Panda Stories: Bridge to Wolong Panda Centre
Wolong Panda Centre
12 September 2007
For four days in September 2007, I walked across this bridge to work as a volunteer at the Wolong Panda Centre. Everyday, I would cross the bridge at least twice – once in the morning to go to work, and once in the evening after work. I think there were at least two days I crossed it two more times to lunch and back.
At the time, I did not know that these would be the only four days I would be crossing this bridge to the Wolong Panda Centre. A massive earthquake shook the Sichuan Province on 12 May 2008, extensively destroying the Panda Centre, including the hills behind the entrance at the far end of the bridge.
The first media reports out of Wolong reported that the bridge had been destroyed but the keepers managed to build a make-shift bridge to send their precious black and white charges to safety. It was a heroic deed, but I found myself wondering how they managed to build across the roaring river beneath.
As it turned out, those first reports were wrong. What actually happened was the hills behind the entrance had come tumbling down and blocked access to the bridge. The bridge across the river was still there; it was the path from the Panda Centre to the bridge that was damaged, blocking access to the bridge. Later pictures from the media showed a make-shift footpath had been built parallel to, but slightly below, the blocked path. It was on this footpath that the tourists were led in a single file to the bridge. Since the footpath was beneath the main path, and thus the bridge, the tourists then climbed a ladder to get on to the bridge to walk across to safety. In the same way, each keeper carried a panda cub along the footpath and up the ladder to the bridge – this to me is a deed more heroic than the building of the bridge across the river.
Later, the blocked path to the bridge would be cleared to allow the rest of the pandas to be transported across the bridge, away from Wolong and to their new homes – some to other zoos and animal parks around China, but most of them to Bifengxia Panda Base. While most of the keepers were also transferred to Bifengxia, some remained in Wolong, and with them, seven cubs born in 2007 for company and also as a reminder that hope remains for Wolong.
This image of the bridge was literally the last picture I took on the evening of my fourth, and last, day at Wolong Panda Centre. Perhaps something told me that I might never walk across this bridge again.
