Mom Meets the F*cking Pandas

My parents came to visit me here in Chengdu for two weeks and it was awesome to have them! Originally, I was supposed to come home first to visit, but I told my parents I’m not really in the financial position to do so. Therefore it may be another year before I get home to visit. My mom was like ugh, fuck that I’m coming to see my baby! And that is how my parents came to visit, so thank you for flying the 15 hours over here mom and pops!

I’ll probably break up the posts a little bit about our travels. But first the most important of all was meeting ‘the fucking pandas’. No lie. Those were the exact words I was told. My mom and pops are coming to China and they are going to see the fucking pandas if they are in China. So it was very important that I delivered them to see the fucking pandas. Granted to say it was cool as D and I have never been to see the pandas so we were able to enjoy it too.

One of the problems of visiting Chengdu in the summer is that the pandas do not like the heat. They are actually from a much higher elevation (between 2500 to 3500 meters, I believe) so after breakfast time they just disappear into a cooler area at the panda places. Originally, I had wanted to take my parents further out to a bigger panda base, but it would have been a pain renting a car for the day and it would be a long ride out. So we opted to go to the Chengdu Panda Research Base instead. We got really lucky as the Sunday morning we went the weather was rather cool, which meant it was prime panda seeing weather.

We arrived at 7:30 and there was already a crowd of people waiting. Wherever you go in China, there will be a crowd if it is a popular destination. Luckily, it wasn’t that bad. We bought our tickets and made our way in with no idea which way to head first. We ended up seeing the red pandas first and I thought they were the cutest creatures!

Eventually we found out where the pandas were and at first we were in this terrible line that was pushing and shoving and had no idea what we were trying to see. There was a panda out that could be seen slightly through the crowd and then we were sandwiched moving along as a sea of people inside a small building. Once we got to a window I realized why it was so fucking crowded, baby pandas. There were about four baby pandas in incubators and this was the reason for the crowd.

Afterwards we walked around and were greeted by a mother and her two cubs, and later we saw another group of pandas playing together. So all in all we had a great time viewing the pandas despite the pushing and shoving to take pictures with the locals. Mom thought she was gonna die, but it turned out okay we saw the fucking pandas and took plenty of photos!