Panda Power

​​​​​​​​​​​Open daily from 7.30am to 6.00pm

One of the world's most successful Giant Panda breeding centres, this is one of Chengdu's most popular tourist attractions, and best for those tight on time, being the closest one to the city centre (though it's worth noting that unlike other reserves, you cannot hold the pandas here). It's also the easiest way to glimpse Sìchuān's most famous residents outside of a zoo, as well as many other endangered species like Red Pandas, black-necked cranes, white storks and more.

The main focus here is getting these super-shy creatures to breed, and being credited with over 100 panda births, we think they're doing pretty well! One of the best times to visit is in high summer (July to September), when, with a bit of luck, you'll get to see a row of swaddled baby pandas in the nursery through the floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows.

Try to visit in the morning (around 8.30am to 10.00am) as not only is it feeding time – when the larger solitary adult pandas wake from their lazy slumber to mosey to a nearby pile of bamboo shoots laid out by the keepers for them, their muscular jaws making quick work of stripping, mincing and munching through their fodder – it's also when they're at their most active, so you'll see the younger pandas clambering up trunks, hanging from arching branches and wrestling with each other along the forest floor.

​Open daily from 8.00am to 5.00pm

If you want to see pandas in a quieter, more natural environment, then this small field centre – gorgeously landscaped over 328.6 acres with brooks, meadows and a variety of edible bamboo – is just the place. Eleven miles from the Dujiangyan Panda Base (and easily walked around in just an hour), it's here that Giant Pandas are gradually habituated and returned to the wild, so you get to watch them learning to live on their own within their natural surrounds.

Still in the first phase of development, Panda Valley boasts three enclosures for transitory breeding and training of captive Giant Pandas before their reintroduction, each with a surrounding outdoor eco-playground and an indoor playground. More than 10 Giant Pandas have undergone adaptive training for reintroduction into the wild at this facility, and future plans include a Giant Panda habitat covering an area of three square-miles, set to incorporate a breeding and husbandry area, a semi-wild training area, a wild training transitory experimental area, a reintroduction experimental area companion animal area, a multi-functional conservation education centre and an experience village for juvenile ecology education.