Pandaland

Before heading to China, I watched a couple shows on the Travel Channel detailing the country’s food, history, people, and of course, Pandas. It was those furry creatures that Hana and Maia were most impressed with, even if my Beijing-based colleague Nelson here calls them mutants…

Wasn’t sure if I’d actually get to see them, but decided I would try if the opportunity presented itself. After going over to the athlete’s village on this day for an interview, I got on the shuttle for the ride back and was informed it wasn’t leaving for another 50 minutes. It was about 3 p.m. and I had the rest of the afternoon off, so rather than walk a few miles in the heat, I decided to call a cab and just have it take me to the Beijing Zoo, which was about 20 minutes away.
I had some time to kill before dinner and zoo admission is free to media with Olympic credentials, so figured it was a great chance to take in the special Panda exhibit. The endangered pandas are unquestionably the biggest draw at the zoo. People have to pay a separate price to get into that section, but the crowds are still the largest.

I ended up picking the right time of day to go because this young fella was real active, running, climbing, swinging, tumbling, just having a great ol' time to the delight of the crowd. The pandas have a pretty big habitat, so he would climb across his set of monkey bars made of logs, then hang upside down and drop to the ground. Then he'd run through the grass to his slide or hang on his tire swing before finally climbing up a tree for a rest.. Check the video link at the bottom for this fella in action!

After the pandas, I decided to wander a bit and of course had to check out the big cats..

All these guys were in pretty small cages. There must have been about 10-12 big cats in this building, which absolutely reeked of piss. It was pretty overpowering.. There were quite a few people in there holding their noses.

This fella was just pacing and pacing across the front of his cage, while the black jaguar in the pen next door emitted growls that echoed through the entire building..

In the furthest reaches of the park was the elephant section; near it was a bunch of sculptures for the kids to play on. Right nearby was a boathouse on the canal that looped through the zoo. Here, you could get into an 8-person motorboat (in a canal that was about 30 feet wide) and the guy would just gun it like a bat out of hell and then swerve side to side, seemingly poised to flip the boat at any moment or at least roll the thing into one of the side walls.. I actually erased a picture my mistake and had considered taking a ride before worrying the boat would swamp and I'd lose my bag..

It was at the bridge across the canal where I had my first episode in which one of the locals wanted to have his picture taken with me. I thought he was asking me to move out of the way as I stood in the middle of the bridge watching the boat swerving wildly, but he then grabbed my arm and pulled me next to him. He then put his arm around my shoulder, and I put mine around his, as his mom snapped a pic. I then shook his hand and bid my new friend good-bye in Mandarin..




And of course, the star of the show!