A
fter a minute-long video of a panda per-
sistently clinging to a keeper’s legs went
viral online, the seven-month-old panda
cub, Qiyi, shot to fame overnight.
In the clip, despite continued efforts by the
keeper to move her from his leg and on to a plat-
form, she scampered back from wherever she
was put to clamp herself back in place. Seeing the adorable ups and
downs, many netizens commented that taking care of pandas must be
a fascinating and enviable job. But panda keeper Chen Bo sees taking
care of pandas as being just like taking care of babies which has both
roses and thorns.
Naughty Creatures
At 8am on the morning of March 5, 2016, Chen arrived at the
panda maternity ward of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda
Breeding (Chengdu Base), Sichuan Province, and changed into new
work clothes. Outside the ward, a separate section for expectant pan-
das, newborns, and cubs, there are several activity areas surrounded
by trees and a wooden platform for pandas to play and sleep on. Even
though it was a Friday morning, crowds of tourists were eagerly wait-
ing outside the fence with cameras held high above their heads.
Today the ward is home to 10 adult pandas and nine cubs who are
cared for by 10 panda keepers. Chen takes care of two of the creatures
who live separately in two rooms but share a play area. Pandas are
solitary animals and the two pandas enjoy the outside activity space
in turn.
Chen doesn’t have a Sina Weibo account, China’s Twitter-like social
media platform, and it was his colleague who told him that the video
clip had been a huge hit online and viewed over 160 million times
worldwide. Chen told our reporter that panda cubs grab a keeper’s leg
because they want to play with him or her, add-
ing that cubs are always in the mood to play with
a person until something better comes along, like
a new toy, when they’ll dump you straight away.
“On that day, when I was planting bamboo
in the playground, the cub was there the whole
morning and treated me as the new toy. If other
people came in at that time, she would have done the same thing [to
them],” he said.
Chen fondly remembers his first day of work at the Chengdu Base.
He came to the playground to feed panda cubs but was chased non-
stop by two three-year-old cubs. To avoid being bitten, he desperately
zigzagged around the playground because he knew pandas are better
runners in a straight line. It was a full 10 minutes until Chen had a
chance to open the gate and flee.
Chen’s first duty every day is to clean out the pandas’ enclosures, as
in the morning, the floor is scattered with pieces of leftover bamboo
and feces. An adult panda with its diet of bamboo can produce 10
kilograms of feces every day though compared with other animals,
pandas’ poop is relatively clean with no unpleasant odour.
Chen said the weight of the feces is important and used by panda
keepers to determine whether the previous day’s diet was adequate. A
panda can consume more than 60 kilograms of bamboo in a day in
three or four sittings. After feeding the pandas their main diet of bam-
boo, keepers will give them some snacks including bamboo shoots
and apples as well as nutritional supplements made of corn, beans,
oats and vegetable oil that are delivered to the playground at 11am
every day.
Chen said pandas are fond of lying on the ground after they eat
and a key task for panda keepers is to exercise them, for example to
have the pandas sit down and raise their forelegs. Sometimes, a ballThe work is easy to
begin with, but it
requires a wide range of
professional knowledge
which takes many years
to build up