I have a ticket to a Janis Ian show in Cerritos, CA, on 26 March 2008 which I’d bought online late last year. The added attraction is that I can go and see Mama Bai Yun’s latest cub, Zhen Zhen, at the San Diego Zoo. Cerritos is on the outskirts of LA, 3 hours from San Diego, so of course, I won’t pass up the chance if I get to go.
If I get to go. Yup, that’s the issue at hand.
I don’t have an air ticket to LA yet. I’m waiting for a MATTA Travel Fair to get a suitable cheap fare. From the MATTA website, I see the next Travel Fair is scheduled the weekend of 16 March. Will I be able to get a ticket there to fly on such short notice? Or are the tickets sold at that Travel Fair only for travel further in the future?
Meanwhile, I checked a few airlines to see what are the regular not-yet-discounted fares they offer. And I nearly fell off my chair when I found out. Below are the various fares I found, in ascending order:
Malaysia Airlines - RM4,029
EvaAir - RM4,4,636
Singapore Air - RM6,091
Cathay Pacific - RM9,046
All the above are economy fares, with tax and fuel surcharge already factored in. And that’s really why the fares are so expensive - airport tax and especially fuel surcharge. There have always been airport taxes, but fuel surcharges are a recent (and unwelcome) addition.
I remember, the last time I flew to LA in November 2006, the fare was around, maybe RM3,000/-, which I bought through the MATTA Travel Fair. It’s just a little over a year later, and the price difference is big. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a suitably cheap fare again this time. If not, no worries - I’m sure there’ll be another JI fan who’ll be happy to take my ticket in return for a donation to The Pearl Foundation.
These days, the panda cubs in the nursery at Wolong are usually one-half of twins born to their mothers. They are examples of the success Wolong has had in a strategy embarked on a few years ago - swap rearing, in which humans and panda mothers share the responsibility of rearing twins born to the latter. This involves leaving one cub with the mother and swapping it with its sibling so both cubs spend time nursing with mama. Newborns are swapped every 4 days or so, and as they grow older, the length of days away from mama increases to around 10 days. And while one of them is with her, the other one is in the nursery, enjoying a simulated environment involving time in the incubator in temperatures similar to mama’s body warmth and sometimes even a covering made of panda fur (either fake, or real from pandas who have passed on).
Twins are actually a common occurence for the giant panda population. However, in the wild, the weaker twin is often abandoned because the mother can only care for one at a time - she needs one paw to feed herself and the other paw to hold and nurse the surviving cub.
In Wolong, after observing this happening to their captive panda mums, the scientists decided to try taking away the younger baby to care for in the nursery. This was possible due to the extreme trust the pandas have in their human keepers - to the point of allowing them near their newborn cubs to examine and take away. Nowadays, the scientists don’t take away just one cub but both cubs for a quick examination before one of them is returned to the mother and the other remains in the nursery waiting for its turn.
Of course, the nursery was not built just for the purpose of swap rearing, but has been in existence long before, used to examine newborns, and also to house the ones rejected by their mothers. One such rejected cub is Fei Fei, mother of my Yoong Ping; her birth and rejection was documented in the National Geographic documentary I saw in 2000, and then included in a follow-up documentary a few years later. It is a good thing - indeed, a miracle - that her rejection has not affected Fei Fei’s own capabilities as a mother herself.
Here are some pictures of precious cubs in the nursery when I visited in early September 2007, including one (the last picture) of Hua Mei’s younger twin who was having her turn in the nursery at that time.
Posted on 8 January 2008 @ 21:54 in Women, Writing
Got this off the Moleskinerie site. Thanks, Armand, for sharing this very inspiring talk by one of my favourite authors. From the TED site:
In one of the most beloved talks from TED2007, novelist Isabel Allende talks about writing, women, passion, feminism. She tells the stories of powerful women she has known, some larger-than-life (listen for a beauty tip from Sophia Loren), and some simply living with grace, dignity and ingenuity in a world that, in too many ways, still treats women unjustly.
It’s just over 18 minutes long, so sit back and get ready to be inspired!
At last, I arrived in Wolong on the evening of Saturday, 8 September 2007, after nearly 5 hours on the road, one that often saw me looking over the edge into the river that ran beside the road, and one that wound through at least two mountain tunnels that had no lighting except for headlights from on-coming vehicles. It was around 6:30 p.m. when we arrived and drove past the Wolong Panda Centre’s entrance enroute to the hotel. Dromal, my Tibetan tour guide, pointed out the Centre to me, but I would have to be patient and wait till the next morning to report for work.
For the next four days, I would go to “work” at the Wolong Panda Breeding Centre. Since I was staying at the Wolong Hotel located about eight kilometres from the Centre, Dromal helped arrange daily transport for me with a local resident who offered his van for such a purpose. This was an easy task as there were various such vans available and the fare was standard. Each morning, he would fetch me from the hotel at around 7:45 a.m., by which time I’d had breakfast and even a walk around the square next to the hotel.
At the centre of the square is a sculpture depicting Wolong’s most famous residents.
My transport would drop me at the main entrance and I would walk across the bridge and through the gate like all the other Wolong staff and volunteers. For four days, I really felt like I was a part of the Wolong Panda Breeding Centre.
Like all volunteers, I was assigned to a master to assist him in his various tasks. I had two masters during my four days at Wolong - Master Huang, a young handler, had to go away on my third day to take his driving test, and I was reassigned to Master Zhou, a senior keeper who’d been with Wolong since the 1970s.
Master Huang was in charge of two pandas - Ling Ling, a male, and Hai Zhi, a new mother in confinement with her month-old cub - while Master Zhou was in charge of an expecting panda, Xi Xi. Master Huang had another volunteer, Ken from Arizona, under his charge when I joined his team. Master Zhou also had one other volunteer working under him when I was reassigned to him on my third day.
Master Huang and I at the gate leading to Ling Ling’s room.
Master Zhou feeding slices of apples to Xi Xi in preparation for her ultrasound examination. She’d been taught to lie on her back for the tests, and the apples were her treat for doing so.
Volunteer tasks basically centred around doing whatever the master told us to do, and nothing more. This was very important as there were areas volunteers were not allowed into. For example, Hai Zhi, one of Master Huang’s two charges, was in confinement with her month-old cub, so Ken and I were not allowed to go into her room, but only to stand at the door and carry out whatever items Master Huang passed to us, etc. In contrast, we had access to Ling Ling’s room, walking up to him and even helping to feed him. We would also help to hose down and scrub his enclosure (after he’d been let outdoors, of course), as well as change the bamboo leftovers for fresh ones, and then cart the leftovers to the rubbish room. Most times, we’d be pushing carts, either empty or full of bamboo from the supply area to the panda enclosures.
Ken letting me push the cart of fresh bamboo to Ling Ling’s room. It was a privilege to do so!
The Panda Centre seen from the inside of the main administrative building.
Although this was my first trip to Wolong, I felt I’d been there before. And I have - through the various National Geographic and Animal Planet documentaries aired over Astro, including the very first documentary back in 2000. So the Wolong Panda Centre felt very familiar to me, the people and the pandas, too.
In fact, Ling Ling, one of the pandas I helped look after in Wolong, is an “old” friend who I first met when he was just a one-year-old cub featured in the National Geographic documentary aired in 2000. Ling Ling is also the father of Hua Mei’s first set of twins born in 2004. Another cub featured in the 2000 documentary, Fei Fei, would go on to give birth to Yoong Ping, the cub I adopted in 2006. Going to Wolong in September 2007 was like going home for a family reunion for me.
During my four days in Wolong, there were at least three other volunteers who were there on their own, as well as a group of around 10 from Australia. All of us had paid our own way for the experience to work with the Wolong panda keepers and handlers. For me, this was no small sum as it included airfare, accommodation, meals, and the volunteer fee, too. But it was a privilege to be able to get so close to my favourite wild animal and to be a small part of the overall giant panda conservation effort.
At the time when I saw my first giant panda documentary eight years ago, Wolong was almost inaccessible to the general public in the outside world. It’s now becoming more accessible, despite the bumpy and often dangerous road journey, and this is largely due to local travel agents offering packages to Wolong which can include volunteer fees as well as fees for taking pictures with the younger pandas there.
I have heard criticism that the volunteer programme has been commercialised because of the volunteer and photography fees charged, and also because of the travel agents who charge quite exorbitant rates for their packages to Wolong. But the fees charged go towards funding the Centre’s various research projects. As for the travel agents, if it weren’t for them, Wolong would be less accessible as it would cost even more for individuals to make their own arrangements.
There has also been criticism that the volunteer programme doesn’t really allow participants to do “real work” in Wolong. But participants can’t be allowed to do the actual conservation work because most volunteers are laypeople, many of whom are from different backgrounds with no experience. For the volunteers, it’s an opportunity to get up close with one of the world’s most beloved endangered species. For the Wolong Panda Centre, it’s a good way to allow laypeople the opportunity to see what goes on at Wolong, as well as a source for additional funding for their research projects.
For this volunteer, my journey to Wolong has been the fulfilment of a journey first begun eight years ago when I first learned about the Wolong Panda Breeding Centre from a National Geographic documentary. The journey continues as I look forward to returning to Wolong in the near future.
I was really there at the Wolong Panda Breeding Centre!
