Monday I got to sleep in a little bit, and by little, I mean like 7:30 AM because I convinced Jinfei that she should shower first. After the previous miserably cold and wet day, I didn’t even want to leave the hotel if it was raining, so I looked out the window. It was raining. Despite not leaving the hotel until 8:30 AM we were clearly the first ones to leave because the front door was still locked. Then again, there’s a good chance there wasn’t too many people staying at the hotel that night. Jinfei and I joined Zhu Mangqi for breakfast again, some vegetables, a boiled egg, a few baozi and we were ready to go. Fortunately while we were eating breakfast the rain stopped. I remember thinking that it could actually be a pleasant day!

A couple bus rides, and about an hour after breakfast the three of us arrived at the Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Center. It is here that many of the only 1000 pandas that exist were conceived, born, and raised. I was pretty excited to see some live pandas and because it wasn’t raining. ThePanda Breeding and Reasearch Center was like a large park, with habitats for the adult and sub-adult giant pandas (the black and white ones) as well as the red pandas. There was also a nursery which housed the baby pandas until they were old enough to live in their habitat outdoors. The baby pandas we’re probably the coolest, and cutest thing I saw the whole day, but unfortunately they wouldn’t allow pictures of them.

» Read more: Chengdu: Pandas & Jinli Street