6-Day Panda Conservation, Leshan, Mount Emei & Sichuan Cooking

Morning — Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding
Visit this panda sanctuary, established in 1987, to see endangered giant pandas in leafy, naturalistic enclosures and learn about the breeding and conservation work that has helped grow their population. A short included presentation explains the center's research and how visitors can support panda protection.

Lunch — at your leisure
Lunch is at your own arrangement around the morning visit.

Afternoon — Jinli Ancient Town
Wander Jinli, a restored Qing-Dynasty-style street where cobblestone lanes, traditional courtyard shops, and teahouses recreate old Chengdu. Watch Sichuan opera or shadow-puppet performances and try local snacks such as chua bing (twisted dough sticks) or sweet osmanthus rice cakes.

Dinner — Yunlai Shuiji Restaurant
Enjoy classic Sichuan dishes like mapo tofu and dan dan noodles in a restored Qing Dynasty courtyard setting.

Evening — at your leisure
The evening is yours to relax at your hotel.

Morning - the shift starts
Leave Chengdu before the traffic builds and reach the base for the keeper briefing. The work is organised around the animals' clock rather than the visitors': bamboo is cut and delivered in the morning, the supplementary food is steamed early, and the service areas are cleaned while the pandas are outside. Depending on which base takes the group, you may be working at the Dujiangyan base, at Shenshuping in the Wolong reserve, or at Bifengxia near Ya'an. Volunteer places are limited at each and are allocated separately, and a place is never guaranteed in advance.

Late morning - bamboo and the steamed ration
Bamboo is not simply food here; it is a supply chain with quality control. Volunteers learn to tell the species and the age of stems apart, to reject the woody or over-young ones, and to weigh out a day's allocation per animal against the keeper's sheet. Then the supplementary ration is prepared: a coarse steamed cake of cornmeal, soybean meal, rice and a little egg, sugar and salt, which covers the protein, calcium and trace minerals that bamboo does not. Preparing it involves the same hygiene discipline as any food operation - gloves, clean surfaces, and no entry to the food room in outdoor clothing.

Lunch
Base staff canteen.

Afternoon - yards, then the release programme explained
The afternoon is spent on the yards and enclosures: sweeping and hosing the concrete, clearing leftover bamboo and the day's droppings, scrubbing troughs and refilling them, and checking the climbing frames and the water supply. Keepers then explain the part of the base's work that visitors rarely see - training animals for life outside. Candidates for release are moved to larger enclosures where they have to find and handle natural food, climb, and, crucially, learn to avoid people; a panda that has lost its fear of humans cannot be released. That is one reason the no-contact rule exists, and it is a better answer to "why can't I hold one" than any policy statement.

Note
All tasks are assigned by the base's keepers on the day and depend on the base's volunteer quota and its current animal-health protocols. The programme may be shortened or suspended without notice during the nursery season, in high heat, or if disease-control measures are in force. Where the base cannot take volunteers, we substitute a supervised study day at the education centre.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch

Accommodation
In Chengdu.

Morning - the Leshan Giant Buddha
Drive south from Chengdu through the Sichuan basin to Leshan, where the Min, Dadu and Qingyi rivers meet. The cliff face above the confluence carries the tallest stone Buddha in the world: 71 metres from the hair to the toes, begun in 713 by the monk Haitong and finished in 803 with imperial support. The project was originally a flood-control measure in the widest sense - the monk believed the river was taking men's lives and the carving was meant to calm it - and, as it happens, the rock quarried off the cliff was tipped into the water and did narrow the channel. Walk the nine-turn plank road down the side of the figure to the platform at its feet, and note the repair history: the statue has been enclosed, repointed and coated repeatedly, and it is under continuous conservation.

Lunch
A river fish restaurant in Leshan, or a bowl of the city's bobo chicken - cold skewers lifted from a chilled chilli broth.

Afternoon - Mount Emei
Drive north-east to Mount Emei, whose slopes rise from around 500 metres at the base to 3,079 metres at the Golden Summit. Emei is one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains of China and is the seat of a bodhisattva, and together with the Leshan Buddha it forms one UNESCO World Heritage site, inscribed in 1996. The mountain holds more than thirty temples, some of them well over a thousand years old and rebuilt many times. Depending on the weather and the time, either take the bus and the two-stage cable car to the summit, where the views run to the snow peaks of the west, or stay lower and visit Baoguo Temple at the foot and the Wannian Temple, whose surviving brick hall contains a bronze statue of the bodhisattva cast in the eighth century. Monkeys are common on the middle paths and take food from hands with no hesitation at all.

Evening - overnight at the mountain foot
Dinner and an overnight at the foot of the mountain, so that the drive back is a morning's work rather than a night's. If you would rather sleep in Chengdu, the day can be run as a long day trip and the return will finish late.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
At the foot of Mount Emei (or in Chengdu if you prefer to return the same evening).

Morning - the market, and the ingredients that decide everything
Sichuan cooking begins in the shop, not at the stove. Walk a neighbourhood market with the instructor and buy the day's ingredients while the fundamentals are explained. The fermented broad-bean paste from Pixian, west of Chengdu, is the backbone of the cuisine: broad beans, wheat flour, salt and chilli, fermented in open earthenware for a year and aged for longer at the top grades. Sichuan peppercorn is a citrus-scented husk, not a pepper at all, and the red and green varieties do different work, one numbing and warm, one sharp and herbal. Dried and fresh chillies are not interchangeable, and a Sichuan kitchen keeps several kinds because they are used for different things. Choose the pickling vegetables as well - mustard tuber, radish, long beans.

Late morning - three dishes at a wok
In the teaching kitchen, cook the three dishes that carry the whole cuisine. Mapo tofu is a nineteenth-century Chengdu dish, from the restaurant of a woman known locally as the pockmarked grandmother, and it teaches the balance of fermented bean paste, chilli oil and ground peppercorn over soft tofu. Dan dan noodles were street food named for the carrying pole the sellers used, and the dish is the topping and the sauce rather than the noodle. Kung pao chicken carries a sweet-sour salt balance in a single wok and is named for a Qing official who held the title of palace guardian in the 1870s. Each participant cooks at their own wok, with the instructor correcting timing and seasoning as they go.

Lunch
Eat what you have cooked, with rice and a plain soup, deliberately so.

Afternoon - pickles, chilli oil and the recipes
The second session is about keeping the cooking alive at home: fill and season a jar of Sichuan pickles, make a batch of chilli oil with the right temperature discipline so that it does not turn bitter, and go through the twenty-odd flavour profiles that Sichuan cooks work with - strange flavour, fish-fragrant, numbing-and-hot, and the rest - and how a menu is built to balance them. Participants leave with printed English recipe cards giving ingredient weights in grams, since a dish that cannot be reproduced was never really taught. Return to Chengdu in the evening if the previous night was spent at Mount Emei.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch

Accommodation
In Chengdu.

Morning — Chengdu Panda Base
Visit the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, where you can watch playful cubs in the outdoor enclosures as they climb and feed. You may join a volunteer session to help prepare bamboo for the pandas, learning about the conservation work that protects this endangered species (an extra fee applies).

Afternoon — Dujiangyan Irrigation System
Explore the Dujiangyan Irrigation System, an ancient engineering triumph built around 256 BC by the engineer Li Bing. Walking its canals and embankments, you learn how a design using bamboo baskets and stones tamed the Min River and still irrigates the farms of the Sichuan plain today.

Evening — Shu Feng Ya Yun Sichuan Opera
In the evening, attend a performance at Shu Feng Ya Yun, a celebrated Sichuan opera venue. The show features face-changing, fire-spitting, and puppet acts that showcase the region's distinctive performing arts.

Morning — Wuhou Memorial Temple and Jinli Ancient Street
Located in the southern part of Chengdu, the Wuhou Memorial Temple was built in honor of Zhuge Liang, the Martial Marquis of Shu during the Three Kingdoms period. Among the Wuhou memorial temples across China, the one in Chengdu holds the greatest significance, being the only one dedicated to both King Liu Bei and his esteemed prime minister Zhuge Liang, whose loyalty and strategy are celebrated as a model of Chinese statesmanship. Leaving the temple, you will begin exploring Jinli Ancient Street, a modern commercial pedestrian street integrated with buildings originally constructed during the Qing Dynasty. Along the way you will find exquisite lacquerware, folk handicrafts, Shu Embroidery and calligraphy, along with puppet theater performances and craftsmen selling paper-cuts and clay figurines, all of which offer a glimpse of the authentic local way of life.

Afternoon — Kuanzhai Lane and Shu Brocade
In the afternoon, your destination is Kuanzhai Lane, known as China's Lane, which blends the architectural features of northern Chinese courtyard houses with those of traditional dwellings in western Sichuan across three parallel alleys: Kuan Lane, Zhai Lane and Jing Lane. Sipping tea in a local teahouse or tasting Sichuan dishes and snacks here is an easy way to immerse yourself in Chengdu's leisure life, with well-preserved traditional buildings in Zhai Lane for lovers of architecture and a livelier blend of Chinese and Western influences in Jing Lane. You will also encounter Shu Brocade, a traditional silk fabric unique to Sichuan renowned for its exquisite craftsmanship and vibrant colors, and a visit to a Shu Embroidery workshop shows the intricate processes involved, from silk thread preparation to the final weaving and embroidery. If you would prefer to slow down further, an optional alternative is Chengdu People's Park, where locals gather to play chess, practice Tai Chi and enjoy mahjong, and where a teahouse offers traditional Sichuan tea in a serene setting.

Evening — Flexible Evening
The evening is yours to enjoy at your leisure in Chengdu.

Meals — Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
All three meals are included on this day.