that would be me. The next time I have a bad day I am going to McDonalds and buying a million fries and then laying in bed with the fries spread all over me! I think that would be my panda equivalent! To disgust you further, I learned that pandas only have 17% digestion so when you look at their poop the leaves and stuff are still whole. That’s why they can’t eat meat because their bodies wouldn’t be able to digest it. Connor asked Kaye if he could eat panda meat and we learned that you get the death penalty for that even if you say Kaye told you it was ok. I never wanted to leave the first panda exhibit but the driver urged us to keep moving. We look down and there are about 7 more exhibits circling around the zoo house in the middle, all with 3 to 5 pandas in each!!! SO many Pandas!!!
We went to one and the panda was curled up in a little ball where you couldn’t tell the head from the tail or what you were lookin at. This is the view I am used to in American zoos. However, we where close enough you could hear her snoring! Every few seconds there was a moan almost a woof sound, and loud too! I couldn’t help but laugh at loud. To which the driver jokingly scolded me, pointing to a sign translated into Chinese, Japanese and English saying “love me, don’t bother me!” I want to get that shirt made! We decided that was our motto for 2011.
Next was the 3 to 5 year old pandas! They were all in a huge exhibit with a side walk circling the cage. We were like children screaming at each other, “there are 3 no 4, I see another one!” the four panda cubs all ate together going for each other’s bamboo moving actively. Then we saw one panda pacing down in the ditch that separated them from the observers. He was the badass loner panda. She didn’t give a crap about fighting over one bamboo tree with 4 other pandas! I loved her! The cage had all these “natural toys” like a swing made out of logs and a little platform. She climbed up on the wobbly swing which flew up and threw her on the ground. Being a badass, she just rolled out of it and kept walking. We read on the sign that one of the pandas was born in Georgia to which we replied in unison, “America, F yeah!” you know from the Team America movie, no? yea tough crowd, everything is funnier in China. Anyway, we decided that she must be the American! Cast out by the Chinese pandas in their little click speaking Chinese all fast and calling each other fat. She is a southern bell, you got to slow it down panda friends! Me and Georgia are one! China may kick us out of their swings or buses and we just let it roll off our shoulder and keep on rockin’! Lol
The baby babies where amazing! I cried a little. They were like little fluffy basketballs rolling all over the place. I think their back legs aren’t as strong so they would get to running and the back legs would just quit and they’d slide around. The zoo keeper had to come out and keep them from killing themselves. They all wanted to climb up on the wooden platforms but then they don’t pay attention and walk right off the sides! Then they hang there holding on for dear life until the lady runs over and rescues them. Most of the pandas ignored the lady, I don’t know what they think happened and how they escaped death like that. One of the pandas must have been a teacher’s pet type. He would follow the zoo lady around every step! When she realized it, she shined in her 10 minutes of fame and had the baby panda follow her around the edge of the cage to the “oh” and “awes” of the entire crowd! I wanted to see him ride a motorcycle on a tight rope like the black bears!
Now it was time for the reason for my whole vacation, hold a baby panda! Only me and T decided that it was worth the ridiculous amount of money that I am too embarrassed to admit that I spent to hold a panda. I always wondered what went on inside the little grey cement building in the middle of the zoo cages, well I will now reveal the secretes! The hallway leading into the panda holding room had a huge poster of Jackie Chan holding TWO pandas! Apparently he donated a ridiculous amount of money to the research center and adopted 2 baby pandas. He named them Chan-Chan and Long-Long a version of his Chinese name Chan Long. He was so happy with the pandas and I was so excited to be like Jackie Chan! We walk in and they give you that blue hospital gown thing and step into this machine that puts little booties on you. I was like how gross are the pandas that we have to wear all this gear and T said, “no they are protecting the Panda from you!” T has a super nice camera so we gave it to the assistant lady and told her to take both of our pictures.
I made T go first because I wanted to know what to expect. We see the panda in the distance and I decide he must be Jackie Chan’s panda Long-long. He looks just like the one in the picture! The man holds an apple in front of the panda, Long-long, and leads him to the bench where T was sitting. Then he picks him up and plops Long-long in T’s lap! The Panda is chowing down on the apple just as happy as can be and the lady goes to town snapping pictures of T with a genuine smile permanently on his face! The Panda was 2 years old and about as tall as T seated so maybe 2 feet . He weights nothing T assures me as I sit beside him eager for my turn! Like a lady I sit on the edge of the bench and pose for a picture together with T and Long-long. However, being a lady kicks me in the butt. The man moves Long-long into my lap and gives him a new apple. But since I am sitting on the edge of the chair all the panda’s weight is on my knees and he is sliding down my slick hospital gown! So I angle my knees in trying to create more of a lap for him to rest on. So I really have to hold him up with my arms but I don’t want to squeeze too hard because I have seen national geographic and they can eat you alive! I find him much heavier than T let on but still fall madly in love with long-long. I just kept staring at how beautiful he was and I was holding a FREAKIN PANDA! The camera lady kept yelling at me to look at her to get a good picture but I didn’t want to look away from Long-long. Sitting on my lap he covered my entire body so I had to lean over to peak around him. I decided to give him little kisses on the side of his head and he quickly turned from his apple to stare me in the face! I quickly lean back snapped out of my love trance and realized that he was not a teddy bear! The zoo people swarmed and fed him honey on the end of a stick to which he quickly turned his attention. I realize now that he was just looking at me lovingly because he was in love with me too. But at the time I thought I was about to die. When he finished his snack it was time for him to go and they plopped him on the floor but he didn’t want to leave! The man grabbed Long long and turned him by the nap of his fur just like a dog. But Long-long turned to look at me and T still gazing at him lovingly like proud parents sending our baby off to the first day of school!
Kaye was teasing me later about how he couldn’t understand why people would pay so much to hold a panda replied sharply, “have you ever held a baby panda, I have. How many people can say that? Do you know what panda fur fells like? Super soft, you know how I know, I held a panda! Jealous?” we laughed together I am pretty sure I won him over with my slick argument. The rest of the group quickly tired of our panda story over and over again as me and T literally skipped through the zoo, still on cloud nine. T flipped threw his camera, the woman had taken a million pictures, there was literally only room on his memory card for one more picture! We decided to go to the electronic store right after to get a new card and upload the pics to Facebook immediately.
So we leave the boys at the hostel to play with the cats while Roz, T and I head out to find the electronic district. It was near this huge building with little stands set up for each of the big names, Sony, Kodak, Samsung. We are attacked by everyone’s sales pitch as we make our way to one of the larger stands in the back with a wider selection. I fall in love with a pink camera and decide it is time to upgrade. T decides to upgrade to a new memory card and get an external hard drive to store all his china pictures. The guys working there say they can transfer everything from the camera to the new hard drive while we wait. So we relax for awhile and then start to get impatient. We can see the thumbnails of all the pictures on the screen but they seem to be having some trouble agreeing with themselves. Finally T stands up and asks what’s the problem. The guy holds up the memory card and says “Haui le” meaning broken and follows that up only with nervous laughter. I respond under my breath that I am about to haui le him! T and Roz both studied Chinese in college and speak well enough to understand that when they put the disk in it didn’t copy correctly and now the card was empty. They blamed this on the card being broken, rather than the reality of the situation; they have one job in life and suck at it. I don’t know much about computers but I transfer my pictures all the time and if only erases the pictures if you select erase after copying. The odd part is that one random picture survived, but no it was not of the pandas it was some stupid picture of Jeff and the dang cats. I was livid! But Roz and T were shockingly calm. T explained very calmly, “this camera picture of me holding panda 1000 kaui, she paid 1000 kaui to hold panda 1000 kuai. You lose pictures we lose 2000 kuai, understand? Now you say pictures gone? Where?” The men responded in nervous laughter “hai le?” Roz and T start to leave with a “oh well.” Oh well nothing! Those boys better get in a panda costume and curl up in my lap to recreate the photo or get to photo shopping. “I should have just done it myself,” T says. Yea because you should have known that the technology experts who do this every day wouldn’t know to make sure it copies before you er
ase the photos! They are just lucky that I am not the one with language skills to translate for them. I would have taken a little liberty translating T’s “oh well.”Through a birthday miracle (Feb. 7th) this picture was recovered of Long Long, me, and T!
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