12-30-12

Me: Today we visited the pandas at the Chengdu Panda Preserve.

This was THEE day that Ro and Ree could not contain their excitement for.
And the pandas did not disappoint.

The smile on Ree's face when she first saw the pandas was priceless!

The rest of us were giddy too. It was so fun to watch these entertaining bears!

Pandas LOVE their bamboo!

They like to climb...

play...

and mostly lounge.

The highlight of the day was when Ro & Ree got to get a photo sitting right next to a big real live panda. I'll have to borrow a pic from M to post of that later. Soooo cute!

The Chengdu Panda Preserve is 1 of 31 preserves in the country. There are only 1,000 pandas in the world and are at high risk for extinction. Their specific bamboo supply keeps dwindling. Thankfully China has a great program to keep the pandas happy and thriving. I hope the pandas survive...they are soooo cool.

Note: Bob and I bought my panda sweatshirt and Ro & Ree's panda vests at the walking mall last night. The vests were a big hit and super cute on the girls!

After the pandas we were off to a local bamboo park & tea house. On the way we saw endless groups of highrise apartment buildings. The China city skylines are continuous clumps of these too numerous to count.

Bamboo Park Tea House

We enjoyed some hot tea and a table side neck massage.

Many of the locals were playing games, dancing and singing.

This man has a talent for sugar art. It's edible (& good).

Chinese graffiti. :-)