Artist and naturalist Peter Scott, the mastermind behind London’s wetland centre which we visited last month, was also closely involved with the worldwide fund for nature and designed its logo which is, naturally, the giant panda.

Having been deprived of giant pandas in England ever since Chi Chi died in 1972, (although there are two, Tian Tian and Zhang Guang, in Scotland), we were very keen to visit pandas in a research and breeding area near Chengdu.

Our visit there was yet another high point in our China exploration. Who cannot fall in love with this adorable creature (which the Chinese call bear-cat) and is a great example of how an endangered species can be saved (the panda is now described as ‘vulnerable’ instead of ‘endangered’).

We saw pandas playing with each other, resting on trees, having a good slide-down and gorging themselves on their favourite bamboo shoots. Fortunately, we got to the reserve quite early and found the pandas awake and active and the area not too crowded with visitors.

Let these pictures give some feel of our experiences.

A few points about giant pandas:

The panda used to live in the lowland areas around Chengdu but deforestation and loss of suitable habitat have driven them to the hills and mountains.

The panda anciently used to be carnivorous but now 99% of its diet is vegetarian and bamboo-shoot centered although it will accept other foods including meat.

The panda is very finicky about mating especially when it’s in a reserve hence the big problems zoos and centres have which they get around by using artificial insemination and now also frozen semen.

The female panda gives birth to twins, only one of which survives in the wild. There has been one known case of triplets. While we were there we saw a baby panda which had been abandoned by its mum and was under care.

Normally male pandas are the ones who don’t worry about their offspring, leaving it all to mum.

Giant pandas are not usually aggressive except when they are teased. Their bite is very strong, given they demolish bamboo for their diet.

Because of the low energy level of bamboos pandas spend most of their time eating them and, consequently, defecate around forty times a day.

Pandas in the wild have increased from under a thousand to an estimated three thousand in the last twenty years. There are around seventy pandas in world zoos today.

There is another type of giant panda with more brownish colouring and a smaller frame called the Qinling panda.

The panda was first seen by the west in 1916.

Pandas have been the best ambassadors in easing Chinese – western relationships after the difficult period of the 1960’s.

There is no direct species relationship between giant and red pandas although both live mainly on bamboo and have a false thumb called a sesamoid bone with which to hold bamboo. Here is the equally adorable red panda which is also in the reserve.

All-in-all, seeing so many giant pandas must surely have been not just a highlight of our China voyage but a highlight of our life!

We spent a total of four nights on the MS Yangtze II ship.

The next day we sailed through the second of the three gorges, the Wu, a little shorter than the Xilling at 45 kilometres in length but no less dramatic. The limestone peaks almost seemed sculpted by some gigantic monster in the country’s primeval past. Perhaps they were, indeed, petrified daemons.

We took a delightful detour up the Daning river tributary to the three small gorges. Their names are Dragon gate, Misty and Emerald. Although smaller in scale than the main gorges the ‘little’ ones have a wonderfully intimate feel as their sides truly hugged our vessel.

I wish I could have spent more time here among the forests which are filled with wild animals including monkeys and red pandas. Life is just too short for what there is to see on this wonderful planet.

In the evening entertainment was laid on in the opulent ballroom on the top deck. It was a sweet Chinese version of something reminisicent of the shows held in that immortal sitcom ‘Hi de Hi’.

Although we were in such mythical places, where earth, sky and water played with each other, in this same month of November, looking back at our photographs it all already seems a dream. Were we really there or was it just a passing vision?

A high-rise orient:
rock peaks instead of concrete;
kissed by green waters.

China’s three gorges are among the most spectacularly scenic parts of this fabulous country, and also one of its most controversial because of the changes wrought upon them by the dam completed in 1994. How could the relocation of over a million people, the submersion of valuable archaeological sites and the considerable erosion of the Yangtze river banks justify such a project?

In fact, the idea of a dam for the Yangtze goes back at least as far back as the 1920’s if not beyond. This seminal area of Chinese civilization has always been prone to the worst floods, drowning thousands, and the most risky navigational problems. The idea of adding the world’s greatest hydro-electric generating station to a dam was much more recent and has enabled almost half of the country to benefit from new sources of electricity.

All dam building involves difficult choices between environment and development. All I can say is that our cruise through the gorges still thrilled me with one of the most awesome journeys I’ve ever undertaken and that a whole new generation is provided with a future which more than compensates for the nostalgia an older generation must have felt for the destruction of their ancestral roots.

To get to the start of our gorges adventure we flew from Shanghai to near where the dam is situated at Sandouping in Hubei province.

A fine boat called Yangtze II was called into service and our cabin was most comfortable. Situated on the starboard it also had a nice balcony with wicker chairs and table. It certainly evoked a by-gone charm and was the first proper cruise we had ever been on.

We visited the world’s largest power station generating almost 100 megawatt hours (enough to light up most of Europe!) and enjoyed the view from the monument at the top of the hill dominating the development.

The dam, which is 7661 ft long and 594 feet high, has three main sections with the central part containing sluice gates opened to release the build-up of silt behind them.

We were lucky enough to have our luxury liner go up the recently completed huge set of five locks separating the lower river from the upper stretch above the dam. Having only had experience of English narrow boat canal locks I was completely bowled over by the almost superhuman scale of the dam locks.

For smaller boats there is also a lift, opened in 2016, but our vessel was a little too large for that!

It took us five hours to get up the series of mammoth locks, which also accommodated other boats. I was utterly stunned by the vast scale of contemporary Chinese engineering. Yet I was pleased by the fact that it was Leonardo da Vinci who thought up the modern mitre lock and that the brits developed it extensively in the world’s first industrial revolution.

Having used this extraordinary watery staircase our pleasure liner was able to enter the start of the gorges.

The first gorge is called Xilling and is 66 km long. We entered Xilling in a misty early morning. What a sight to greet us in our half awakened state…

Pictures are worth a million words here so here they are:

I felt the same too.

Note also the weird ancient coffins wedged in cracks on the gorge sides. No-one quite knows how they managed to get there.

They belong to an ancient Neolithic culture and date back to at least 1000 BC.

Mysteries upon mysteries as indeed so much of China is saturated with.