熊猫(Panda) – Bucknell Women's Rowing Abroad

This week was by far the most chaotic in China so far! It was my last week of classes so I had my final exam in Chinese, celebrated Thanksgiving with all my friends, and now I am traveling for the next week and a half. For Thanksgiving, I used my teacher’s toaster oven to bake an apple, blueberry, and pecan pie. We also had turkey and sweet potatoes, so it was an authentic Thanksgiving meal. I am now in Chengdu, the capital of China’s Sichuan province. It is the 7th largest city in China with 14.43 million people and is known for its hot pot and Giant Panda research centers. Hot pot consists of a simmering metal pot of stock at the center of the dining table. While the hot pot is kept simmering, ingredients are placed into the pot and are cooked at the table. Typical hot pot dishes include thinly sliced meat, leaf vegetables, mushrooms, wontons, egg dumplings, and tofu. The giant panda’s diet is primarily herbivorous, consisting almost exclusively of bamboo. However, the giant panda still has the digestive system of a carnivore. Pandas are born with sterile intestines, and require bacteria obtained from their mother’s feces to digest vegetation. They eat about 25% of their body weight in bamboo per day! Gifts of giant pandas to American and Japanese zoos formed an important part of the diplomacy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the 1970s, as it marked some of the first cultural exchanges between the PRC and the West. This practice has been termed “panda diplomacy”. At the research center, they also had the unrelated Red Panda. The red panda is quite adaptable to living in captivity, and is common in zoos worldwide. The one we saw was so comfortable with humans that he climbed under the fence ran across the side walk and into the next captivity, not really sure if the researchers are aware its fencing needs to be reinforced. I am in Chengdu for a few more days before I head to Shanghai for a week!

在前！

Elizabeth

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