Panda Quest

My boyfriend and I are on a quest. The goal is simple - to see pandas. Until we can take a trip to China to see the Panda Kindergarten at the Chengdu Panda Base, we'll have to settle for seeing as many at zoos as we can.

The Ueno Zoo in Tokyo had pandas when I was there, but my time living in Japan predated my interest in pandas, so I never made the time to see them. Because I missed out on the Tokyo pandas, we've been trying to make up for it by seeing all of the ones we can. Since we currently live in North America, that's where we've started.

Last year, my boyfriend and I went to Washington, D.C. and, naturally, at the top of our itinerary was the National Zoo, to see the pandas. The National Zoo actually has got a fantastic panda cam and I'd been watching it when Bei Bei, the then-cub was born. By the time I visited, the tiny baby panda that I'd seen learn to walk and climb trees was as big as his mother.

The entire zoo was lovely - it was entirely free, the only charge was if you wanted to purchase a map, which we did - the zoo is not so confusing that you can't get round without one, but it was nice to have and the proceeds went to support the zoo.

This wasn't my first time seeing pandas in person - I saw them first in San Diego, but I'm never going to complain about seeing more. They're adorable and I'm so glad that they're finally off the endangered species list. They're still vulnerable, but that downgrade from endangered is thanks to all of the hard work and time put in by people who truly care about them. Hopefully we'll see a return of pandas to the wild someday as well.

I promise there are pandas in the photo with me - they're in the shade, trying to escape as much of the early autumn heat as they can.

Panda Surprise

If you'd asked me a few years ago what my favourite animal was, I definitely wouldn't have said pandas. Obviously I knew about them, mostly about how they were endangered, but I hadn't really thought too much about them beyond that. At least I hadn't until I met my boyfriend, whose favourite animals are dogs (he's year of the dog and so feels an affinity) and pandas.

It didn't take much for him to convert me - a few YouTube videos of baby pandas acting adorable and I was hooked. I was actually the one to discover iPanda, the YouTube account with a 24-hour live panda cam directly into the Chengdu Panda Base in China and almost daily videos of pandas (usually the babies!). It's been a nightly ritual of ours for several years now to watch a few panda videos before going to sleep.

This morning, he told me that he had something he wanted to do today, but wanted it to be a surprise for me. I'm not the biggest fan of surprises, so normally I would have pushed for more details, but he really wanted to surprise me with this one, so I decided to let him.

And it was definitely worth the wait! It turns out he'd booked tickets to the new IMAX film Pandas (narrated by Kristen Bell) in 3D. I couldn't have asked for a better surprise. It was so sweet of him and we both thought it was adorable. The baby pandas are just so cute.

I loved the film - it's not the first panda documentary I've seen at the IMAX. The first one had talked about releasing pandas back into the wild but had been focusing on pandas who had more recent connections to the wild, such as at least one parent who had been captured wild. This new documentary focused on ways to get completely domesticated pandas to learn the natural instincts on their own that would have been taught by their parents if they had been born in the wild and the special panda cub, Chen Chen, chosen to be the first for the project.

It was wonderful to see that there was a long-term plan to not only increase the numbers of wild pandas but to also expand their habitat, since a lot of it had been damaged or destroyed by humans. They're no longer considered endangered, thanks to the efforts of the Chengdu Research Base and others around both China and the rest of the world, but they're still threatened, especially in the wild, so it was really heartwarming to see all of the efforts of people who really care about these adorable bears.

If surprising me with a panda film wasn't enough, my boyfriend had also found out that we have yoshino cherry trees in our city. We went to see them, but they weren't blooming yet. We could see the buds, though, so we'll try again next weekend when they're (hopefully) in full bloom and I'll write more about them and why they mean so much to me then.