5-Day Panda Conservation & Sichuan Mountain Ecology Study

Breakfast (7:30–8:30 AM) — Chunxi Road
Start at this bustling breakfast street and try congee with preserved eggs or youtiao (fried dough sticks) at Lao Ma Guan, a classic Chengdu morning bite.

Morning (9:00–11:30 AM) — Hawker's Alley & People's Park
Sample iconic Chengdu snacks such as fuqi feipian, la zi ji (spicy chicken), and cui guo (fried rice cakes) at Hawker's Alley and the wider Chengdu Snack Street. Then relax in People's Park's tea houses, where locals play mahjong and sip tea, offering a true taste of the city's laid-back rhythm.

Lunch — while sampling snacks
Lunch is flexible, built around the snacks and bites sampled through the morning.

Afternoon (12:00–5:00 PM) — Sichuan Provincial Museum & Sichuan Opera
At the Sichuan Provincial Museum, learn about the region's history and see treasures such as the Zhouyi Jiang bronze rhino, a national-class artifact. Later, watch a live Sichuan opera performance, where face-changing (bian lian) and shadow puppetry showcase the province's theatrical flair.

Dinner — Chengdu Hot Pot
End the day with Chengdu hot pot, the city's fiery signature, cooked at your table with bubbling chili broth and an array of dipping ingredients.

Evening — at your leisure
The evening is yours to relax after a full day of food and culture.

Morning - the base and the shift briefing
The three bases around Chengdu do different jobs and are worth understanding before you work at one. The Bifengxia base at Ya'an, opened in 2003, is the breeding and nursery centre of the Chinese conservation and research centre, and many animals were moved there after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake damaged the Wolong facilities. Shenshuping, in the Wolong reserve at around 1,700 metres, is the rebuilt Wolong base and works closely with the surrounding reserve. The Dujiangyan base west of Chengdu opened in the early 2010s with a strong role in quarantine, veterinary care and preparation for release. Volunteer places are allocated by each base separately; where you work is decided by availability on your dates, not by preference.

Late morning - bamboo, food and water
The first shift covers the animals' food. Bamboo is delivered by species and age, because pandas are selective and will reject stems that are too woody or too young; volunteers weigh and distribute it, clean and refill the water troughs, and help prepare the supplementary ration - a steamed cake of corn, soybean, rice and a little egg, sugar and salt - which supplies protein and minerals that a pure bamboo diet does not. Nothing is fed by hand, and all work is done in the service areas rather than in occupied enclosures.

Lunch
Base staff canteen.

Afternoon - hygiene round and a behaviour scan
The afternoon covers cleaning and disinfection in the yards and houses the animals have been moved out of, and the collection of leftover bamboo and droppings - a keeper's droppings count is a crude but real measure of how much an animal is eating, because pandas digest only a small fraction of what they take in. Volunteers then run a simple behaviour scan with the keeper: every five minutes for an hour, record what the animal is doing - feeding, resting, moving, climbing, interacting - on a prepared sheet. The point is not to produce research but to see how much of a panda's day is spent eating and how little of it is the playing, tumbling image the species is sold on.

Note on access
Tasks are assigned by the keepers and change with the day. Volunteer numbers at each base are capped, some bases do not accept foreign volunteers at all, and the programme can be reduced during the nursery season, during disease-control measures or in extreme heat. Where work is not possible we run the education-centre programme instead and explain why.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch

Accommodation
In Chengdu.

Morning — The Headworks, Structure by Structure
Dujiangyan is not a dam. It is a set of three works that split the Min River, shed its silt and control what is allowed into the plain, and they have been doing that since about 256 BC. Work through them in order. The fish-mouth levee, Yuzui, sits in the middle of the river and divides it into an inner and an outer channel. The flying-sand spillway, Feishayan, is the safety valve: when the inner channel runs high, water and the bed load of gravel and silt are thrown across into the outer river rather than into the fields. The bottle-neck intake, Baopingkou, is the control: a gap cut through the rock that meters the flow onto the plain no matter what the river is doing upstream. The students sketch each in plan and section and record the dimensions.

Afternoon — Maintenance and the Long Record
The system survives because it is repaired on a schedule rather than rebuilt. After lunch the group walks the site with the maintenance principle in hand - dredge the bed deep, keep the weir low - and works out why a low weir is the safer choice, and what happens to the silt budget when the rule is ignored. Cross the Anlan suspension bridge over the inner river, then return to Chengdu with the day's notes.

Evening — Field Notes
Back in Chengdu the students write up the measurements taken at the three works. The pairs set their Dujiangyan data against the second subject of the programme, which begins tomorrow at Sanxingdui and Jinsha.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch included.

Accommodation
Hotel in Chengdu.

Morning - transects and why elevation matters
Drive north-west to the wooded slopes of the Qingchengshan range, where the foothills of the Sichuan basin rise into the Qionglai mountains. The day is built on a simple fact of panda ecology: bamboo is everywhere in these hills, but pandas are not. They need the right species, a dense understorey they can move through, a canopy that keeps the bamboo from drying out, and slopes within their preferred range. Different bamboo species grow at different altitudes and a changing climate shifts those bands uphill, which is why survey work at the plot level matters. Field rules are set out before you start: stay on the marked line, take nothing, leave nothing, and record what you cannot identify.

Late morning - the plots
Lay out small square plots - five metres by five is enough for this exercise - at three elevations, and work through a standard sheet. Identify the bamboo genus where you can: the high-altitude Fargesia and Bashania types characterise the habitat that pandas depend on in these mountains, while Chimonobambusa and Phyllostachys grow lower down. Count the culms in the plot, measure the height and the diameter of a sample, estimate the percentage of ground covered by bamboo, and record the canopy above and the other shrubs and herbs present. Then look for evidence of animal use: chewed culm stubs, feeding sites with the leaf littered in a ring, droppings, and tracks in soft ground.

Lunch
A packed field lunch, carried in and carried out.

Afternoon - data, then back to the city
Finish the third plot, pool the results and look for the pattern - where cover was densest, where the culms were thickest, and where animal sign appeared. The instructor then explains how a real survey turns plots like these into a habitat map, how the fourth national panda survey used a combination of sign counts and DNA from droppings, and why the answer to "how many pandas are left" always comes with a confidence range. Return to Chengdu, enter the day's data into a shared sheet, and discuss what could be improved if the survey were repeated.

If conditions do not allow
The field day needs dry weather, safe trails and a permit where the land lies inside a protected area. Rain, landslide risk or an unapproved route moves the day into the Qingchengshan scenic area on established paths, or to a supervised session at the panda base.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch

Accommodation
In Chengdu.

Morning — Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding
At the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, observe playful cubs munching bamboo and climbing trees in spacious enclosures. Your visit also introduces the conservation efforts working to protect this beloved endangered species, from breeding programs to habitat protection.

Lunch — Sichuan Hotpot
Feast on Sichuan hotpot at Haidilao, where numbing peppercorns and fiery broths ignite the senses. Cooking fresh ingredients at the table makes for a lively, interactive meal.

Afternoon — Jinli Ancient Street
Explore Jinli Ancient Street, a Tang Dynasty-style lane lined with tea houses, snack stalls, and artisan workshops. It is a pleasant place to browse local crafts and soak up Chengdu's relaxed pace.

Evening — Sichuan Opera
Cap the day with a Sichuan opera performance, featuring face-changing performers and fire-spitting acts. The show highlights one of the region's most distinctive theatrical traditions.