Pandering to pandas
His day starts with watching the pandas, judging their health, cleaning up the enclosure, and then feeding them bamboo leaves. Li Denghe, 23, is a panda keeper, the youngest in Bifengxia Panda Base. Li came to work here half a year ago after he graduated from a vocational school.
For the whole morning, Li must watch how much food his pandas have eaten, and then decide how much forage to feed them. Most of the time, he attentively observes his pandas' mental state and activities.
"It's an honor for me to do this job, since I majored in animal and veterinary sciences and I can use what I have learnt in my job," said Li.
"I had never seen pandas before I came here, and I was really excited after I saw them. Now I'm closely connected to these pandas. They'll come out and approach me when they hear my voice. I really like this job," he said.
Bifengxia Panda Base, affiliated to the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, is located 18 kilometers north of Ya'an, Sichuan Province.
The base came into service in late December of 2003, and now has 155 pandas, according to its website. With fewer than 2,000 pandas remaining in the wild, centers like Bifengxia are vital in the iconic species' survival. It is focused on raising and breeding pandas, and in recent years has produced "panda celebrities," who are presented as gifts, like Tuantuan and Yuanyuan to Taiwan in late December of 2008.
The job of being a panda keeper is similar in the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, 150 kilometers away.
There Li Jia, 28, has been a panda keeper since 2005. Her job is to take care of panda cubs, Xinhua reported last year. She's responsible for feeding eight panda cubs every day. They are too young to eat bamboo leaves, and their food is breast milk for breakfast and milk for dinner.
Besides professional knowledge, having a loving heart is a necessity, shared by all panda keepers.
Li Jia cleans up the panda enclosures and their feces, in case they get sick. "It's not very tiring, but we have few holidays. Even on a vacation, I'm still thinking of the cubs," said Li to Xinhua.
Li's husband Deng Tao works in the same base as her. They got to know each other at work. "There are many other couples like us, too. We worked together a long time, saw each other every day, and finally become a couple," said Li.
Applying for the job is competitive, too. Usually two mature pandas need a keeper, which means each base has a quota, like Bifengxia. Those who fail the test can become panda volunteers. Some of them are foreigners, according to media reports.
Global Times