This summer I decided to try volunteering in China at the Giant Panda Center project. There is a local team received us. People from different places are gathering in Chengdu every week. On Monday we visited the city and another panda base, where we learnt some knowledge by watching the documentary and seeing the museum.
It was nice to meet the people and get familiar with them during the journey. On Tuesday we headed on to the panda base. Then we visited the waterfall.
From Wednesday we started the volunteer project. We were grouped to assist at different stations; each station takes care of two to four pandas. An expert gave a wonderful lecture about the situation and behavior of the pandas. He shared his experience of being injured by an escaped panda. Although the pandas look cute, they can be very strong and sometimes dangerous.
There are two kinds of work, cleaning and feeding. Cleaning is tough work, with lots of panda poo to pick up. We also carried bamboo to feed the pandas with. Feeding is very easy and enjoyable. We just threw the food to them, and watched them eat. We had lots of free time in the day, since it took only one and a half hours to clean and few minutes to feed. There wasn’t a lot of new things to do, but it was a good chance to relax and enjoy some leisure time.
